Talk:Yiddish language/Archive 2

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tatysch or dyatsch?

Ajd and Olve, you seem to disagree on this, which is it? Also, the second "yod" in Yiddish looked like question marks for me before, but Olve's edit fixed that. Was there a reason you changed it back, Ajd? Jayjg | (Talk) 22:27, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The Yiddish word for 'German' is daytsh, not taytsh—that's why I changed that back (though if I can be convinced that it was taytsh at the time in question, I'll accept it). The yod was a mistake; I'll fix that. AJD 22:58, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Well, you missed the same problem in the word "daytsch". Jayjg | (Talk) 23:14, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The traditional form used in connection with Yiddish is the T form. In connection with (mainly non-Jewish) German, D is often used, but then normally in the form daytshish (-er, -e). In older Western Yiddish, the pronunciation would often be tâtsch (with un-rounding, opening, first-component lengthening and subsequent monophthongisation of the historic diphthong), and the word would often be written as טאטש. Yiddish "tsu taytshn" (also with a Tet rather than Daled) comes from the same root and means to translate into Yiddish.

The reason I changed the ay digraph into two Yods was that the explicit ay digraph is a de facto deprecated form which is not displayed properly in most generally available Hebrew fonts.

(By the way: My qualifications for writing about Yiddish include a university degree in linguistics (including dialectography) and ethnomusicology in addition to years of studying comparative linguistics (with an emphasis on Germanic languages) on my own. An example of my work with Yiddish may be seen here: http://utne.nvg.org/j/jiddisch/ ) -- Olve 23:08, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Taitsh is the definite traditional form in Yiddish — and glyphs above the normal range for Hebrew are not supported by most Hebrew fonts. I am going to wait a little bit for additional input, and then go ahead with my edits unless someone can show compelling evidence countering those of my contributions which were removed by Ajd. -- Olve 23:26, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

OK — I have checked Weinreich's Modern English-Yiddish Yiddish-English dictionary, and here is a summary of what it says:

  • דיַיטשיש = דיַיטש German
  • טיַיטש־חומש a Yiddish version of the Pentateuch
  • טיַיטשן interpret

It is clear from this that the distinction between daytsh- meaning German and taytsh- meaning Yiddish is still valid. I will therefore change the Yiddish back to yidish-taytsh. -- Olve 00:06, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This doesn't make anything clear at all. If daytsh means 'German', why shouldn't the form meaning 'Jewish German' be yidish daytsh? That is, daytsh means the language, and taytsh is a related word that means 'translation' or something like that. So shouldn't yidish taytsh be 'Jewish translation', not 'Jewish German'?
Also, if most Hebrew fonts can't show a pasekh-tsvey-yudn, I'd say the fault is with them, not with us for using it, but.... AJD 03:38, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I do not think it should be that unclear: The inherited Yiddish form is taytsh. The newer concept of German nationality is denoted by the loanword daytsh — a lightly Yiddishised form of German Deutsch. This word is also frequently found in the form daytshish. That taytsh and daytsh have different meanings is not any different from hotel and hospital having different meanings. The fact that Yiddish daytsh means specifically German as opposed to Yiddish can be illustrated by the word דייַטשמעריש daytshmerish — a word which means 'too much like German (said of modern words or phrases sporadically used in Yid. but not accepted by cultivated stylists'. (Weinreich 1968, p. 657) You ask: "If daytsh means 'German', why shouldn't the form meaning 'Jewish German' be yidish daytsh?" The answer to that is: It isn't -- and part of the reason is that "Jewish German" is not exactly what the term means... It would be great if someone could come up with a better translation. As for the form "Yidish Daytsh" with a "Daled", part of its problem is in fact that it is to daytshmerish...
Coming to think of it, Ladino is an interesting parallel: Ladino in its classical Judeo-Spanish, Spanish and Portuguese form denotes the translation of Hebrew and Aramaic into a Romance language — and thus means something quite different from "Latin". I guess one could say that "taytsh" denotes "Germanic as opposed to Semitic" rather than "of the German language or culture/nation" the same way that "ladino" denotes "Romance" (particularly Iberian) as opposed to Semitic" rather than "of the Latin language or culture/nation".
The cognate "*theud-" is widely used in the Germanic languages with other meanings than "German". Thus, the English term Dutch means "from the Netherlands"; the Old Norse <thorn>jó<eth> means 'people'; the Norwegian dialect otjø and standard Norwegian utyske (lit. "un-folk" or "un-person") means monster; the Norwegian tyde, German deuten and Yiddish daytn means 'make understandable to people', etc. -- Olve 06:16, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The right word is DAJTSCH. German: DEUTSCH. Simon Mayer

Scandinavian language closer than Yiddish/German?

First of all, the bit about Danish and Swedish being closer than German and Yiddish must clearly be a mistake. My first language is Swedish, and I've studied German for almost seven years. When I watch a movie with Yiddish spoken (like the tenth episode of season four of The West Wing), I can understand everything except a few words with the help of the German I speak. When I watch a Danish movie (like Idioterne), I can hardly understand anything but a few words here and there.

But even having just "Swedish and Norwegian are far more closely related to each other than Yiddish and German" sounds very POV in my mind. Is there a reliable linguistic source on this statement first made by Jayjg? As far as I can tell, in lexical correspondence, grammar and orthography, I would say that it's the other way aroound. —Gabbe 20:02, Jan 14, 2005 (UTC)

