Talk:Yiddish/Archive 3

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Yiddish words in English

I'm no sure if I'm reviving an old discussion here, but I'm concerned about the "Yiddish-derived idioms used in English, particularly in the United States".
(a) Are these "idioms"?
(b) Some are written as they are commonly written by English speakers (e.g. Schnorrer, Schmuck) and not as transliterations from Yiddish; others vice versa (latkes, farkakte). Shouldn't there be consistency? Or perhaps how they are commonly spelt in English and what the corresponding Yiddish word is? (A related question is on the apparent policy of using Harkavy romanization rather than YIVO (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yiddish_orthography_and_typography#Transliteration - i.e. ch not kh, tz not ts?)
(c) I thought that previous discussion had established that "Schmuck" is not "literally "jewel"" and "bupkis" is not literally "goat droppings".
By the way, I am not challenging the idea of having a (short) list in this article!

• How the heck else do you spell latkes? -- Jmabel | Talk 06:42, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm just browsing... but why on EARTH would you link to the article that you're having the "Discussion" on?(66.235.9.26 (talk) 15:56, 20 June 2010 (UTC))

• Given the separate articles on words borrowed from Yiddish into English, I don't really see any purpose to the redundant appearance of such material in the present article (although I am prepared to argue the specific points you criticize). On the other hand, there is not likely much to be gained by trying to remove it -- sooner or later it will begin to reappear. The same goes for the regular attempts that have been made at normalizing the romanizations that appear here. (Tracing the history of the way Forverts is spelled provides as a good example.) There used to be a claim in the article about its consistent use of YIVO transliteration. The fact that the statement wasn't reinserted may be an indication of the degree of interest in using a uniform romanized Yiddish orthography, which after all is not a characteristic of the bulk of writing in or about Yiddish. --futhark 16:20, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Status of Yiddish as a Germanic Language

The status of Yiddish as a Germanic language is occasionally challenged from two opposing perspectives. On the one hand, there are those who suggest that in its deep structure Yiddish is unrelated to German—that it is instead a Semitic or a Slavic. For example, the linguist Paul Wexler claims that Eastern Yiddish was originally a Slavic language, Sorbian, whose vocabulary was replaced with German words, and that a second round of relexification, this time replacing an East Slavic dialect with German words, occurred when this variety of Yiddish migrated eastwards to Ukraine. His claims are not widely accepted. There have even arguments proposed that Yiddish is somehow a Romance language, or even that it is a derivative of Basque.

This spurious nonsense should stay on the Talk page until someone can come up with a damn fine argument for re-inserting it. A paragraph on the unwillingness of some people to believe that Yiddish is a Germanic language based on 20th-century history would be perhaps appropriate, but this paragraph as it stands can't be allowed to sit in the article dressed up as an argument worth considering... Sorbian indeed... and "relexification"? Good grief... there's a reason noone's created an article for this Paul Wexler person yet. Colonel Mustard 13:45, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

HughFlo (talk) 23:41, 21 February 2010 (UTC)These comments are not based on sources, but on personal experience. The fact that Yiddish evolved in the Rhineland in the period of 900 to 1100 is not disputed. There is still today a Rhineland dialect related to Swabisch in Southwest Germany and to Schwyzer Duutsch (umlaut "u"), the dialects (there are many) of German spoken in Switzerland. There are definite similarities of Yiddish to those dialects. (Examples: "bissel" in Yiddish; "bitzeli" in the Zurich area. "madel" in Yiddish; "maiteli" in Zurich. Diminutive endings "la" in Yiddish, "le" in Schwabischh and "li" in Swiss.) My conclusion is that Yiddish evolved as a variant of the Rhineland dialect and picked up words from other languages. Jews moved into the Rhineland from France and Italy, but there does not seem to be much influence of those languages in Yiddish. Exception: "Sibbola" for onion in Yiddish is similar to "cipolle" in Italian. HughFlo (talk) 23:41, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Hi, Hugh. Another late-comer to the Discussion, I see. You seem conversant on the subject: WHY did they stop speaking Hebrew? If you like, you may put your answer on my page... or, here: Mox nich. 8-] (Paleocon44 (talk) 16:10, 20 June 2010 (UTC))

Amen!!! -- Olve 16:59, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Indeed. And, as previously discussed, the thing about Basque was clearly either a joke or a paranoid delusion. - Jmabel | Talk 18:50, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Colonel Mustard, please explain why you are so quick to dismiss Dr. Paul Wexler and his research. Wexler is a linquistics expert working at Tel Aviv University, please tell us your qualifications. If you have not read his books (eg. "The Ashkenazic Jews: A Slavo-Turkic People in Search of a Jewish Identity") then I suggest you shut up and start reading. His theories regarding the origins of Yiddish are supported by the research of several other well-informed linguists, eg. Dr Robert King, and quite frankly Wikipedia cannot be taken seriously if it does not make mention of this in the article.Logicman1966 08:21, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

A Google search on "Paul Wexler" "Robert King" leads to articles that suggest this should be mentioned, at least as a dissident theory, and probably expanded upon in an article of its own. But I stand by my remark that the thing about Basque is either a joke or a paranoid delusion. - Jmabel | Talk 18:30, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, Wexler has a right to be taken seriously, but history is littered with theories from respected scholars that have turned out to be wrong. As far as I can see, any mention of Wexler's theory needs to deal with the fact that it is so counter-intuitive: Yiddish seems too much more like German than any other language, despite its non-German features, for any other origin to wash with most people. AlOgrady 22:41, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Intuition is not a basis for determining the origins of a language. See also Abraham Harkavy on the use of Slavonic by Jews before the Crusades.--Redaktor 13:53, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

No, the basis for determining classification (not origins) of a language is the basis of what earlier language its core vocabulary is derived from by the process of regular sound change. Wexler's notion "relexification" doesn't mean that Yiddish is a Slavic language; it means that the Yiddish-speaking communities used to speak a Slavic language, but then they stopped speaking that and started speaking Yiddish instead. AJD 16:04, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Vocabulary is an important component (but not the only one). Yiddish has a significant Germanic component in its vocabulary, but also has Hebrew, Aramaic and Slavic components. Grammar and sentence structure in Yiddish are are only marginally derived from German. --Redaktor 18:05, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, and English has a significant Germanic component in its vocabulary, but also has French, Latin, and Greel components. That doesn't stop English from being a Germanic language. Again, it's the process of regular sound change that's key to classifying a language. Yiddish may also have regular sound change from Hebrew as well as German, but in that case you can refer to the grammar as well as to the fact that the core vocabulary (one, two, three, four, five, mother, father, brother, sister, water, fire, stone, milk, etc.) is Germanic. And yes, the grammar of Yiddish is heavily Germanic, in the V2 syntax, the systems of verb, noun, and adjective inflection, and the derivational morphology of the verbs at the very least. There's a Slavic substrate in the grammar as well, but that doesn't stop it from being a Germanic language. AJD 21:22, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

What is your understanding of the V2 syntax? --Redaktor 22:54, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

