The morphology of the Yiddish language bears many similarities to that of German, with some influence from Slavic languages and Hebrew.
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Yiddish nouns are divided into three classes, or genders - masculine (zokher), feminine (nekeyve) and neuter (neytral). On the whole, gender is assigned to nouns arbitrarily, though there are some regularities. Nouns denoting specifically male humans and animals are usually masculine, and nouns denoting specifically female humans and animals are usually feminine; nouns ending in an unstressed schwa are usually feminine. Nouns built on most of the common abstract-noun suffixes, such as -ung and -hayt, are feminine; diminutive nouns with the suffix -l are neuter in the standard language. Loanwords are generally assigned masculine gender by default unless they end in a schwa, in which case they are usually feminine.
Nouns are not normally inflected for case. A few exceptions exist which are optionally or obligatorily inflected for case, including certain kinship terms (tate 'father', mame 'mother') and the word harts 'heart'; among these, masculine nouns take the ending -n in the accusative and dative singular, and feminine and neuter nouns take -n only in the dative singular.
Possession is not indicated by a separate genitive case (as it is in German). When reference is to a human, possession is indicated with a suffixed ס -s, not unlike English possessive -'s. Other forms of possession are normally indicated by the preposition פון fun 'of'.
The regular plural endings for nouns are -s for a noun that ends in an unstressed r, m, n, or vowel, and -n for all other types of nouns. However, there are a very large number of nouns with irregular plural morphology; irregular manners of marking the plural include -es, -er with umlaut, umlaut alone, and (for many words of Hebrew origin) -im with stem mutation.
Adjectives are inflected for case as well as gender and number. While attributive adjectives—that is, those that directly modify a noun—are inflected to agree with the noun in number, gender, and case, predicate adjectives remain uninflected. For example, one says der guter man 'the good man' with the adjective guter inflected for masculine singular nominative, but Der man iz gut 'The man is good,' with no suffix on gut. When an adjective is used absolutively—that is, to stand as the head of a noun phrase as if it were itself a noun—its ending changes as if it were followed by a noun: Der man iz a guter 'The man is a good [one].' Neuter singular attributive adjectives have no case ending unless their noun phrase is introduced by the definite article.
| Masculine | Neuter | Feminine | Plural | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Definite | Absolutive | ||||
| Nominative | גוטער guter | גוטע gute | גוטס guts | גוטע gute | גוטע gute |
| Accusative | גוטן gutn | גוטע gute | גוטס guts | גוטע gute | גוטע gute |
| Dative | גוטן gutn | גוטן gutn | גוטער guter | גוטע gute | |
The -n ending becomes -en after a vowel, m, ng, or nk; and it becomes -em after n.
A class of pronominal adjectives, including eyn 'one', keyn 'none', and possessive pronouns such as mayn 'my, mine' and zayn 'his', display behavior opposite to that of ordinary adjectives: they are inflected for number, gender, and case when used predicatively but not when used attributively. (Absolutively, they behave as normal adjectives).
| First Person | Second Person | Third Person | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | Masculine | Neuter | Feminine | Plural | |
| Nominative | איך ikh | מיר mir | דו du | איר ir | ער er | עס es | זי zi | זיי zey |
| Accusative | מיך mikh | אונדז undz | דיך dikh | אײַך aykh | אים im | עס es | זי zi | זיי zey |
| Dative | מיר mir | אונדז undz | דיר dir | אײַך aykh | אים im | אים im | איר ir | זיי zey |
Third person pronouns must agree in gender with the noun they refer to. Thus even inanimate objects are sometimes referred to as er or zi if they are masculine or feminine respectively. Neuter nouns receive es.
The definite article agrees in gender, number, and case with the noun it is used with.
| Masculine | Neuter | Feminine | Plural | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nominative | דער der | דאָס dos | די di | די di |
| Accusative | דעם dem | דאָס dos | די di | די di |
| Dative | דעם dem | דעם dem | דער der | די di |
The indefinite article is אַן an before a word beginning with a vowel and אַ a everywhere else.
Like most Germanic languages, Yiddish employs V2 word order: the second constituent of any clause must be the finite verb, regardless of whether the first constituent is the subject, an adverb, or some other topicalized element.
Yiddish verbs are conjugated for person and number. The present tense of verbs is conjugated thus:
| קויפֿן koyfn 'buy' | פֿאַרלירן farlirn 'lose' | |
| איך ikh | קויף koyf | פֿאַרליר farlir |
| דו du | קויפֿסט koyfst | פֿאַרלירסט farlirst |
| ער er/זי zi/עס es | קויפֿט koyft | פֿאַרלירט farlirt |
| מיר mir | קויפֿן koyfn | פֿאַרלירן farlirn |
| איר ir | קויפֿט koyft | פֿאַרלירט farlirt |
| זיי zey | קויפֿן koyfn | פֿאַרלירן farlirn |
Like other varieties of High German, Yiddish has ceased to use the inflected past tense (preterite) entirely, and the perfect, constructed periphrastically with forms of האָבן hobn 'have' (or זײַן zayn 'be') and the past participle of the verb, has taken over its function. Certain verbs will take האָבן 'hobn', while others will take זײַן 'zayn'. There is no way to tell which verbs take which auxiliary. Verbs taking hobn are more common, however; as a rule of thumb, those taking zayn are often verbs of motion. Hobn and zayn are conjugated irregularly:
| האָבן hobn | זײַן zayn | |
| איך ikh | האָב hob | בין bin |
| דו du | האָסט host | ביסט bist |
| ער er/זי zi/עס es | האָט hot | איז iz |
| מיר mir | האָבן hobn | זענען zenen |
| איר ir | האָט hot | זענט zent |
| זיי zey | האָבן hobn | זענען zenen |
For example, the past tense of איך קויף ikh koyf 'I buy' is איך האָב געקויפֿט ikh hob gekoyft, and the past tense of איך קום ikh kum 'I come' is איך בין געקומען ikh bin gekumen 'I came'.
The past participle is used extensively in Yiddish. The majority of verbs (weak verbs) form the past participle with the addition of -גע ge- and ט- -t to the stem, e. g. געקויפֿט gekoyft 'bought.' However, there are also a group of verbs, called strong verbs, which form the past participle with -גע and נ- -n, accompanied by a vowel change, e. g. געהאָלפֿן geholfn 'helped' from the stem -העלפֿ helf- 'help.' The vowel change is unpredictable and simply must be learned.
The prefix -גע is omitted in past participles of verbs whose first syllable does not bear primary stress. There are two classes of verbs for which this happens: verbs with one of several unstressed stem prefixes, such as -פֿאַר far- or -באַ ba-; and verbs built on the stressed suffix יר- -ir, usually used for loanwords. Thus the past participles of פֿאַרקויפֿן farkoyfn 'sell' and אַבאָנירן abonirn 'subscribe' are, respectively, merely פֿאַרקויפֿט farkoyft and אַבאָנירט abonirt.
There is no way to tell from the infinitive whether a verb is strong or weak.