"Swedish is closely related to, and usually mutually intelligible with, Danish and Norwegian." according to Swedish language. "Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish are linguistically very closely related and are generally mutually intelligible. This is due to the way the national boundaries have been in flux throughout Scandinavian history. Norway and Denmark were a single country for four centuries, until 1814. And after they split apart, Norway was under the rule of the Swedish crown until 1905. The movement for the recognition of a Norwegian language separate from Danish and Swedish led to the consequent formation of nynorsk." [1] As for the specific statement, it is "Languages like Danish, Swedish and Norwegian are far more closely related to each other than Yiddish and German." This is clearly the case, since Yiddish and German separated over 1,000 years ago, and 30% of Yiddish's vocabularly comes from two completely unrelated language groups, the Semitic and Slavic groups. On the other hand, Norwegian formed as recently 200 years ago, after a conscious effort to separate it from Danish. How much Yiddish was spoken in those movies and television episodes? Jayjg | (Talk) 20:18, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Hej Gabbe, It is true that spoken Danish and spoken non-Skåne Swedish are significantly different from each other phonologically and to a smaller degree also grammatically. It is also true that Swedes have a tendency to understand less of the other Scandinavian languages than the other way around for mostly sociological reasons. However, Swedish and Norwegian are close enough that I can say (as a linguist who write and speak Norwegian (Nynorsk, Bokmål), Swedish, German and Yiddish reasonably well) that the differences between Norwegian and Swedish are smaller than those between German (Bühnesprache) and most forms of Yiddish. If you are talking about dialects of German and dialects of Yidish, this may of course vary a great deal -- just like it does between dialects of Norwegian and Swedish (and, to a smaller degree, Danish). As Jay points out, the significant component of loan words from Hebrew, Aramaic and Slavonic languages in Yiddish makes communication beyond the very basic level difficult between Yiddish and German. But what Jay writes about Norwegian is not quite precise: Norwegian was of course around for several centuries before the two Norwegian written languages developed as official norms in the course of the 19th and 20th centuries. Shabbat shalom / God hälg! -- Olve 22:34, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Alright, I might be mistaken. The examples I cited aren't really scholarly "proofs" of anything, I agree. It might very well be that Norwegian and Swedish are closer than Yiddish and German. But regardless, there's just something about "Danish, Swedish and Norwegian [...] are almost completely mutually intelligible" that really strikes me. I cannot accept that statement as an undeniable fact. And saying that they are "far more closely related to each other than [...]" is a needless peacock word. I think the pro-Yiddish-is-a-language part of the "A German dialect?"-section deserves more easily-verifiable statements of fact in its favour, such as for example:
While it might still be argued that the European Union and the United States are wrong from a linguistical standpoint, to me these two examples "throws more weight around" so to speak. It is easy to verify the objective truth of the two statements above, but it is hard to look up in a chart or table of language groupings and compare the values for Norwegian/Swedish versus Yiddish/German and see which pair is closer. It's a bit like trying to measure which of Goethe or Schopenhauer had most impact on 19th century Germany, isn't it? I know it might strike a nerve with some to remove the mention of the Scandianvian languages entirely, and there's certainly a point in mentioning them, but the analogy is too murky and subjective to really convince anyone. Am I making sense? What I'm trying to say is that the analogy currently in the article has an inconspicuous veracity, it might almost be called POV.
Oh, and by the way, a trevlig helg to you too. :) —Gabbe 22:26, Jan 15, 2005 (UTC)
I must say that the mutual intelligibility between Danish and Swedish is obvious. However, it also depends on what dialect the Swedes and the Danes speak. A Swedish speaker from Finland or a North Swede finds Danish incomprehensible. I come from south central Sweden and I find Copenhagen Danish comprehensible. However, I would probably not understand Jutland Danish very well. So, I think it is better to state that the languages are mutually intelligible but that it comes in degrees depending on the language varieties of the speakers.--Wiglaf 20:00, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

My 2 cents:

Whether you understand Yiddish depends on where in Germany/German speaking countries you come from. I would argue that Southern/South Western and Western Germans (i.e. Rhineland) tend to understand Yiddish, since our dialects have a lot in common with spoken Yiddish, in structure, pronounciation and word choice. My hometown is Stuttgart in the South Western German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg and my "First" native language is not Standard German (which I didn't learn until I attended school) but Schwaebisch. My grandmother is Alsatian, so I am rather familiar with that German (Alemmanic)dialect too. Yiddish sounds a lot like Alsatian with quite a few words/expressions of Hebrew, Slavic etc. origin added (25 -30%). I also listened to the Yiddish Boston Radio and understood about 90%, without ever having studied Yiddish formally. I had a North German friend listen to the same programm and she barely understood what they were talking about. There is not "one" German - but many German dialects and a national standard, that functions as a lingua franca throughout the German speaking world.

IMHO Yiddish is clearly a Germanic language in its structure and the majority of its terminology. Whether you want to call it a dialect or a language doesn t matter. The line between language and dialect is blurred i.e. the issue of Standard Dutch/Dutch and German dialects in the German/Netherlands border region, Standard German or the question whether the different versions of Chinese are dialects or languages.

Luke Pacific Grove, CA

I agree Yiddish should be considered Germanic... unfortunatly :'( (anon, 2 May 2005)