V2 word order is a feature that all the modern Germanic languages have except English, and very few languages outside the Germanic family do. It refers to the fact that the second syntactic constituent of any (ordinary) sentence must be the inflected verb. This is one of the chief defining features of Yiddish syntax, and is not found in any of the languages Yiddish has had contact with except for the Germanic languages. AJD 02:47, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I speak German, and I never learned "Yiddish." After I learned the Hebrew alphabet I found I could read Yiddish (a claim I cannot make for, say, Dutch). That tells me that Yiddish is not only Germanic, it is in fact German. All arguments to the contrary seem to me to be bending-over-backward attempts to distance Jews from all things German. An understandable sentiment perhaps, but unrelated to any scientific linguistic classification. Di46Araj (talk) 20:22, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Your personal opinion is original research. No reasonable person disputes that Yiddish is closely related to German, and that there is a degree of mutual intelligibility. But, Yiddish has been quite effectively separated from German for ~1000 years, and reliable sources clearly indicate that it has developed into a separate language.--Pharos (talk) 21:17, 29 January 2008 (UTC)--Pharos (talk) 21:17, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Certainly an argument can be made for this, but only if we also say that all German dialects are separate languages. Yiddish differs from modern standard German no more than Bavarian and Swabian varieties do, and much less than do northern German dialects, for which assertions of separate-language status are much more convincing. Of course each dialect can be traced back many centuries, so Yiddish has no special claim on that point. Really my underlying point is that the debate over separate language vs. dialect seems to be driven more by sentiment than by science. Di46Araj (talk) 21:39, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

There aren't purely language-internal criteria for deciding whether two varieties are different languages or dialects of the same language; that's certainly true. And what you might call "sentiment" plays a major role in it—if speakers of two different closely-related varieties, such as Swabian and Bavarian, think of themselves and each other as speaking dialects of the same language, that's as reliable as anything. It was Max Weinreich, after all, a Yiddishist himself, who is credited with the saying that "a language is a dialect with an army and navy". The best criterion I've heard for distinguishing between languages and dialects (though I can't cite it) is source of linguistic authority—where a speaker would look to learn more about their own language. For instance, if a Bavarian or a Swabian wanted to know the name for some plant, say, that they had never encountered before, they might look in a German-language encyclopedia, or ask a botanist at a German-speaking university, and be satisfied that they'd been told the right answer for their own language. But Yiddish speakers wouldn't consider those to be reliable sources on what the proper word is in their own language. AJD (talk) 04:27, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

All these points are well taken -- particularly as they mesh completely with my contention that language-vs.-dialect status is usually (popularly) debated as a matter of cultural-political-ethnic -historical considerations (what I've been calling 'sentiment'). I'm a linguist and those issues mean nothing to me when examining this question. If two people can understand each other, I conclude that they're speaking the same language (if we're using any scientifically useful definition of that word). A Yiddish speaker and a German can understand each other, therefore they're speaking the same language, however anyone wishes to label that language. A Flemish Belgian and a Dutchman don't *want* to consider themselves part of the same group, so they insist they're speaking separate languages, even though the differences between their idioms are less than the differences between American and British speech. The point in the latter case is that Brits and Americans don't *mind* considering ourselves to be speaking the same language. All of this is completely irrelevant to the purely linguistic question of language-vs.-dialect. Di46Araj (talk) 20:04, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

My point is that language-vs.-dialect isn't purely a linguistic question. It's a sociolinguistic question, and no useful definition of "same language" or "different language" can be arrived at without without taking into account the social factors of language ideology and standardization. Otherwise all you've got is a bunch of people's different idiolectal grammars. Mutual intelligibility doesn't do the whole job. AJD (talk) 21:16, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Certainly the question of how a speaker feels about his or her language is an interesting sociological (or sociolinguistic, to use your word) question. But it is irrelevant to the scientific classification of that language. (For instance, how would we otherwise classify extinct languages whose speakers left no mention of their feelings on this issue?) Asking non-linguist speakers to classify their language is like asking the lab rat how he feels today, rather than gathering relevant data, analyzing it, and coming to a scientifically defensible conclusion. If you or anyone else wants to underscore a feeling of separateness, be my guest and say you speak "American," or "Southern" for that matter. I just don't see any value in slicing the turkey that way. If I were a Southern separatist I might well have a different opinion, but it would be a politically motivated opinion and not a linguistically competent conclusion. The name you give something doesn't change the thing; at most it changes your perception of the thing. I prefer to let my thoughts control my words rather than the other way around. Di46Araj (talk) 21:20, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm swiss, and my native tongue is "Schwîzertüütsch", a collection of dialects mainly consisting of a less changed middle high german than modern high german. I can read and understad yiddish and middle high german withouth problems, both of them are actually nearer to my local dialect than modern high german. Yiddish is as much german as swiss german is. Actually, we've got a load of yiddish words in swiss german like "Beiz" (from "beis", imported via Rotwelsch) which, by the way, is the most common word to refer to a restaurant. -- 212.55.212.99 (talk) 09:40, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

As a Swabian (southwestern Germany) I can say Yiddish sounds like a German dialect, and I often understand whole sentences while hearing it, but there are many sentences where I don't understand the meaning of the verb or several nouns so I don't understand the whole sentence. I would guess that I understand about half of the text while hearing it. Spoken Yiddish is easier to understand than spoken Dutch, but Dutch is nearly fully readable if I think about the meaning of several words, that is not so easy with the Yiddish words I don't understand although there are many words of Hebrew and Slavic origin in German. Singing Yiddish while hearing klezmer music is sometimes nearly as easy as singing German. The question is only if someone who understands Yiddish understands what I sing. ;-) 93.231.175.158 (talk) 01:44, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Moldova?

I don't see anything on the Moldova page about Yiddish being an official minority language. CharlesMartel 22:59, 12 October 2006 (UTC)CharlesMartel

- Nothing about Yiddish on the Sweden page, either. Perhaps, someone would add this in the future.

Acutally,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden#Language will show that that is not true. Can anyone show any evidince that Yiddish is acutally a recognized Minority Language in Moldova?CharlesMartel 00:45, 14 October 2006 (UTC)CharlesMartel

- There is a section on Status as official language above with two references. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 207.127.241.2 (talk • contribs) 17 October 2006.

The article includes only one external link about Moldova: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/moldova.html. The document there contains no reference to Yiddish having any particular status in Moldova, although it seems likely that it would include such information if there were any warrant for it. The same applies to the external references it lists. If there is no factual basis for the assertion that Yiddish is an official minority language in Moldova, the Wikipedia article — which is widely echoed in derivative text — needs to be corrected asap. --Futhark|Talk 06:52, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Returning to this now I note that the claim of there being 17,000 "native speakers from the latest available national censuses" is at complete odds with the census figures given in the article on the Demographics of Moldova. The figures there give a total Jewish population of 4,867, being 0.13% of the total population. Even if everyone recorded as Jewish spoke Yiddish, it is inconceivable that there are an additional 12,000 Yiddish speakers in the remaining population. I have therefore removed the two references to the number of Yiddish speakers. --Futhark|Talk 07:40, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

There has been no response whatsoever to the various requests for substantiation of the status of Yiddish in Moldova. Unless any objections are raised within the next few days, I am going to remove all references to it from the article. --Futhark|Talk 07:36, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Is this external link appropriate or not?

I have been asked by a WP editor to open this discussion here. I am the editor of the website Yiddish Sources which is an academic portal offering comprehensive information for those interested in Yiddish and Yiddish Studies: so there are links to archives, libraries, events, digital materials and topical pages. The website is part of the well-known WWW Virtual Library History Central Catalogue hosted at and maintained by the European University Institute.

As indicated: I maintain this website and so I am aware of the conflict of interest that is involved as mentioned on Wikipedia: External Links. Of course I would like to see people using this resource, that is why the website was made. Yet this is a non-commercial website of an academic nature with the sole aim to provide people wishing to use Yiddish in their research with a useful directory. It is the only portal of its kind (which is the whole idea of the Virtual Library) and it falls under the WP Links to be considered section as a "well-chosen link to a directory of websites or organizations". To me it seems a useful resource that would be of benefit for many of those who are seriously interested in Yiddish language and its study. Hence I added it earlier but the link was removed as inappropriate. I don't think it is always possible, especially with sites dealing with specialised topics like this, to avoid a conflict of interest when considering adding an external link. In any case I am curious what others think and of course it is a community decision.

