A High German language with Hebrew, Aramaic, and Slavic admixture — the historical mother tongue of Ashkenazi Jews and still spoken in Hasidic communities worldwide.
Where it’s spoken
Yiddish (ייִדיש) once had 11 million speakers across central and eastern Europe before the Holocaust. Today its largest speech communities are Haredi Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn, Monsey, Williamsburg, Lakewood, Antwerp, Stamford Hill (London), Mea Shearim (Jerusalem), Bnei Brak, and Montreal. Secular Yiddish has declined sharply but persists in academic and cultural revival circles.
What it sounds like
Yiddish phonology descends from medieval Rhineland High German, with significant Slavic influence on word stress (often penultimate) and intonation. It has affricate consonants (ts, tsh) and lacks the strong final-obstruent devoicing of Standard German.
How it’s written
Yiddish uses a modified Hebrew alphabet with additional letters and uses certain Hebrew letters as vowels — unique among languages using Hebrew script. YIVO orthographic standards were established in 1937. Hebrew and Aramaic loanwords retain their original Hebrew spelling, while Germanic and Slavic vocabulary is spelled phonetically.
History
Yiddish emerged from medieval German dialects spoken by Jewish communities in the Rhineland and spread east. The Holocaust devastated Yiddish speaker populations; Hasidic demographic growth has sustained the language in religious communities.
Find more languages by letter
Yiddish starts with Y and ends with H. Browse other languages along the same letter.
Languages that contain a letter from "Yiddish":