Political baggage and linguistic method

Reading all of the above (I come to this for ths first time) makes my hair stand on end. I think we need to come clean here and say outright: the relationship between Germans and Jews is so heavily weighed down by the baggage of 20th century history that the idea of German linguistic origins is upsetting for some Jews. I have a lot of sympathy for that, but we can't let that affect the results of linguistic science. Read the article on comparative method if you want to know how we judge what languages are related. In the case of Yiddish, though, there is not a lot of hypothetical comparative methodology necessary, because the whole history is documented. We have a continuous tradition of Jewish writings going back to the 13th century. If you read the early texts (14th-century Dukus Horant, for example) you will see that this is Middle High German in Hebrew characters with a slight vowel shift (possibly, depending on how you interpret the Hebrew characters), with about one Hebrew lexem per page (see the statistical analysis by Jim Marchand) and no significant unique grammatical features. That is why we call it Judeo-German in this early phase: it is German with a Jewish colouring. In the next two centuries, Judeo-German becomes Yiddish, i.e. the dialect develops into a language in its own right. It borrows a lot from Slavic (but of COURSE it does not become a Slavic language) and develops a rich tradition of idiom all of its own. Modern Yiddish is not longer a German dialect because communication across this boundary is difficult (not impossible) and it has its own institutions (newspapers etc.) using its own norms. Yiddish is a language in its own right, and like English it is a Germanic language with a large proportion of borrowed non-Germanic lexemes. I am not a German. I am not a Jew. I have no axe to grind here. Bit I am a trained linguist who has studied and written about this, and that's just the way it is. The above arguments are mostly just silly. For this reason I would propose deleting the unnecessary paragraph "A German dialect?" (which is accurate enough but sounds more like special pleading than lingusitic scholarship) and instead opening the history paragraph with a note about late-mediaeval Judeo-German and what happened after that. I'll be glad to do it if no-one else does, but not without a consensus on this discussion page first. --Doric Loon 09:36, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Actually, the section "A German dialect?" looks to me like pretty good NPOV summary of a question relevant to the article. I'd keep it. --Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 15:44, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Rather than deleting the section, why not just propose additions to it here? BTW, what do you think of Wexler's thesis (a re-lexified Slavic language)? Jayjg (talk) 18:08, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I'm not Marnen, but my answer is that I don't think the notion of "relexified Slavic language" is meaningful. We classify non-creole languages by the origin of their lexicon, regardless of what changes have happened to the grammar; and if it's lexically a Germanic language it's a Germanic language. AJD 05:19, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Actually, it's mostly the other way around. As I say, read the article on comparative method; we classify languages not according to either lexis or grammar but according to a continuous tradition of development. However, obviously where there is such a tradition, there will also be grammatical and lexical evidence of it, and when the tradition is not otherwise documented, these provide the evidence which fills the gap. Of these two, grammar is more important. The grammar of any language is subject to sporadic changes in the course of history, but in so far as the grammar reflects a relationship with another language, it is reflecting its origins, because grammatical structures are very rarely passed sideways from one language to another. This applies especially to morphology - similarities in syntax can be co-incidence. So for example if two languages have a parallel paradigm of verb inflections, that is an almost infallible sign of original relationship. In the case of lexis, on the other hand, "loan words" are very common, so lexical similarities are a less safe criterion for judging language relatedness. Nonetheless, a broad range of lexical similarities is very useful, and in particular, there are some classes of words which are rarely borrowed (personal pronouns, numerals, prepositions, the verb "to be"), and in these cases, if two languages share most of their lexis, they are certainly related. So, the criteria in order of importance are: 1. the continuous tradition if it can be documented; 2. any structural or morphological similarities which are too precise be co-incidence; 3. any lexical similarities which are too precise to be co-incidence and are unlikely to be borrowings. In the case of Yiddish, though, its development out of Middle High German is recorded in black and white from the very beginning, so no hypothetical work with the other two criteria is required. But if we didn't have historical records, we could use first morphology and second the most basic lexis to prove easily that Yiddish is more closely related to German than to any other language. It would be hard to find a case anywhere in the field of comparative linguistics where the evidence is clearer. But as I say, there is an entirely understandable post-1945 anti-Germanism among many Yiddish speakers which make them want to believe that Yiddish is related to something - ANYTHING - other than German. So we get the silly Slavic thesis and the silly French thesis, and if it absolutely has to be Germanic then we get wild parallels drawn with Swedish... (I once spoke to a Ukranian who tried to convince me Ukranian is a Romance language most closely related to French. ANYTHING but Russian! This is a world-wide phenomenon among "beer-garden linguists".) I don't know what you do with people who get these things into their head, but whatever it is, it ain't linguistics. --Doric Loon 14:24, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Well, the reason that whole section actually appeared in the first place was because some German speakers kept insisting that Yiddish was nothing but a German dialect (not a language in its own right), and that speakers of modern German could easily understand it. Since that is not a typical view, sources were brought which contradicted it - I believe this may be the exact opposite of the reason you thought it was there. In any event, you sound quite knowledgable in the field, and your contributions would of course be welcome, and I'm sure vastly improve the article. Please keep in mind, though, that sources for theories and views should be cited, otherwise we run the risk of putting original research into the article. Jayjg (talk) 02:34, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Eh, woops! Sorry, looks like I misunderstood where this argument was coming from. (I've had this debate before, and possibly I jumped to a conclusion - mea culpa!) Nonetheless, the possibility of Slavic origins and Swedish connections are implied in the article and do need to be debunked if they can't be quietly ignored. BTW, what do you think of the idea that Yiddish is descended from Basque? I just found this: [[3]]. Can't make up my mind if the author is a joker or a headbanger.
But coming back to your point, Jayjg, there are usually two criteria for saying that dialects have separated far enough to be separate languages. One is when the communication barrier becomes too difficult for the average person, even after they've spent a little time atuning. And the second is the presence of institutions which use the language as a written norm. Either one will do. In the case of Yiddish, most Germans certainly can't read it, and usually they are struggling to understand the klezmer songs which have become so popular in Germany since the '80s. More importantly, there is the long tradition of serious publishing in Yiddish which indicates a literary standard. Read the article on dialect though - which suggests that the whole thing is so subjective that in the end we use what the respective group wants (PC principle) - so how do Yiddish speakers feel about it?
I should declare myself: my interest is medieval languages/lit. I cover Yiddish to the 16th century. I guess that fills a gap here, so I'll pose as an expert on that, but not on the modern language.
I'm getting a message that this page is too long. Which is probably mostly my fault. Should we do something about it?--Doric Loon 19:46, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I think all the information you're presenting is great and belongs in the article; however, I must strongly emphasize that everything you state should be cited. Regardless of how strongly you know something to be true, based on your professional training, you need to cite the sources of your contentions. WP:NPOV is another policy that should be helpful here. And regarding the length of the page, I wouldn't worry about it yet. You can just edit this specific section here, titled "Political baggage and linguistic method", rather than the whole page, using the little "edit" button that shows up on the right hand side of the page beside every section header. After the discussion here dies down, I'll archive some of the older discussion. Jayjg (talk) 03:51, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Two issues

(which are largely resolved 21:10, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC))