Gerben Zaagsma (University College London)

Dighist (talk) 14:33, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

? about dialects

Can some one perhaps help me out? Below is a link to 3 samples of Yiddish - I am trying to find out what dialect each of the three samples is - any insight into this would be greatly appreciated.

 http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/projects/digital/lcaaj/hear.html

necquitely@aol.com Iris69.206.139.59 (talk) 18:52, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Efforts to make Yiddish an accepted first language/national language?

I can't find anywhere in these articles on Yiddish, an important topic which should be written about prominently - These articles talk mostly about Yiddish literature, but what about the more ground-roots phenomenon of establishing Yiddish as a formal working first language for the masses of Jews? In other words, the Yiddish press, all the scientific/educational books translated into Yiddish (in New York, there was the Frei Arbeter Press, or something like that), Yiddish encyclopedias, etc. The actual impact of Yiddish on Jews was not in all this fiction literature, rather it was the day to day, secular, non-fiction material, which tried to establish Yiddish as a viable, official language, in Poland and many places. From the Nazi, or German perspective, this was a noticeable "threat", also. This entire effort to use Yiddish as an official, modern, day to day first language among millions of European Jews, is not covered at all in these articles. It's important also in relation to the Holocaust articles, as these Yiddish-speaking masses wound up being the main victims of the Holocaust (85% of holocaust victims spoke Yiddish).Jimhoward72 (talk) 21:15, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Questionable passage in "status as a language"

I removed the following passage:

However, from a linguistic point of view, all of these arguments lack foundation. If Yiddish is close enough to Modern High German that speakers of both could understand one another, it might be considered a dialect of German. If it is different enough from Modern High German that speakers cannot understand one another, then the two could be considered different languages.

Especially in this context it is highly questionable. Many German dialects (Cologne for example) are practically unintelligible for non-local native German speakers. On the other hand, many European languages are mutually understandable, at least to a certain degree (Spanish and Italian for example).—Graf Bobby (talk) 19:22, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

The UK 2011 census has Yiddish as a language in which the census form can be obtained. This is very strange as there can be very few people in the UK who speak only Yiddish. Hebrew/Ivrit is missing from the list of languages in which the census form can be obtained which makes the inclusion of Yiddish even stranger. It has been suggested that Yiddish was included to find out how many strictly orthodox Jews there are in the UK as they generaly refuse to answer the religion question. .—Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.243.46.27 (talk) 21:57, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

taytsh-tiutsch vs. Yiddish-German

And this is just silly:

(taytsh, a variant of the contemporary name of 'the language otherwise spoken in the region'; compare the modern Deutsch)

This particular edit seems to have been made to avoid linking to the language that dare not speak its name.

Colonel Mustard 15:39, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

The silly stuff was an attempt to shy away from calling the early language "Yiddish" (a term that wasn't to turn up until a few centuries later), and equally to avoid comparing it "German" (a term that wasn't to turn up until a few centuries later). I've now added an explicit reference to Middle-Darenotspeakitsname. --futhark 16:50, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Heh. Thanks, reads better now. Please pardon my clumsy, hostile tone, I assumed you were trying to repoliticise the Yiddish article, but that was a bit silly of me - in fact, you've improved the article immensely. Colonel Mustard

13:09, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

I take it vaybertaytsh is not a dialect form of Standard German "Weiberdeutsch" and it would be best if English speaking readers were not given the impression it is. I apologise for my ignorance.

84.135.202.75 17:03, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh yeah, it is. Because in my dialect it is exactly called as in Yiddish. Standard German "eu" (oi) becomes "ai" (like in 'i'ce) in Yiddish and Austro-Bavarian, for instance. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chinesischer Weltenwandler (talk • contribs) 10:42, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

vaybertaytsh is a typographic designation

In German, the term Weiberdeutsch is used to designate the Yiddish language. However appropriate that may be, and whatever argument may be made for the use of German in English language articles (especially in one that does not regard Yiddish as a dialect of Standard German), in English discourse about Yiddish the term vaybertaytsh designates a typeface. Although the terms vaybertaytsh and Weiberdeutsch are obviously cognates, they do not have the same meaning in the context of this article. It can also be questioned if this use of taytsh is a noun cognate to Deutsch or is derived from the verb taytshn, which means to render something into legible Yiddish. --futhark 10:28, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

The verb taytshn is cognate with Deutsch. AJD 15:00, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

taytshn's Standard German form would be "deutschen" (in Austro-Bavarian i would say deitschn/daytshn which comes very close to Yiddish) and that means - hypothetically - "to German", so to translate something into German. This comes from the time when Yiddish was regarded as a normal German dialect (like Austro-Bavarian, East Prussian, Dutch(!), Switzertütsch, ...) and therefore simply called "taytsh". In my dialect I call it "daitsch", the Swiss call it "tüütsch", the Dutch call it "Dietsch" - they all mean/meant their form of the German language. I think their is a problem of the definition of the word "German" in some corners of the world. "German" does not necessarily mean "belonging to the BRD", but, for instance, linguistics still speak of a German dialect continuum from Dutch (a word which was used in former times to designate all continental German(ic) dialects and comes from "deutsch") to (Switzerland) Alemannic - without meaning the Netherlands, Luxemburg, (parts of) Belgium, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, South Tyrol belong to a common German(ic) empire.

The fact that Dutch is usually considered an independent language with official status (in the Netherlands) and Switzerland Alemannic is not (in Switzerland), is pure hazard. In a parallel world, the official language of the Netherlands may be German, whereas Switzerland's official language may be Alemannic. Pure hazard. So to put it into a nutshell, taytsh and taytshn both come from the word whose High German Standard form is nowadays "deutsch". --User:Chinesischer_Weltenwandler 12:31, 28. Heuert/Juli 2011 (MEZ) 10:40, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Place among german language dialects

From what dialects yiddish do derive from? As I know, it isn't dialects of Rhineland, but eastern dialects of High german. Do yiddish derives from saxonic dialects? Or from Bavarian dialects? Dresden? There are lot of articles about yiddish, but they don't say, from witch dialects it developed. But, I think, this is rather important question. 91.190.44.4 (talk) 13:38, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Yeah as a native speaker of Austro-Bavarian I can say that Yiddish sounds close to my dialect, I read some Yiddish texts with German transcription (Latin letters) and it appeared to me as being evolved from Eastern German dialects, for instance Silesian, with a mixture of other German forms as well. Overall Yiddish is closer to my dialect than Dutch, often regarded as German's sister language. Speaker of Low German understand Dutch easilier, speaker of High German understand Yiddish easilier (due to the fact of "lautverschiebung", which divides Low German/Prussian/Dutch and High German/Austro-Bavarian/Alemannic/Schweizerdeutsch). Nevertheless, Yiddish has not all (but allmost all) of the typical "lautverschiebung"-sounds, so I would locate its origin in Middle Germany. --Benutzer:Chinesischer_Weltenwandler, 12:18, 28. Heuert/Juli 2011 (MEZ) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chinesischer Weltenwandler (talk • contribs) 10:19, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

File:Yiddish WWI poster2.jpg to appear as POTD soon

Hello! This is a note to let the editors of this article know that File:Yiddish WWI poster2.jpg will be appearing as picture of the day on June 30, 2011. You can view and edit the POTD blurb at Template:POTD/2011-06-30. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page so Wikipedia doesn't look bad. :) Thanks! howcheng {chat} 03:21, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Picture of the day

An American World War I propaganda poster in the Yiddish language. It reads, "Food will win the war! You came here seeking freedom; now you must help to preserve it. Wheat is needed for the Allies. Waste nothing." Yiddish is a High German language of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, spoken throughout the world and written in the Hebrew alphabet. It combines German dialects with Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages. In the early 20th century, it became the primary language of a large Jewish community in Eastern Europe that rejected Zionism and sought Jewish cultural autonomy in Europe.Poster: Charles Edward Chambers; Restoration: Lise Broer

History of debate over origins?

