LennytheWicked wrote:
Kraichgauer wrote:
scubasteve wrote:
ruveyn wrote:
LennytheWicked wrote:
I don't know how many orthodox Jews are Ashkenazi, but most Jews of my generation, including at least some orthodox Jews, are not learning to speak Yiddish, and most likely will not teach their children Yiddish unless as a means to discreetly insult people.
Visit the orthodox Jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn. There you will Yiddish more often than English.
ruveyn
I think the neighborhoods you're referring to are mostly Haredi rather than Orthodox. (The Haredi are the ones who wear the black hats and curled sideburns. They often still live in isolated communities.) Outside of these isolated communities, however, Yiddish is a dead language.
Actually, the South Franconian dialect of German my Dad's people spoke was close enough to Yiddish that they could understand Yiddish speakers well enough.
-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer
Makes sense. Lots of Yiddish words are based in German words. Like Dreidal comes from Dreyhen or some such word that means "to spin."
Thats my understanding. Yiddish is simply a dialect of German, but written in the Hebrew alphabet.
Thats the short definition of 'Yiddish".
Though the main ingredient is German it is seasoned with pinches of Slavic, and Magyar (Hungarian), and may even have the ancient remnants of Semitic languages like Arabic, and Aramaic from the pre European Jewish past as well.
29 Mar 2012, 4:14 pm