  1. The 4-million-speakers figure is (a) great (b) in all probability too high. What is the source for the claim, and how recent is it?(Pedantic addendum: as most language censuses I've seen don't register the ethnicity or religion of all speakers of a language, perhaps that should be changed to "x million people", anyhow, where x is the correct number (x=4 a few decades ago, presumably).)
    • I don't have a formal source for this, but if there were 10 million Yiddish speakers at the start of World War II, it seems relatively safe to say that there would still have been 4 million at the end.-- Jmabel | Talk 02:04, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)
      • ... the majority of whom would have died by now. Hasdrubal 19:29, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
        • I'm sorry, I didn't see the context for that. Yes, I agree, that is almost certainly an overestimate. (In other contexts, I've used that as an approximate minimum for 1945, thought I'd done so here, and thought that was what was being referred to.) I'll look for a citable number. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:18, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)
          • Remarkably, it's not a lot lower. Ethnologue estimates 3 million [4] in 1991. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:24, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)
            • I suspect it is somewhat lower now, but its hard to tell; on the one hand, the old Yiddish speaking generation is dying off at an increasingly high rate. On the other hand, the Yiddish speaking haredi communities have a ferociously high birth rate. Jayjg (talk) 20:36, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
              • I'll take a look at Ethnologue's source when I have the chance. While the birth rate of haredim and hassidim is very high,

Yiddish is not being transmitted to the new generation in many communities. For instance, relatively few Hassidic families in Montreal are raising their children as Yiddish speakers (completely unscientific personal observation). Of those few, at most a small minority seem to be at all interested in using the Yiddish literature collections at the local library, but that is another matter... Hasdrubal 22:46, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  1. Regarding the section "Is Yiddish a German dialect?" - it is my impression that most linguists nowadays see the difference between dialect and language as purely political, and not truly helpful. Perhaps the section should be omitted or shifted until later in the text? It is the sort of thing that would have been important to emphasize a generation ago, but now it may be besides the point. Also, the theory on Yiddish's being a "relexified Slavic language" is generally considered to be on the border of crankish. Far more relevant is the ongoing discussion as to whether Yiddish had its main origins in medieval high German or medieval Bavarian. Hasdrubal 00:54, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • I'm with you on this one. The Slavic theory seems absurd to me (though I'm not a professional linguist). The language vs. dialect theory usually comes down to "a dialect is a language with a flag and a navy." -- Jmabel | Talk 02:04, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)
      • "An army and a navy", actually. Usually I wouldn't be so pedantic but this saying actually originated in Yiddish (or so I'm told): "A shprakh is a dialekt mit an armey un a flot." (Max Weinreich.) AJD 03:00, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
        • Interesting. I never knew the origin of that. I would say that if we are going to take up to topic at all in the article that quote belongs here, if we can get a decent citation on it. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:57, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)

Largely resolved:

  1. The current statement on number of speakers at a reasonably recent date (1991) now has a citation. If someone has something more recent and citable, great.
  2. I've added the Weinrich quotation (found the citation for it, too). I think the article's current dismissive mention of the Slavicist theory is fine, but if someone wants to make it even more dismissive, I wouldn't object. -- Jmabel | Talk 21:10, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)

Remaining issues:

  1. The question of which parts of Germany contributed in what degree to Yiddish should be taken up; I don't know enough to write it.
  2. If someone wants to move the section on dialogue vs. language farther down, as Hasdrubal suggests, I certainly wouldn't object. -- Jmabel | Talk 21:10, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)

Um, OK, folks, I've begun reading the article, and was struck by an apparent inconsistency. Thinking perhaps it had been discussed on the Talk page, I came here, where I read everything, and yes...it certainly has been hashed to death here, yet no resolution seems forthcoming. The whole argument over whether Yiddish is a language or a dialect of German will no doubt drag on at least as long as the argument over whether or not German is one language or 20. That notwithstanding, it seems rather silly that the two statements:

  • Yiddish and German share a large portion of their respective vocabularies, and have reasonably similar grammars.
  • Much of the grammar of Yiddish differs substantially from that of German, some of it having been influenced by contact with other (e.g. Slavic) languages

should appear in the article, especially in such close proximity (in the pathetically-named "A German Dialect?" section). How can their grammars be "reasonably similar" while simultaneously "differ[ing] substantially"?! Am I the only one who thinks this is doublespeak? I haven't looked at the history to verify it, but it sounds like these two statements were written by two different authors, one of whom didn't bother to make their statements jive very well with the remainder of the section... Any volunteers to either fix this or to explain how this is not inconsistent? kol tov. TShilo12 22:58, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

We recently added some content pointing out that the language/dialect distinction is rather arbitrary. As for the specific degree of similarity and difference:

  1. Someone who knows Yiddish far better than I should write a section summarizing the nature and degree of difference from Hochdeutsch (or perhaps from Mittelhochdeutsch).
  2. Any remarks like "reasonably similar", etc., should probably have attribution. This is a controversial matter, and authorities should be cited. -- Jmabel | Talk 00:39, Mar 16, 2005 (UTC)
I've asked User:Doric Loon to return, since he/she seemed to know what he/she was talking about. Users Olve and AJD seems knowledgeable as well. Perhaps they can help fix it up. Jayjg (talk) 00:43, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the vote of confidence. Since I last visited here (I'm not a very regular user) Jmabel has added some of the material I thought was missing, but at your prompting I am glad to expand it. (Jmabel has also written a new and welcome article on the Bovo Bukh; I started one a week or so ago on the Dukus Horant - so gradually we're getting there!) As I said before, my knowledge is that of a medievalist, and given the close scrutiny of movements on this page, I wouldn't dare expound much about the modern language. But I hope the historical starting point is now properly documented. Incidentally, I deleted that silly stuff about Jews in Germany going back to the second temple - sounds almost masonic! Let's stick with what is recorded - there's enough history there without inventing what might have been. I'm glad to see that TShilo12 agrees with me about the dialect section sounding rather pathetic - it's not so much the content as the tone, which feels whinging somehow. I've moved it down and have refocussed the presentation, though the content is the same. But I think quite a bit of that section is redundant. That's all I have time for tonight. Feel free to revert everything I have done if you have strong feelings - I will only sulk a little!--Doric Loon 21:10, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'm concerned about this paragraph:

The status of Yiddish as a Germanic language is occasionally challenged from two opposing perspectives. On the one hand, there are those who suggest it is merely a dialect of German, not different enought to be classed as a separate language; at the other extreme there are those who suggest that Yiddish is unrelated to German, that it is in essence Semitic, Slavonic, Romance or even a derivitive of Basque. The former view may be a matter of opinion, but the usual consensus is that Yiddish is far more than just a dialect. The latter view, though propounded frequently and and enthusiastically, is simply wrong, as a cursory study of either the historical records or the linguistic structures makes clear.