I think it would be instructive if someone could provide a history of the debate over the origins of Yiddish, since events before and during World War Two could have provided a powerful incentive for many people to deny or minimize the extent of its German[ic] roots and/or influence. Historian932 (talk) 17:39, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

NY Times Article

Is it appropriate to include a link to the following "NY Times" article in the reference section? </http://www.nytimes.com/1996/10/29/science/scholars-debate-roots-of-yiddish-migration-of-jews.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm> — Preceding unsigned comment added by Stevek863 (talk • contribs) 17:56, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

פאלקסשטימע

Hello Futhark, do you know the Hebrew alphabet? In the word פאלקסשטימע there is a samekh an then a shin, the transliteration of samekh is "s", the transliteration of shin is "sh", therefore it is folks-shtime, there is no letter one would transliterate with a "c" in English in the word פאלקסשטימע. In German the transliteration would be folks-schtime, with "sch" for shin, but this is an English article, and if one would transliterate it in the German way, there should be two "s" anyway. Take a look at these two articles: samekh and shin. Metron (talk) 12:12, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

The bannerhead of the publication gives its name directly in Latin letters – Jidishe Folkschtime – as is unequivically visible in the image (which can be clicked through to a high-resolution version). For purposes of bibliographic control, any romanized representation of a Yiddish title that appears in a work is to be used in preference to any other transliteration of that title. The romanized title Jidische Folkschtime is, in fact, neither correct Swedish nor German. That's how it's catalogued in library collections, however, and that's how it should appear in the Wikipedia. --Futhark|Talk 12:57, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Freie Arbeiter Stimme - this is correct German, isn't it?Jimhoward72 (talk) 02:34, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Assuming that the orthographic practice of the day permitted the separation of Arbeiterstimme into two words, yes. --Futhark|Talk 18:51, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Unusable citation

Citation number 4 just says "Katz, 2004". I assume it means to reference David KOTZ, who published 2 books and 6 papers in 2004. Should it just be removed and revert to citation needed? Does anyone know what work the citation's for with page numbers? -- Burton Radons (talk) 03:03, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

The 2004 reference was to the 1st edition of what is now updated to the 2007 2nd edition. --Futhark|Talk 03:14, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

2007 2nd edition of what? Do you know where in that work Katz says that supports its cited use for the claim "The first language of European Jews may have been Aramaic"? Sorry about misspelling Dovid Katz' name, my brain keeps switching which "a" gets replaced with "o". Thanks! Burton Radons (talk) 01:54, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

"Katz 2007" is clearly indicated in the bibliography section of the article (and, yes, it includes a discussion of the Aramaic nexus at some length). --Futhark|Talk 00:53, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Oh I'm sorry, I didn't notice the bibliography section. :) That seems odd to me because you're following a link to get an inline citation that's supposed to be in the text, which you then find in the bibliography. I'll figure out what the best practice on this is (lots of similar pages have a link from the inline citation to the bibliography) and edit it if necessary. Burton Radons (talk) 19:17, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

I would have thought a bibliography section to be an appropriate spot for listing sources that are broadly used in the preparation of an article. If there is something specific to be gained through point-by-point in-line referencing, the WP equivalent of a series of op. cit. and loc. cit. notes might be worth the effort. Since that requires the location of multiple explicit page references in each of the cited works, it is a massive undertaking, and I do wonder how much it would benefit the present article. --Futhark|Talk 08:47, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Balkan substratum?

I found this book called The Balkan Substratum of Yiddish: A Reassessment of the Unique Romance and Greek Components by Paul Wexler on the internet. Hope this helps. Komitsuki (talk) 15:18, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Not sure I understand

How can a German language be derived from (non-European) Jewish origins (shouldn't it be called a Jewish language then)? Similarly, how can a "vocabulary" morph into a dialect, but not be influenced by the latter? The first paragraph makes it sound as if Yiddish was wholly created by Ashkenazic Jews, without any input from the indigenous Rhenish population. At the very least there must have been some kind of bidirectional "influencing" going on (I'm still trying to wrap my head around "relexification").Historian932 (talk) 02:22, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

I hope the change in the lead sentence will help. As far as relexification is concerned, its role in creole genesis has been heavily disputed, if not utterly debunked; the mention of relexification in relation to Yiddish here is a matter of mere historical reporting. Eklir (talk) 03:35, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

I think the lead sentence is much better but the one following it is still slightly confusing, it reads: "Western Yiddish originated in their [Ashkenazi Jewish] culture, which emerged in the 9th century in Central Europe." it again sounds like the language/dialect is a purely self-created cultural practice; it is clarified several sentences later that Yiddish comes from Old High German but for someone who just scans the first couple sentences the current wording is potentially misleading (and lends itself to being misquoted).Historian932 (talk) 14:50, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

I think that it is misleading to use the term "Western Yiddish" to designate the initial form of the language. The fact that its development started at what, centuries later, was to prove the western side of the fully-developed language's range, should not be conflated with the latter designations for its various dialects. It might be argued that the infusion of Slavic vocabulary into the Eastern forms resulted in a greater modification of the proto-language than did the similar assimilation of Alemannic elements into the Western forms. This does not imply that modern Western Yiddish closely enough resembles the initial form of the language for the current wording of the lead sentence to be taken as substantively correct. Pending more detailed justification for it appearing in the next few days, I will edit the article further to eliminate the confusion Historian932 notes. --Futhark|Talk 16:12, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Yiddish flag

The discussion that led to the deletion of the separate article on the Yiddish flag did not just reject it on the basis of insufficient notability. That action was also due to the lack of external references either to the prototype flag or the initiative for its use. Anything without such a source is not permissible for inclusion in the Wikipedia. It doesn't matter if it is presented in an autonomous article or in a section of another one. I have no interest in a reversion conflict but will remove this material if it is still present the next time I do any substantive editing in the present article (when following through on my remarks about the incorrect conflation of proto-Yiddish with Western Yiddish). --Futhark|Talk 07:48, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

I think the section about the Yiddish flag is very informative and important to the article, and therefore I'm posting here so that hopefully someone will be able to find a few more sources on it so we can bring it back to the article. Thanks, Shalom11111 (talk) 19:56, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Whoever might undertake that action should keep in mind that the article here is about the Yiddish language. From time to time somebody includes a political issue that is not primarily of linguistic significance and triggers a flurry of re-editing to bring the article back into focus. The recently deleted separate article on the Yiddish flag would have been the given place to discuss all aspects of its nominal topic. If and when referenceable substance for it is located, it might be best to present it under the more specific heading and add a link to it in the article on the Yiddish language. --Futhark|Talk 07:53, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Content

Yiddish flag

Yiddish flag (ײִדישע פֿאָן)

Use	The flag of Yiddish language and culture

The Yiddish flag (Yiddish: ײִדישע פֿאָן) is a proposed symbol of the Yiddish language and culture. The design of the flag consists of two horizontal black stripes on a white background, which recalls the Orthodox Ashkenazi Tallit, the Jewish prayer shawl and of a Menorah, the oldest Jewish symbol in the centre, between the stripes.

The Yiddish flag in front of a synagogue

The black stripes from the Tallit are a remembrance to the destruction of the Holy Temple and the exile of Jews, this also refers to the fact, that the Yiddish language evolved in the Galut. The Yiddish flag is similar to the Israeli flag, but that has a Magen David ("Star of David"), instead of a Menorah and has blue stripes, which represent the symbolic end of the Diaspora.

