Yiddish Language
Yiddish is a language primarily spoken by Ashkenazi Jews, who are descendants of Jewish communities from Central and Eastern Europe. This rich and unique language developed around the 900s CE, originating from a blend of medieval German, Hebrew, and various Slavic languages. Initially shaped by Jewish communities in Germany who incorporated elements from their native languages, Yiddish evolved significantly over the centuries, especially as Jewish populations migrated eastward due to persecution, ultimately leading to the formation of Old Yiddish.
Today, Yiddish is spoken by approximately five hundred thousand to one million people worldwide, with a strong presence among Hasidic communities. The language embodies not just spoken and written forms but also a vibrant cultural heritage, including Yiddish theater and music, which have flourished particularly in North America and parts of Europe. While the number of speakers has declined dramatically since the early twentieth century due to historical tragedies, Yiddish remains a vital aspect of Jewish identity and culture, with academic programs and cultural institutions dedicated to its preservation and study.
Yiddish Language
Yiddish is a language spoken by Ashkenazi Jews—those native to Central and Eastern Europe—and their descendants scattered around the world. It is an amalgam of medieval German, Hebrew, and various Slavic languages of Eastern Europe. Today approximately five hundred thousand to one million people worldwide speak the distinctly Jewish language.
History and Classification
The development of Yiddish is believed to have begun in the 900s CE, when Jews from France and northern Italy began migrating in large numbers to Germany's Rhine River basin. This area was already home to some small Jewish communities who spoke the medieval form of German. After settling, the new arrivals continued to use the languages they had spoken in their native lands, which included several Jewish-infused dialects of the Romance languages. Romance languages arose from Latin. Among those spoken by the new arrivals were Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and Romanian.
French Jews played an especially important role in the formation of Yiddish. To their new German home they brought their own Laaz language, a Jewish-French dialect. Members of this Jewish community began introducing various Laaz words and phrases to the standard medieval German. They also incorporated Hebrew and Aramaic words from their scriptures and rabbinic teachings into the existing Jewish-French-German blend. All of these languages and dialects eventually combined to form the earliest incarnation of Yiddish, which at this time was still limited to these Western European Jews. The word "Yiddish" itself means "Jewish."
The language continued to change over the next two to three hundred years. The Crusades, which ended in the late 1200s, had called much of Western Europe's Christian population to holy war in the east. Largely left alone in their German communities, speakers of early Yiddish Judaized the language even more, stripping it of some of its stronger German elements.
Throughout the 1200s, the Jewish inhabitants of the Rhine basin began fleeing east to escape religious persecution. Their flight took them to eastern Germany, Poland, and the various Slavic lands of Eastern Europe. When these Jewish populations then began adding Slavic-language words and inflections to their existing Yiddish, the formation of what is known today as Old Yiddish was complete. Yiddish had broken free of its German base to become its very own language. These Jewish communities of Central and Eastern Europe formed the base of the Ashkenazi Jews.
Jews flourished in Eastern Europe, especially in Poland, over the next several hundred years. By the 1500s, Yiddish had taken on such a Slavic identity that it had lost most of its similarities to the kind of Yiddish still spoken by Jews in western Germany and France. During the 1500s, a written version of Yiddish using Hebrew characters was introduced.
The early modern period of the 1700s spelled the beginning of the end of western Yiddish. At this time, the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment, began encouraging Western European Jews to abandon Yiddish and instead teach their children European languages so they could communicate with the developing world. Eastern Yiddish in the Slavic countries remained strong until the mid-1900s, when Soviet Union leader Joseph Stalin began persecuting Soviet Jews and later when chancellor of Nazi Germany Adolf Hitler implemented the Holocaust. Millions of Jews were killed under Stalin's and Hitler's regimes, after which Yiddish fell into a disuse so widespread that it was considered nearly extinct.
Geographic Distribution and Modern Usage
At the beginning of the twentieth century, nearly 11 million of the world's 18 million Jews spoke Yiddish. The largest portion of these, more than 6.7 million, was located in Central and Eastern Europe. The second most populous Yiddish-speaking population in the world was in North America, which hosted nearly 3 million Yiddish speakers. The remaining regions of the world—including areas such as Western Europe, Palestine, and South and Central America—were home to an average of several hundred thousand Yiddish speakers each.
In the early twenty-first century, after the extreme suffering the European Jewish population faced throughout much of the twentieth century, about five hundred thousand Jewish people worldwide speak Yiddish. Most of these are part of the Hasidim, the community of Orthodox Jews who strictly adhere to Jewish religious practices. This fact is one of the unique characteristics of the language and one that has defined it since its inception: unlike many other languages, which often are limited to their countries of origin, Yiddish is not a language of a nation or global region but of a people.
About 250,000 American Jews speak Yiddish, with approximately half of these living in New York City. The language has thrived throughout the modern era, with some schools offering Yiddish as a language course and universities such as Columbia in the United States and Oxford in England boasting departments in Yiddish studies.
Today the Yiddish language is composed of much more than its spoken and written words. An entire Yiddish culture has burgeoned around the language among the many Ashkenazi Jewish populations of the world. The 1800s saw an especially rich Yiddish theater tradition arise in places such as Ukraine, Lithuania, and later New York City. Yiddish music—traditionally played on instruments such as flutes, clarinets, and tsimbls, a Jewish adaptation of the stringed dulcimer—also has become its own cultural niche, as it is an important component of Jewish religious ceremonies. The most populous Yiddish-speaking communities in the world today are located in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Israel.
Bibliography
"Basic Facts about Yiddish." YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. 2014. Web. 9 July 2015. http://www.yivo.org/images/uploads/images/Basic%20Facts%20About%20Yiddish%202014.pdf
"The Crusades (1095-1291)." Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Web. 9 July 2015. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/crus/hd‗crus.htm
Schoenberg, Shira. "Yiddish: History and Development of Yiddish." Jewish Virtual Library. American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise. Web. 9 July 2015. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/yiddish.html
Shyovitz, David. "Modern Jewish History: The Haskalah." Jewish Virtual Library. American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise. Web. 9 July 2015. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/Haskalah.html
"Yiddish Language and Culture." Judaism 101. JewFAQ.org. Web. 9 July 2015. http://www.jewfaq.org/yiddish.htm