As written, it makes a number of assertions which are not cited in any way. Any statement that something is "simply wrong" almost inevitably violates the NPOV rule. Can you think of a way of re-wording this that simply lists the claims, and counter-arguments, citing sources for both? Jayjg (talk) 21:47, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

True. Needs rephrasing. But I think the whole thing ought to be dealt with briefly, and without a lot of fuss. Well, you see what I was trying to do. I will alter those two words, and you are welcome to alter it more. --Doric Loon 21:59, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Eh, Jayjg, I think we both tried to save changes in the article at the same moment and something went askew. Just check that whatever you did didn't get deleted.--Doric Loon 21:50, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I made some minor changes. Some cites would still be extremely helpful (e.g. who thinks its Basque, who insists it is its own language). I'm not adding them because I don't know what they are. Jayjg (talk) 22:15, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

In the course of these generally good edits, the following was deleted without comment:

  • The oldest surviving literary document in Yiddish is a manuscript consisting of four epic poems on biblical and haggadic themes, dating from about 1382, found in Egypt and edited in 1957 by I. Fuks.

2 remarks: (1) In general, when deleting substantive material, one should bring it over to talk and/or explain why it was deleted. (2) In particular, assuming the deletion was intentional, what was wrong here? That this document (although Germanic and written in Hebrew characters) might be too early to be called Yiddish, or what? And even so, wouldn't it still merit mention? -- Jmabel | Talk 00:54, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)

No, that wasn't deleted, just rephrased. This is the Dukus Horant manuscript, which is still very much in there. But it was not quite the oldest surviving document, and I am unclear where the date 1382 comes from - the MS is assumed to be 14th century, but no-one can be much more precise than that. What did get deleted (accidentally) was the reference to the edition by Fuks. I will put that back in - but perhaps I should put it into the separate Dukus Horant article rather than here. There are other editions too. --Doric Loon 06:51, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Cool. BTW, where it came from was the cited book by Liptzin, A History of Yiddish Literature. I have no claim to a scholar's knowledge of medieval Eastern Europe, I just had a book at hand. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:30, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)

"Weinreich aphorism" demoted to a link

I see that once again "A shprakh iz a diyalekt mit an armey un a flot" has been removed from the article, relegated elsewhere. Is this part of the war against vivid writing? -- Jmabel | Talk 23:51, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Ah, that was me. I didn't realise it had been done before or I would have been a little more careful about interfering in a live debate, but no, it was not part of a war against vivid writing - it was part of a war against bad writing. The paragraph in which it stood was badly constructed and added little to the section. You know, when we plead our case with unnecessary length and pathos, we don't strengthen it - we can end up looking weaker, as though we are trying to cover something up. There is a consensus that Yiddish is more than a German dialect. There is no serious opposition to that. So, let's just say that, and then cross-reference to more general articles about the difference between dialects and languages. Putting paragraph after paragraph in here just gives the impression that we secretly suspect our case is not as strong as we are suggesting. After all, Weinrich's aphorism is relevant to all dialect/language questions, not just Yiddish. My 2c. --Doric Loon 10:24, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
Given that as far as can be cited it arose with repect to Yiddish, and that it is commonly quoted in Yiddish, it would seem to me particularly relevant to Yiddish. I don't care about the surrounding prose in the particular paragraph it was in. I care about getting the quotation itself into this article. It sums up -- aphoristically, indeed -- the basis on which Yiddish was relegated for centuries to the inferior status of a "jargon" or dialect. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:54, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

OK, put it back in. --Doric Loon 07:38, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:00, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

jiddisch or judisk?

On the page it says 'The name Yiddish itself means "Jewish" (German: Jüdisch, Swedish: Jiddisch)...' I want to point out to the inconsistency that "Jüdisch" is German for "Jewish", while "Jiddisch" is Swedish (and German) for "Yiddish", while "Jewish" in Swedish is "judisk". So, shouldn't it be either "(German: Jüdisch, Swedish: Judisk)" or "(German: Jiddisch, Swedish: Jiddisch)"?

Besides, why do we want to give German and Swedish forms anyway? Let's delete that! --Doric Loon 21:51, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I removed Swedish, and reduced German to a "comparison". I think that makes more sense. AJD 21:52, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

So...How many people really speak yiddish?

I see that the article now consistently says throughout that there are an estimated 3M speakers of Yiddish. (Anyone any idea how many of these are first-language speakers? over the age of 50?)

What I was originally going to gripe about is that Yiddish and Ladino are the only two languages in all of Wikipedia which have big religion-oriented tables attached to them. Note: Armenian_language does not have a big table for Armenian_orthodox, Hindi_language doesn't have a big table for Hinduism, and Thai doesn't have a big table for Theravada_Buddhism. I realize that the speakers of Yiddish and Ladino historically are almost all Jewish, and I can appreciate that, but I'm not sure that a big table for Jew belongs as part of any language's description. I've got that off my chest, now to the real issue:

Unfortunately, while the numerical inconsistency has been fixed on this page (3M vs. 4M...although I don't know that following ethnologue's estimate exclusively is sufficient grounds to lop 1/4 of the speakers out of cyberexistence), I was appalled to find that there are really only one million! Doubt it? check it out: Jewish languages. I think this disparity requires actual source research, rather than a consensus that "so-and-so's estimate is good enough for Wikipedia". I'm not talking about original research, I'm talking about somebody going out and actively seeking out reliable estimates and comparing them and coming up with some kind of reliable conclusion as to how many people really speak Yiddish...and whence come these wildly different numbers. Any takers? Sorry...unless someone's got US$2.4k to donate to a poverty-strick college student, I don't have the time this sort of research will require. kol tov. -t TShilo12 08:23, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Úps! I see I lied. Not only do Yiddish and Ladino have the big "Jew" table in their articles, it appears that Hebrew language does as well. While Yiddish and Ladino are/were almost exclusively spoken by Jews, the Hebrew article (incorrectly) states that (hahaha) "all" of Israel's Jewish and Arab citizens speak the language...which leads one to wonder why the "Jew" table is on the page...and all the moreso, why a Hinduism box doesn't appear on the Hindi language page. TShilo12 09:18, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