1908 Yiddish Flag

In 1908, a protest was held by Jews in Waterbury, Connecticut, against a vaudeville act which used an offensive stereotype in presenting a “Yiddish Flag”. The design had “blue and yellow stripes on one side and the familiar three-ball sign on the other”—that being the universal symbol of a pawn-broker. A delegation of “Hebrews” led by Samuel A. Weinstein called on the manager of the Jacques Opera House, a Mr. Clancy, who “agreed to cooperate in making things cheerful and agreeable”. Presumably that meant not using the flag. It is unknown whether the flag had seen any broader use beyond this incident.

References

Ashkenazi German?

The infobox now ascribes the same significance both to the established classification of Yiddish as a Western Germanic language and Wexler's theory about it being relexified Sorbian. That's a fairly sweeping thing to do and I believe requires at least a few words in the text of the article with references that corroborate Wexler. Where does the term "Ashkenazi German" come from and how is it other than a recursive label for Yiddish (strongly evoking "Judaeo-German", which might otherwise be best avoided). --Futhark|Talk 07:04, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami: I agree with Futhark here. I've flagged your addition {{Citation needed}} at both levels (Slavic family and Judeo-Sorbian language), with a link to this Talk section in the Edit summary. --Thnidu (talk) 05:56, 27 May 2014 (UTC) / 06:12, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

The source is of course Wexler. Agreed that it should be covered in the text. The issue crops up not just for Yiddish, but for Hebrew: for those I've seen who believe Modern Hebrew is relexified Yiddish, that makes it effectively a Slavic language, not Germanic. I don't know how widespread Wexler's ideas are for Yiddish, but it's rather common to see analyses of Hebrew as not really a Semitic tongue. — kwami (talk) 06:01, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Wexler's ideas have not had appreciable impact in the literature on Yiddish classification. The current wording of the article makes it seem as though his analysis and the traditional one are of equal weight. If there are, indeed, citable sources for this other than Wexler, himself, they need to be added. And that still doesn't answer the question about the appearance of the term "Askenazi German." --Futhark|Talk 06:39, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Changed it to "High German", since it's essentially the same thing. Wexler is ref'd by others, though the ref I added was by Wexler.

Summarized by a historian w/o linguistic understanding in Deborah Hertz, 2002, "Pre-Emancipation Contacts and Relations", In and Out of the Ghetto: Jewish-Gentile Relations in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany. — kwami (talk) 06:41, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

The work of Wexler's normally taken as the basis for his thinking on Yiddish is, "Two-tiered relexification in Yiddish", ISBN 9783110172584. The work cited in the article deals similarly with Ladino and, I would have thought, is not even relevant here. Otherwise, the references I've seen in the linguistic literature to Wexler's classification of Yiddish either simply mention, or are overtly dismissive of it. Since this is an article about language, if Wexler is to be ascribed the significance currently given to him, some corroborative linguistic source needs be cited. If not, the text should either be reverted or extended with a discussion of the relexification theory. --Futhark|Talk 07:44, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

The ref I gave is a more recent one showing that he still holds those views. Either one is fine.

Yes, reception is of course important. Most I've seen have been tentatively positive. — kwami (talk) 16:50, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

ELL2 states that, the long-dominant theory of origins (connected with the work of Max Weinreich) attributes this development [of Yiddish] to the migration of Jewish speakers of Old French and/or Old Italian, who were literate in Hebrew/Aramaic, into the Rhine Valley, where they encountered Germanic speakers. In recent years, scholars have questioned parts of this theory, suggesting Northern Italy or Bavaria as the point of initial contact, arguing that Yiddish developed as a relexification with Germanic materials of a kind of Judaeo-Slavic (Paul Wexler) or proposing that Yiddish began with contacts between Aramaic-speaking Jews from the Middle East and Germanic speakers (Dovid Katz).

That's not dismissive of Wexler, and Rothstein (U. Mass.) considers him significant enough to include in a very short summary of the lit. — kwami (talk) 17:01, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

I've added "possibly" to the two relevant lines in the infobox to indicate the less-general acceptance of the relexification hypothesis, and commas after "Germanic" and "High German". The latter comma is necessary to limit the relexification hypothesis to Judeo-Sorbian. --Thnidu (talk) 21:00, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Added a section. I'm not familiar w Katz, so I didn't say much. As for Weinreich, did he propose that Yiddish is relexified Judeo-French, or that Judeo-French was abandoned for German? I've come across claims of the former, but not in RS's. — kwami (talk) 22:29, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Genealogical origins

The new section is exactly what was needed. But does Wexler really make the distinction between the origins of Eastern and Western Yiddish? These are normally taken to be dialects of Modern Yiddish. The dichotomy, at least in the sense put forward here, is not made in the literature on Old Yiddish. An earlier edit to the present article made the assumption that since Yiddish originated at the Western geographic extreme of its subsequent European range, the term Western Yiddish was the appropriate way to label the earliest version of the language. Is the new section simply propagating this or do the sources that question the Germanist school actually differentiate between Western and Eastern Old Yiddish? (I had previous offered to tweak the conflated wording and am still willing to do so. If, however, there is more to it than I’m currently aware of, I’ll hold off for a while longer.) --Futhark|Talk 06:47, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

That's the understanding of the 2ary source, which seems to be a bit confused about some things but which I doubt got something that fundamental wrong. It would be a good idea to check against the 1ary, though. — kwami (talk) 06:52, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

The primary being Wexler. Assuming that he really sees Western and Eastern Yiddish as having separate origins (national variation in, say, English can be greater) the article still needs to reflect other sources. I've taken a light hand to the intro but stopped short of pruning the entrenched notion of the language's origin. --Futhark|Talk 07:23, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Any extant dialect called "Western Yiddish" would presumably be a western dialect of what W considers to be Eastern, possibly with a Western substratum, but we'd need to read W to be sure. The 2ary source is a historian, and not clear on the details. — kwami (talk) 07:48, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Jacobs (2005) provides a detailed review of the "three main types of approaches [that] have been taken concerning the origins of Yiddish", from a rigorous linguistic perspective. Wexler figures in this and regardless of the attention that any of us might pay directly to his writing, Jacobs's broader consideration might be the more appropriate starting point for the section on genealogy. Would @kwami be comfortable with my reworking it on that basis? --Futhark|Talk 08:20, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Certainly we should consider a 2ary source like that. Does it answer my question about Weinreich in the previous thread? The historian ref I chose mainly so we wouldn't have to interpret 1ary sources ourselves, but a linguistic summary would of course be preferable. — kwami (talk) 16:52, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Weinreich doesn't speak of relexification. His major contribution is generally regarded as having debunked the notion of Yiddish being a ghettoized form of German, instead presenting it as the creation of an immigrant community that incorporated extensive Germanic elements into the language that had long followed them on their path to Ashkenaz. Jacobs summarizes this in good detail, also paying careful attention to subsequent linguistic work that both extends and takes exception to Weinreich's approach. I'll distill from this what will hopefully serve as a useful summary of the early history of Yiddish in the new section of the article. (In that light, I see Jacobs less as a secondary source than as the provider of an expert review of the various schools of thought -- he counts three major ones -- that provides a good basis for our present effort.) --Futhark|Talk 17:42, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

I presented Wexler with a verbatim quote of his own introductory statement in the cited reference. If that wasn't clear and the deletion of the quotation marks was not a matter of policy, it might be useful to clarify and revert. --Futhark|Talk 05:50, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

It made copy-editing awkward, and didn't seem to be something that needed a quotation rather than a paraphrase. But restore it if you like. — kwami (talk) 06:56, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Esperanto? I've been fluent in Esperanto for about fifty years, and I've studied Russian. Of course Yiddish was Zamenhof's native language, but I don't see any basis in Esperanto for calling it a Slavic language! Ditto for Hebrew. (§ Genealogical origins, last ¶) I guess I'd have to read Wexler's book to see his argument.—But there, I'm going off-track, since our job here is to report his theory, not argue its pros and cons. Sorry. --Thnidu (talk) 06:49, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Katz and Wexler

