Talk:Yiddish

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[edit] Yiddish culture

As is the case with the names of many languages, the word Yiddish is both a noun and an adjective. Unless there is some action underway to apply the principle inherent in:

  • "Yiddish, unqualified, always refers to the language. A dab page is not a "see also" *to related terms. See WP:MOSDAB)"

to all such language names that appear unqualified as the titles of disambiguation pages, there is no reason to treat this one any differently. As the list of articles being disambiguated indicates, there is a significant range of topics to which Yiddish is applied adjectivally -- variously associated with both a culture and a language. --futhark 18:14, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. I reviewed many dozens of articles that contain links to Yiddish, and they all, without exception, were referring to the language. I don't think references to things like Yiddish theater or Yiddish orthography are a counter-example -- these are referring to theatre in the Yiddish language or to the orthography of the Yiddish language.
As for "all such language names," that is not a valid comparison. If you are referring for example to French or German, each of those is the name of an ethnic group as well as of a language, and in some cases also the name of places and/or people. For Yiddish, the corresponding demonym is either Jewish or Ashkenazi(m).
I don't want to start a revert war, but I think we should get others to express their views on this and form a consensus. --Russ Blau (talk) 10:40, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
Anglophone members of the Ashkenazi community regularly use Yiddish and Jewish as fully synonymous terms — both interchangeably designating ethnic identity and language. This has diffused into external usage as well. Try, for example, a Google search on "Yiddish cooking". It gives over a half million hits and I doubt that many of them apply the term to kitchen banter in the Yiddish language. Similar results are to be had by searching on "Yiddish music", and other culturally-based (rather than language-based) composite terms.
If no current Wikipedia articles use the word Yiddish in both senses, that provides a useful indication of paths for its future development. The assertion that warrant for a statement in a Wikipedia article needs to be found in another Wikipedia article is antithetical to the purpose of the Wikipedia, or any other encyclopedeic endeavor. --futhark 07:12, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Might I add that WP:MOSDAB is quite clear:

[edit] Examples of individual entries that should not be created

On a page called Title, generally do not create an entry for:

  • Title County
  • Title City
  • Title Hospital
  • Title University
These may require their own disambiguation pages. For example, "Jefferson County" should list the counties in all the states, but the "Jefferson" disambiguation page ideally would not. A reader looking for Jefferson County would be expected to type both words and hit the Go button, not just type "Jefferson". However, if you find that another editor has felt the need to create such entries, please do not remove them.

You may want to create entries on the same page for:

  • TITLE and Title
  • Title town and Title township
An example is "Willow Valley", which lists a town of that name as well as "Willow Valley Township" in another state.

"Title Island", "Title River" or "River Title" may be worth listing in cases where the "Island"/"River" part is often omitted, so "Catalina" might include "Santa Catalina Island".

In most cases, do not list names of which Title is a part, unless the persons are very frequently referred to simply by their first or last name (e.g. Galileo, Shakespeare).

Likewise, WP:Lang says clearly (emphasis added):

Each language should be on a page titled XXX language. Reasons for this policy:

  1. Ambiguity. While some language have special forms that refer unambiguously to the language, English is inherently ambiguous about language names. Having a standard of "XXX language" ensures that it's always unambiguous. There is always the possibility of "XXX literature", "XXX grammar", but these cannot be referred to simply as "XXX", and so are not a reason for disambiguation.

—msh210℠ 00:41, 1 August 2006 (UTC)


The article on the "Yiddish language" bears precisely that title in full conformity with WP. That frees the title "Yiddish" for use in some other context that does not exclusively designate a language. Since WP apparently prohibits it from being used to head a disambiguation page, I've removed formal indication of disambiguation from the article. It now simply provides information about the word Yiddish as it used in composite designations for various facets of Yiddish language and Yiddish culture, coincidentally also meeting the need described in the following section. --futhark 08:05, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] External links to renamed articles

This article was created to provide a means for maintaining the viability of external links to articles about Yiddish that have recently changed name. If it is genuinely in conflict with WP despite my attempts at following editorial advice, some other mechanism is going to be needed if users following links provided externally are to end up where they are trying to get. --futhark 09:12, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand this. Can you give an example of the type of "external link" you are talking about? --Russ Blau (talk) 14:53, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

It's moot. The Google juice that I was attempting to conserve has abated in the interim. --futhark 17:25, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] other languages

If this article remains about "Yiddish" (the word, I suppose, even though WP doesn;t generallyahve articles about words — that's for Wiktionary) rather than the languages, then the interlanguage links should be checked to make sure that they're about "Yiddish" also (not the language), and removed otherwise.—msh210℠ 03:24, 2 August 2006 (UTC)