(Answering four months later...) I think there's a difference between Yiddish and Ladino on the one hand hand Armenian, Hindi, and Thai on the other. It's not just that the vast majority of Yiddish and Ladino speakers are Jewish, it's that Yiddish and Ladino only evolved the way they did because they were spoken by Jews. Armenian would still be Armenian even if virtually all Armenians had become Muslims a thousand years ago (there would be differences of course; it would doubtless have lots of loanwords from Arabic, but it would still be Armenian). But if virtually all German Jews had become Christian a thousand years ago, there would be no Yiddish language. And as for Hebrew, if all or virtually Jews had converted to the local religion after the Diaspora two thousand years ago, there would be have been no Mishnaic, Medieval or Modern Hebrew. These languages get the Judaism box because they owe their very existence to Judaism. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 13:15, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Ah, but so much has changed in the past 4 months...we now have Template:Jewish language instead of Template:Jew in the article.  :) Tomer TALK 17:17, July 21, 2005 (UTC)
So we do. Nevertheless, my argument still holds as a reason why there is no Template:Christian language, Template:Muslim language, or Template:Hindu language. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 09:53, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
Cautionary tale: My grandparents would speak Yiddish in the car when they didn't want us to know what they were talking about. Nor did they take initiative to teach us. Consequently, I never learned Yiddish. I imagine this is true for many post-Holocaust American Jews and greatly reduced the amount of speakers over all. --Happylobster 16:20, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

The template

picking up a thread from the previous section...

I'm on the fence regarding the Judaism box. As far as the number of speakers goes, I updated the Jewish languages article to match the number here, more or less, but more accurate numbers would definitely help. Jayjg (talk) 17:50, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Perhaps links could be given at the bottom of the page to pages on Jewish ethnicity? I'm leaning towards TShilo12's position. Hasdrubal 21:27, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I would like to point out that not a lot (certainly less than half) of the {{Jew}} template is about the Jewish religion. Jews constitute a case where it is very hard to separate ethnic and religious definition. The box is intended to tie together the various major topics one might reasonable associate with the Jew article. Yiddish certainly is part of that context. -- Jmabel | Talk 23:48, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)

This is correct. At the same time, there is plenty of irrelevant material within the template (besides religion), in part due to the fact

that Yiddish is a specifically Ashkenazic language. As I said - could we have a compromise by removing the template and adding such links as refer to Ashkenazic culture and ethnicity to the end? It is not as if the Jew article were hard to reach from the text, anyhow. Hasdrubal 00:59, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind if we dropped the template from this article, keeping only that parts that might be considered to be "at one remove" from this topic. Maybe do a "subst" with the template, then edit out what is not relevant? -- Jmabel | Talk 01:11, Mar 19, 2005 (UTC)


This sounds like a good idea: abbreviate the table to contain information more relevant to this article. The same should probably be done with the template at Ladino. Does this require a vote? If so, I'd like to call for one. TShilo12 01:31, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)
No vote needed, but you might be reverted by someone who disagrees. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:57, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)
In the interest of avoiding a revert war, then, is there some way we can solicit comment from those who might not have been following this conversation thus far, before proceding? -t TShilo12 07:18, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Your suggestion sounds fine to me, though I'd like to see what it will look like. Jayjg (talk) 17:59, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Clearly no one who is closely monitoring this page objects in principle, or they'd have spoken up by now. The way to avoid a "war" is just not to fight one. Make your changes, include the words "see talk" in your edit summary, and if someone reverts you, have a discussion instead of reverting him/her back. -- Jmabel | Talk 18:08, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)
Agreed, just do it.--Doric Loon 23:09, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Bah. I started to make a new template Jewish_langs and then stopped. I still think it's bad form to have the Template:Jew in there, since the template is non-linguistic in nature. At the same time, it would be foolish to make a new template for Jewish_langs, from the perspective of double-maintenance. I made a couple of alterations to the text as well, to clarify that Yiddish is spoken by c. 3M people, most of whom are Ashkenazi Jews, although Yiddish is still the only language in Wikipedia whose opening description identifies the ethnicity/religion of its speakers. I think there's a lot of baggage that goes along with Yiddish that makes it difficult for people who are familiar with it to distinguish the language from Ashkenazi cultures...and that is still abundantly obvious in the article itself, which contains a lot of Jewish history and associations that really have nothing to do with the language itself. TShilo12 23:43, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Well, why don't you just remove the template? As you said, the article already has, within its text, plenty of references to many relevant articles (and perhaps even a few irrelevant ones, as you seem to imply, though I haven't been looking for them...). Hasdrubal 19:58, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I took the bull by the horns. Tell me what you think. -- Jmabel | Talk 23:35, Mar 22, 2005 (UTC)
I like it, but think it should list all the Jewish languages, and leave out everything else. I can think of several more Jewish languages not listed in this template. Jayjg (talk) 00:01, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Go for it! -- Jmabel | Talk 02:23, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)
Agreed. Also, perhaps we should leave out "Jewish religion" (that was the original reason for removing the template, no?) and certainly "Who is a Jew?" (what is it doing there?). Hasdrubal 18:01, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)
OK, I'll work on it. Jayjg (talk) 18:12, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Great job Jayjg. I really like it. :-) I see that the Jewish languages article still features the Template:Jew. Perhaps it's actually appropriate there, I dunno. That article really needs some work, but I'll take up that discussion on its talk page. TShilo12 03:02, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Slavonic in history section

It strikes me that the history section is incomplete. Between the "Judeo-German to Old Yiddish" subsection and the modern bit we need a note about how from the 16th century (was it because of the pogroms?) many Ashkenazi Jews moved East and Yiddish began to borrow Slavonic words. That needs to be in the history section, rather than further down the page. My expertise stops precisely where the Savonic influence starts. Is there someone else out there who can write this up? --Doric Loon 23:09, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Recommendation to split article