Are there any reliable sources for these guys' work/theories? They are cited only to themselves. (Geneaology section). Jd2718 (talk) 14:45, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

There are 2ary sources which mention them as the primary alternatives of the traditional model. — kwami (talk) 06:02, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami: Then should those 2dary sources be cited too? --Thnidu (talk) 06:52, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

That's exactly why Futhark added the Jacobs ref. I had added another one, but it was a historian, and she wasn't too clear on the linguistic claims. — kwami (talk) 07:03, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

The citation on this: "Dovid Katz proposes that Yiddish emerged instead out of contact between speakers of High German and natively Aramaic-speaking Jews from the Middle East.[8]" is Katz himself. The citation on the description of Wexler's theory is Wexler himself. Is it possible to get 2ary sources that explain their work, instead? Jd2718 (talk) 14:43, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

In what way does the cited section in Jacobs fail to do this? --Futhark|Talk 15:56, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

I see. The text now says "Dovid proposes..." and is sourced to Dovid. Likewise for Paul. I think, if there's a third party that says those things, then the citations should be swapped to the third party sources (and Katz's and Wexler's works should be listed at the bottom of the page. I think Katz's already are). And I think, if there isn't such a third party source, we should rewrite the sentences so they are about Yiddish, and not about the linguists. Jd2718 (talk) 18:42, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

The article contends that there are three basic schools of thought about the origin of Yiddish: 1. It is essentially High German; 2. It is most certainly a language of its own, albeit classified as Germanic; 3. Yes, a language of its own but classified as Slavic. The source for this is Jacobs who also names proponents of each approach and provides references to their publications. The article then goes on to cite the work of a few of them directly. I'm afraid I can't see any scholarly or procedural irregularity in doing so. If the problem is with the points at which the sources are noted, changing that order is a trivial editorial task. Or am I still missing something? --Futhark|Talk 20:37, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm explaining it wrong, or I'm confusing myself. I'll think it over. I appreciate, btw, the pointers. I've been making some interesting reading. However, I still see Wexler's work described as "controversial" [1]. Should that be reflected in the article? Jd2718 (talk) 21:09, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Both ..agree . .Yiddish . .fusion

i.e., Max Weinreich. However it is far more complicated, several theories vying for centre-stage. I suggest the article be reviewed in terms of the presentation in Batya Ungar-Sargon's Mystery of the Origins of Yiddish Will Never Be Solved Tablet magazine 23 June 2014. Nishidani (talk) 21:14, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. The article basically confirms what linguists have probably long concluded generally: Wexler is a crank and his "theories" have no merit. As for the Rhineland, I'm still puzzled about that point. I'm quite familiar with German dialectology and I don't know of a single feature in Yiddish – at least in Eastern Yiddish – that points to the region. Alemannic and Rhine Franconian dialects are quite distinctive and their typical features must have been present, at least in part, already in the Middle High German period, if not already in the Old High German era. (I acknowledge that certain features in Eastern Yiddish that strike me as unfamiliar from Standard German, but appear to resemble Bavarian dialects, may – just like in Erzgebirgisch – be misleading, as Central German dialects diverge from Standard German in some similar ways, so what strikes me as Bavarian-like is not necessarily relevant, which means that the immediate, intuitive attractiveness of the link with Regensburg that Katz makes should be taken with a grain of salt. Certainly, only those features which are diagnostic of a particular region are relevant here.) If there is not even a trace of the supposed western origins of Yiddish, at least in its dialectological make-up (not sure about other circumstantial evidence, which is at least hinted at in the article), that is a serious problem for those who advocate such an association. Or are there older traces of Judaeo-German dialects with such western features? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 02:45, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Leshon (Ha)kodesh in 2nd (lead) paragraph

I'd like to propose the following possible change: In common usage, the language is called מאַמע־לשון (mame-loshn, literally "mother tongue"), distinguishing it from Biblical Hebrew which (combined with Aramaic and Mishnaic Hebrew) is referred to as לשון־הקודש (Leshon Hakodesh, "the holy tongue").

The Yiddish and Hebrew terms are not identical and the article contains the correct Yiddish form. Also, many colloquial words are taken from loshn-koydesh and it would be misleading, if not outright incorrect, to equate it with Biblical Hebrew (even allowing for additional lexemes from Aramaic and Mishnaic Hebrew). --Futhark|Talk 06:57, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

Number/percent of speakers in Soviet/Russian autonomous region?

The text says '97 persons of the JAO population spoke Yiddish'. Can anyone make sense of the linked article as to whether that means only 97 persons or 97 percent of people? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rmeskill (talk • contribs) 15:30, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

97 people, according to the JAO article. Jews only make up 1% of the population, most having emigrated to Israel. — kwami (talk) 20:22, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Yiddish is a pidgin

Definition of a pidgin: a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups that do not have a language in common. Yiddish began as a fusion of Hebrew and Aramaic with High German dialect, developed by an immigrant group from the Middle East (although a number of them had also lived in Rome and Greece before that) as a means to communicate with the indigenous populations along the Rhine. In light of these facts, Yiddish is most certainly a pidgin language.Evildoer187 (talk) 08:30, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

A pidgin normally develops to facilitate communication between two groups that share no common language but need to interact verbally, for example, to conduct commerce. It is not the native language of either group and is spoken by both. It is intended to support a limited number of domains and therefore has nothing approaching the complexity of either of the contributing languages. When the underlying purpose of a pidgin ceases to exist, in most cases, so does the language. (A pidgin that subsequently becomes the mother tongue of its own speech community is termed a creole.)

In order to demonstrate that Yiddish is a pidgin you would have to provide evidence for the indigenous Rhenish peoples also having spoken it. You would need to explain why it contains Semitic elements, rather than reserving them for whatever the native language of the immigrant community was (a necessary concomitant of a pidgin), and why it was not abandoned when the Ashkenazi Jews moved eastward. Yiddish would also be unique among pidgins in having developed as high a level of literary sophistication as it did.

There is nothing the least bit unusual about an immigrant community learning the native language of the region into which it moves. You have provided no support for the contention that the immigrant Jews in the Rhineland did anything else. There is some latitude for speculating about why they didn't shift to the use of the Latin alphabet, although constraints on the written representation of Biblical terminology may have been sufficient to preclude that option. The article suggests further possibilities but none lead to the conclusion that Yiddish was a pidgin.

Yiddish was the mother tongue of the Ashkenazi community, which by definition developed after arrival in Germanic territory. The Germanic component of that language was (as a corollary) interintelligible with, if not indistinguishable from, the vernacular of the indigenous community. This form of language shift obviates need for a pidgin and applying that label to it is simply not correct. --Futhark|Talk 12:13, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Besides, Yiddish has rich inflection whereas a pidgin would be syntactically characterized by a lack of morphophonemic variation, the use of separate words to indicate tense, and isolating clausal structure. Eklir (talk) 22:54, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Though this issue seems to have been settled for over a year here, I want to point out a basic error that raised a red flag for me as soon as I read Evildoer187's paragraph above. By definition, "A pidgin is not the native language of any speech community, but is instead learned as a second language." (Pidgin, lede paragraph.)

In light of this definition, Yiddish is most certainly not a pidgin language.