Would anyone be opposed to splitting off the Orthography and Grammar sections into independent articles? TShilo12 07:36, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It might make sense; how are other lengthy language articles handled? Jayjg (talk) 14:24, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I just made a cursory "study". English language has separates articles for History of the English language, List of dialects of the English language, a complete set of articles for regional varieties, including Liberian English and Jamaican English, along with about 20 other variants, English grammar, Lists of English words of international origin, English alphabet, and about 30 "See Also" articles, most of which deal exclusively with English. The French language article isn't nearly as detailed, but it has separate articles for French phonology and orthography and French grammar. Spanish language has split off articles on Names given to the Spanish language, the History of the Spanish language, Spanish dialects and varieties, Spanish grammar, Spanish verbs and Spanish phonology, and Russian language has Russian alphabet, Russian orthography, Russian phonetics, Russian grammar, History of Russian language, Reforms of Russian orthography, Russian sayings and Russian proverbs. German language has German grammar, German alphabet, German pronunciation, German spelling reform and German as a Minority Language. Even Hebrew language, which could really use some breaking up itself, has Hebrew alphabet and Romanization of Hebrew. I don't know how to preserve the edit history across the movement of just a section of an article, so I'll leave that in someone else' capable hands. Tomer 02:08, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)

I think the two should be made into an orthography/grammar article. They may be split into separate articles sometime in the future, but at this time I think that they are too short on their own. StradivariusTV 01:09, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Are you volunteering to take up that task? Tomer TALK 01:13, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)
Allow me to clarify...I would long since have done it myself...but as I already stated, I don't know how to preserve the edit history of a section of an article when it's moved...or more specifically, how to move just a section of an article.  :-/ Tomer TALK 01:15, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)
As I understand it, we don't really need to deal with preserving the edit history in the same place. The first edit summary should say something like "factored out of Yiddish language"; then the history is here. -- Jmabel | Talk 02:04, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)
OK. Is any further discussion required on the matter? Should I maybe wait a full week from the original suggestion date and then proceed? Tomer TALK 05:57, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

Concern about " can be readily refuted by a study of historical records and linguistic structures." and "Both languages have written standards"

I'm concerned about the phrase "can be readily refuted by a study of historical records and linguistic structures." This is a bald claim; can someone provide better support fo it? Also, I'm concerned that the phrase "Both languages have written standards" might be unclear. Jayjg (talk) 14:23, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I changed it because the previous version was klutzy, and similarly presented no basis for its claim. Any POV there was not introduced by me...all I did was reword it. Personally, I'd like someone who has some credentials to redo that whole section. I don't know what's potentially confusing about "Both languages have written standards". Each language has an established academy governing its usage. Despite the fact that the German article does not say it is regulated, it is: by the editors of the Duden dictionary. (see [5], cached version:[6], [7]). The only regulating body I know of for Yiddish is YIVO. I don't know whether or not it was YIVO which strenuously objected to using Hebrew spellings for Hebrew words in Yiddish, advocating instead that they be spelled according to Yiddish spelling rules. Admittely it only ever had jurisdiction over the Yiddish in use in places where the language was official, notably the USSR, although this recommendation is still followed in the CIS. TShilo12 16:12, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I was hoping Doric Loon would come back and provide more information, citations, that sort of thing. Jayjg (talk) 16:49, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I don't think it was YIVO, but rather the Soviet government, that prescribed Yiddishized spellings for Hebrew loanwords in Yiddish. The officially atheist Soviet government wanted to emphasize the separation of Yiddish from Hebrew. AJD 18:33, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Agreed. For example, the Soviet newspaper Emes spelled "Emes" phonetically, whereas the YIVO kept the Hebrew spelling. As far as I know, YIVO is still

seen as setting the standard for secular publications everywhere; the haredim and hassidim do pretty much their own thing - it would be good if somebody made a detailed comparison. Hasdrubal 22:39, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Yiddish verbs

I have been working on a couple of comparative articles on the Germanic verb. Two of these need examples from Yiddish. Is there anyone here who knows how to enter the Hebrew characters (defeats me!) who can add the necessary info to these. One of them is the article Germanic weak verb, where the conjugation of the Yiddish verb needs to be added to the table. I didn't want to copy this over from the "Yiddish language" article because we really want to use the verb cognate with "work/wirken" if possible. The second article is West Germanic strong verb, where Yiddish needs a short entry at the end of the section on each of the seven classes parallel to that given to Dutch (please keep the format consistent). This will require someone to go through the list of Yiddish strong verbs at the end of a dictionary and find in each case which class they belong to - it will always be the same clas as the German cognate! - and list them. I will add any comparative comments required, and will help you if you get into trouble. (By all means use my talk page for sorting out problems!) But this should be done by someone who speaks Modern Yiddish, and as you know, I stop at 1600. --Doric Loon 14:54, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • A couple of ways to enter Hebrew characters: if you are on a Microsoft Windows system, you can use the Character Map tool. Alternately, you can go to an article like Hebrew alphabet, cut the alphabet to a text file, and use copy and paste to move letters around. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:26, Apr 27, 2005 (UTC)
    • Character Map works well for Windows; BabelMap is even better. On Mac OS X, of course there's the Character Palette, and on just about any OS, Hebrew keyboard layouts are available that make the task that much easier. However, there's one issue that you ought to be aware of. The English Wikipedia uses ISO 8859-1 as its native format, rather than Unicode. This means that Hebrew letters get converted into character entities (e.g. א is coded as &#1488;). On Windows XP (in both IE and Mozilla), you don't need to worry about that, as Hebrew letters typed into the edit box get converted to entities automatically. However, on Mac OS X, Safari will not convert Hebrew letters to proper entities, so you'd actually need to type &#1488; to get an alef. (I'm not sure about other Mac browsers; I haven't tested them for this yet.) In other words, you can just directly enter the Hebrew if you're using Windows, but if you're using a Mac (at least with Safari), you need to enter the character entities themselves. I'm not sure why this is the case.--Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 13:18, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
      • FireFox on Windows, like IE, works fine for this. -- Jmabel | Talk 03:23, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)

YIVO as regulating authority

Ok, so sorry if I screw up the formatting here a bit, I'm new at this. I noticed that we don't have listed a regulating authority for Yiddish. However, YIVO (http://www.yivoinstitute.org/) is the official authority on klalshpracht, dictionary yiddish. They've published the definitive Yiddish/English Dictionary (by Uriel Weinriech) and the most commonly used textbook, College Yiddish.