(Whether it began as one is a different question, to which the answer is almost certainly "no".) --Thnidu (talk) 04:45, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

You're right Thnidu, Yiddish is not a pidgin language; not anymore at least. It is a creole language. Linguists sometimes posit that pidgins can become creole languages when a generation of children learn a pidgin as their first language, For example: Campbell, John Howland; Schopf, J. William, eds. (1994). Creative Evolution. Life Science Series. Contributor: University of California, Los Angeles. IGPP Center for the Study of Evolution and the Origin of Life. Jones & Bartlett Learning. p. 81. ISBN 9780867209617. Retrieved 2014-04-20. [...] the children of pidgin-speaking parents face a big problem, because pidgins are so rudimentary and inexpressive, poorly capable of expressing the nuances of a full range of human emotions and life situations. The first generation of such children spontaneously develops a pidgin into a more complex language termed a creole. [...] [T]he evolution of a pidgin into a creole is unconscious and spontaneous.

Savvyjack23 (talk) 20:15, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Savvyjack23. I am a linguist, and this is a well respected theory. But Yiddish did not start as a pidgin; it is a West Germanic language with "many loans from Hebrew and local languages" (Ethnologue on Eastern Yiddish), much as English is a West Germanic language with many loans from Norse and Old through Modern French, as well as many other languages.

References aren't usually used on talk pages. This page, anomalously, has a {{Reflist}} because of the inclusion of a proposed page below (#Yiddish flag), and your reference incorrectly shows up there. Better to put the reference data in plain text by hand, unless there's a template for that.

PS: This whole pidgin discussion began with a misinformed (but authoritative-sounding) comment by Evildoer187. I wondered at his username, so I went to his talk page. See User_talk:Evildoer187#Topic_ban there. --Thnidu (talk) 02:41, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Yiddish is arguably not Germanic, but relexified Slavic (per Wexler, Judeo-Sorbian fused with Ashkenazi German), much as Modern Hebrew is arguably not Semitic but relexified Yiddish. But yeah, neither are creoles. — kwami (talk) 06:02, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Yiddish IS German. It is German, and it is German again, no matter how many times you say it isn't. Let me state this more clearly for those who aren't getting it: Yiddish is not simply like German. Yiddish is a German dialect no matter how much that hurts your ethnic pride and no matter how many token Semitic and Slavic words are sprinkled through it. Yiddish is so German that German speakers with no Yiddish background can understand it. Get that through your heads. End of debate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.146.16.53 (talk) 05:42, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

If Yiddish were either a creole or a relexified Slavic language, wouldn't it be pretty magical that it happens to have largely the same grammar as German? The argument for Modern Hebrew being relexified Yiddish rests largely on Modern Hebrew grammar being greatly different from Biblical Hebrew grammar (perhaps most notably with respect to verb tenses and aspects), correct? Compare Haitian Creole to French or Bislama to English to see how a creole compares to the base language. Also, why would Jews reaching Germany be speaking Hebrew as their native language? Hebrew wasn't even spoken as a first language in Israel at the time of the diaspora. —Largo Plazo (talk) 11:17, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Statement on Weinreich

"The first scholarly statement of this approach was provided by Max Weinreich in the 1920s, and remains widely accepted"

The problem with this statement is that the Yiddish linguistics academic community is not that big, and that even those who agree with the basic tenets of Weinreich recognize that his theories, while a foundational contribution to the academic field, have some problems in light of today's knowledge. Today Yiddish linguistics scholars tend to support a modified, "neo-Weinreichian" theory or one of the newer theories challenging the Weinreich theory. Weinreich's major work on this topic has also not been fully available in English until recently, and in particular his extensive footnotes show that his theory is not as straightforward as popularly believed based on an earlier translation without the footnotes.

This statement should be reworded in light of recent debates: http://tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/165247/yiddish-ashkenazi-woodworth Maria Négete (talk) 06:58, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

Theories

The problem is not downsizing Wexler, but building up a more refined, and detailed exposition of the variety of models that have gone beyond Weinreich's model. There's plenty of work to be done there. Rather than excise, construct a more comprehensive picture than the thin, and rather ill-organized material. Wexler's view that eastern and Western Yiddish are not diachronically linked. They differ with his arguments about relexification (cf. Fleischer p.109). It's for this reason also that I am opposed to the dismissive snippet edited last night: Wexler's theory is generally subject to strong criticism, but some elements of it have been acknowledged as important and worthy of development.Nishidani (talk) 10:28, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

After intensive rewriting and reverting we have this major contribution

Alternative theories posit that Yiddish resulted from the fusion of the language spoken by the Jewish community prior to its arrival in Germanic territory with the native language of that territory. There is, however, divergence of thought about the locus of the linguistic interaction and the elements of the host language that carried over into the nascent Yiddish.///These theories agree that Yiddish resulted from the fusion of the language spoken by the Jewish community prior to its arrival in Germanic territory with the native language of that territory. There is, however, divergence of thought about the locus of the linguistic interaction and the elements of the host language that carried over into the nascent Yiddish.Nishidani (talk) 07:06, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

• 'providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with an 'extensive Germanic based vernacular'
• This is unhistorical and WP:OR. At that period, very little remains of this variety of early Yiddish, and what we have was written for infra-communal communication influenced by an infraregional Germanic. 'As is well known, Western Yiddish was gradually given up in favor of German varieties, beginning probabòly as early as the late 18th century . .Well before the Holocaust, Western Yiddish had already been "almost extinguished in the face of the penetration of both regional and Stanard German into the Ashkenazic communities.' (p.110).

What the piece of WP:OR is doing is drenching Old Yiddish with an extensive Germanb vocabularly by retrojective fantasy.Nishidani (talk) 10:35, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

To fix

Originally we had:

It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the pre-existing language of the nascent Ashkenazi community with an extensive Germanic based vocabulary.

That espouses Weinreich's theory, but is nuanced, and emphasizes there was a Jewish idiom prior to contact, without specifying which. Then we had the disastrous edit

It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with an extensive Germanic based vernacular fused with Hebrew, Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages.

As I noted on Monochrome Monitor's page, this is idiotic, because it means that at the turn of the Millenium, Yiddish emerged with an extensive Germanic based vernacular (b) fused with Hebrew, Slavic and Romance Languages.

This is jumping the time gun, and trying to relocate in one sentence, several developments. It's a mess. Yiddish emerged, in the Weinreich hypothesis, when Judeo-Romance speakers began to adopt the vocabularies of some Germanic vernaculars. Being 'Judeo' is would have had the liturgical and customary elements of Hebrew and Aramaic readings present. It then, in this view, shifted and incorporated Slavic elements. That is the major view, but it is contested by several scholars, who think Yiddish may have arisen in two different forms, as Beider and Wexler argue. Even Spolsky states:

It is most difficult to be precise about the German determinants of Yiddish because contact lasted so long and was limited by the antagonism that followed the First Crusade. It is unlikely that Jews ever spoke pure Old or Middle High German, and they were in contact with various dialects at different times. For this reason, it is not surprising to find other theories abgvout the home of Yiddish.'