Again, sorry if I screwed up the formatting, feel free to fix it! --Pmshef 04:42, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yiddish Wikipedia

Hi all. I just got the meshuganer idea I want to help out the moribund Yiddish Wikipedia, currently languishing at 121 articles, and wondered if anyone here would be interested in collaborating. It's crazy of course because I can't actually speak Yiddish to any reasonable degree, but still I feel an impetus to help open up Yiddish on the web. My idea is to base it on the 12-volume (5 volumes general topics, 7 volumes Jewish topics) Algmeine Encyclopedie in Yiddish published in the 1940s, which seems to be the Yiddish equivalent of the 1911 Britannica both in its unprecedented scope and in that as far as I can tell[8], noone has renewed the copyright in the United States. I can get access to the Algmeine in a library and upload some articles, but I'll need help in editing them. I think with a reasonable basis in the old 12-volume warhorse, we could help build a real collaboratively-edited encyclopedia here for a sometimes undervalued language spoken by millions. So, nu, what do you think?--Pharos 05:00, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

  • What's the copyright status? 1940s should still be "in copyright": can we get permission to put it out there under GFDL? -- Jmabel | Talk 04:16, July 30, 2005 (UTC)
    • Publications between 1923 and 1963 would still be copyrighted, if the copyright had been renewed. I tried searching this link for "Yiddish" and only 54 books came up, not including the encyclopedia or, for that matter, the 1928 edition of the Harkavy dictionary. Apparently CYCO/Der Alveltlekher Yidisher Kultur-Kongres/Congress for Jewish Culture, which published the encyclopedia, is still functioniong, but I couldn't find a web presence. I suppose I should talk to the folks at YIVO to be sure.--Pharos 04:43, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
      • If we publish it, and then a copyright holder turns up and complains, we're screwed. Yes, YIVO is the best bet for someone who might have the status of this (and, even if this one turns out to be off limits, for what else might be worth looking into). -- Jmabel | Talk 06:49, July 30, 2005 (UTC)
I'm willing to participate. I am a native speaker of Yiddish. Daykart 20:28, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Splitting off morphology section

The article is getting quite lengthy -- 10kb over the preferred 32kb. It is also quite large in terms of content. I think the morphology should be put in a separate Yiddish morphology. If there are no objections after two weeks I'll go ahead and do it. StradivariusTV 19:57, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Cut: vague

I cut this recent edition because it is so vague as to qualify as little more than rumor: "A recent study of dialects in remote parts of switzerland, found a medieval german language, still spoken, was almost identical to yiddish spoken in the rhine basin." Could be true; it so, a citation (and better wording) would be in order. No problem with material like this in the article if it cites the study (or at least sites a reliable source that cites the study), but useless without that. -- Jmabel | Talk 17:07, September 10, 2005 (UTC)

Sounds like original research to me. Show me something credible and peer-reviewed. Daykart 17:16, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Citation

Futhark, I see you both added and later removed http://www.degruyter.de/journals/ijsl/2001/pdf/150_027.pdf as a reference, removing because it went dead. Is there an equivalent citation?

BTW, this shows the problem with inline URLs as links rather than more verbose forms of linking. With no title, author, etc. given, and (as it happens) with this link not currently (perhaps just not yet) showing up on the Internet Archive, it is almost impossible for anyone but the original author of the passage to try to help find a substitute when the link goes dead. -- Jmabel | Talk 02:05, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

The deleted URL linked to the full text of a journal article that was available without restriction online when I first added it. The publisher has since changed the access terms to subscription only. The article is the one by Joshua A. Fishman listed at http://www.degruyter.de/journals/ijsl/ijsl15001.html. If I knew of any equivalent text, I would have added a reference to it, as I will also do if my on-going searching for such things leads anywhere useful. --futhark 06:27, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Does anyone want to make a case for this link?

In the external links:

Seems to me like a simply commercial site with nothing about the videos in question except sales hype. But it is sort of on-topic, so I figured I'd give at least 24 hours for someone to make a case for keeping it. Barring that, I'm removing it. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:54, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

And perhaps I've been over-generous: same anon linked this at Yiddish theater and Jewish humor and also added a link to the same site at Encyclopaedia Judaica. Looks like straight commercial linkspam, I say remove all of them, but having just said I'd give it 24 hours, I guess I'll hold myself to that. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:57, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
No response, so I'm removing. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:30, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Hebrew naming conventions

Urgent: see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Hebrew) to add your opinions about this important matter. Thank you. IZAK 18:16, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

jidisch

eß leb dajtschland un eß lebn di jidn! mir libn undser hejmland! eß leb der ratn-farband! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.169.211.135 (talk • contribs) 9 Dec 2005.

Yeah, and your German is atrocious too. Daykart 17:18, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
It's not German, it's Yiddish spelt inthe German way which can look quite strange. I think it would be "es leb daytshland un es lebn di yidn! mir libn undzer heymland! es leb der ratn-farband!" —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.35.52.232 (talk • contribs) 28 Dec 2005.
Actually, in German it would be: ich liebe Deutschland und ich liebe die Juden. Wir lieben unser Heimland. Ich liebe den ratn-farban. your german is pretty bad. Engelmann150:58, 28 May 2005 (EST)

Loschen Aschkenas

The other word for Yiddish is "Language of Germany" (Yiddish:Loschen Aschkenas, German: Sprache Deutschlands). Aschkenasim is the Germany in Yiddish for ca 500 years. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.169.208.183 (talk • contribs) 16 Nov 2005.

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