If Yiddish experts are at each other's throats over these things, we should be very wary of taking sides, and careful to formulate neutral sentences that do not prejudice the subject.Nishidani (talk) 16:21, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

I suggest the way out would be based on Neil Jacob's:

in the scenario traditionally accepted in Yiddish scholarship, Yiddish arose via the following chain of vernaculars: Spoken Hebrew - Judeo-Aramaic- Judeo-greek-Judeo-Romance-Yiddish.' Neil G. Jacobs, Yiddish: A Linguistic Introduction, Cambridge University Press, 2005 p.7 Nishidani (talk) 16:33, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

Wexler

I'm still puzzled why Wexler's crackpot idea ("fringe theory" is a euphemism in this case) is still presented as just as valid as any other hypothesis on the origin of Yiddish in the article. Why the "relexification hypothesis" doesn't make any damn sense and is motivated by nothing but politics was lucidly explained by Doric Loon back in 2006. In short: The origin of Yiddish in Middle High German is well-documented, and Yiddish grammar is highly similar to Standard German grammar, with the highly irregular auxiliary verbs zayn and hobn conjugating almost identically to Standard German, and the declension paradigms of personal pronouns being identical (apart from slight phonetic differences which do not affect the otherwise identical pattern) in every detail and those of the definite articles differing only in very few points. In fact, Yiddish is more similar to Standard German in these respects than many German dialects are. The biggest differences are in lexicon, word-formation and syntax, actually. These are where Slavisms and Slavic structural influences are to be found, but they do not point to relexification of an originally Slavic dialect, but are well-known from cases such as Pennsylvania German or Texas German where a surrounding dominant language strongly affects a minority language, resulting in numerous loanwords and calques. Older "language island dialects" such as Cimbrian or Gottscheerish, which are even weirder from the Standard German point of view than Yiddish in these respects, might even represent more precisely fitting analogies. Linguistically speaking, Yiddish is basically a long-standing German diaspora dialect in a Slavic surrounding, whose unique profile is due to the numerous Hebrew and Aramaic words, which reflect an ethno-religious tradition separate from both German and Slavic. I realise that's awkward in view of the constant fear, suspicion, hostility and persecution which the European Jewish minority had to endure from the Christian Germans and which culminated in the Holocaust, but the deep (in fact mutual) intertwining of German and European Jewish culture is a fact of history which cannot be erased by historical revisionism. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 03:30, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Was Hebrew even the daily language of Jews reaching Germany during the Middle Ages? If they and the Germans they came into contact with developed a pidgin, wouldn't it have been based on Aramaic or Greek or Latin or whatever the Jews there had been speaking among themselves at the time? —Largo Plazo (talk) 11:25, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

There are some old Romance-derived words (bentshn "to bless", compare Latin benedicere, orn "to pray", compare Latin orare) in Yiddish that indicate that the Central European Jews spoke a Romance language (akin to Old French) before shifting to German in the (early?) medieval period. That's also why they are thought to have resided on the Rhine somewhere before moving east and adopting a dialect more akin to East Central German (and Bavarian); Yiddish is definitely not based on a western dialect. So it appears that initially, the Jews who came to (Central) Europe spoke Aramaic (with Hebrew always as a second language, but only as a liturgical language, not a vernacular), then replaced Aramaic by Latin, which evolved into early Romance, and then replaced this in turn by German. Compare Judaeo-Romance languages. (There's even Knaanic, which is based on Czech.) So, in short, no, they definitely didn't speak Hebrew as a vernacular, as it had become extinct in this role already in antiquity. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:11, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Wexler does not advocate a "crackpot idea". In the small field of Yiddish linguistics, Wexler is recognized as a serious scholar, and his theory, although controversial, is commonly regarded as one of the main challenges to the once dominant Weinreich theory (which is still is supported by the majority in some form, but increasingly debated). Using terms like "fringe" based on numbers doesn't make sense, because there aren't that many Yiddish linguists. Tablet last year had an article profiling the personalities in the field of Yiddish linguistics, and obviously Wexler is discussed as well. http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/176580/yiddishland Although his theory is by no means universally accepted, Wexler's work belongs in any discussion on the origins of Yiddish. It is quite possible that both Wexler and his opponents have valid points, and that none of them has the complete answer. Maria Négete (talk) 06:58, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

It is not the purpose of this article to take a position in this debate. Wexler's work had already been noted before the most recent edits, which now have the article weighing it more heavily than anyone else's. If the consensus of editorial opinion is that the origins of Yiddish cannot be determined with encyclopedic accuracy, there is all the more reason to truncate the subjective detail of the academic discussion. I'll wait a day or two to permit others to comment on this but otherwise intend to revert the article to its previous wording. --Futhark|Talk 14:09, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

I absolutely agree that it is not the purpose of this article to take a position in this debate, and this is exactly my point in this discussion. A discussion should reflect the different views in the debate (in which Wexler is one of a handful of major participants), not censor a particular view (as argued above) because one editor (unfamiliar with Yiddish studies?) thinks it is a "crackpot"(!) idea. The discussion on the origins of Yiddish, itself a huge topic with few definite answers, is rather short, and I see absolutely no reason to remove sourced material that (actually rather briefly) discusses one of the theories; in fact it is the one sentence which explains the reasoning behind Wexler's claim, removing the reasoning and only leaving the claim there would not be balanced. If you think something is missing, you should instead expand upon other views. The origins of Yiddish would easily merit a separate article. Maria Négete (talk) 15:13, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

You may be confusing the article (an encylopedic statement) with this talk page (where the debate has been conducted). Where in the article, itself, did you find any bias against Wexler or any of the others whose work is referenced? Strong wording may or may not be appropriate to a talk page but the article is often best left alone until the discussion has subsided. --Futhark|Talk 15:42, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm afraid your comment has very little to do with my comment above. I have not said the article is biased against Wexler. This discussion is about the proposal to remove any discussion of Wexler because one German user thinks he is a "crackpot" (as argued above). That would indeed be tendentious, and it is not at all a common view in the Yiddish studies academic community (where Wexler's theory is a minority position, but not considered "crackpot"). In general, it would be appropriate to have a more in-depth discussion (in this article or a separate one) of the origins of Yiddish, and the various theories (not only Wexler's). Maria Négete (talk) 16:14, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

As it now stands, the article devotes more space to Wexler's theory than it does to all the others combined. --Futhark|Talk 16:26, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

That is not correct. The one paragraph on Wexler is not longer than the discussion of other theories combined. But the discussion of other theories is underdeveloped and should be expanded. The solution is not to remove more material from an already brief and underdeveloped chapter. Maria Négete (talk) 17:03, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

No the Other theories should not be expanded and this idea that all theories need to be tossed into the article if frankly ridicules and defies the purpose of an ENCYCLOPEDIA article. The Wexler references should be reduced to a SINGLE sentence and a footnote. Any other alternate theories on the origins of Yiddish should be put in the referenced and NOT in the main article.

Wexler is cited in mainstream linguistic sources such as the Routledge Language Family Series (at least for his relexification analysis of Israeli Hebrew from Yiddish), so it doesn't appear that he's dismissed as a crackpot.

Yes - he is actually.

Also, some of the initial arguments above are off: the morphology of Yiddish is not a counter-argument, but agrees with Wexler's account.

It does seem like it would be difficult to distinguish a Slavic language that relexified to German (including all irregular morphology) from a Germanic language that assimilated to Slavic syntax and semantics. That's where the arguments would need to focus.

Also, there are claims above for an ulterior motive: to distance Yiddish from the language of the Nazis. Is there any evidence Wexler had such a motive? — kwami (talk) 01:28, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Wexler was a respected Slavic linguist before he became known for his work on the origin of Yiddish. I have never seen anyone accusing Wexler of being motivated by some sort of anti-German sentiment, on the contrary many of his claims are at odds with what many Jews would like to hear, such as his argument that Ashkenazi Jews are to a large extent descendants of Slavs who mixed with a smaller proportion of Jews with Middle Eastern origin. He also fully recognises the tremendous impact of German on Yiddish. His arguments regarding its genetic origin are all very technical and unemotional. Maria Négete (talk) 16:39, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

You're posing an argumentum ad hominem (in an inverted form of the usual type) – just because he may have been a respected scholar, or may still be one, does not automatically, instantly convey credibility and seriousness to all his ideas. His ideas have to be judged on their own merits. Well-respected scholars can still have crazy or unreasonable ideas. Or, you know what, people actually change. It's not that rare for respected scholars to drift off into la-la land, unfortunately. Sometimes senility may be the reason, other times mental illness, narcissism, or something else, I don't know. Perhaps Wexler is merely an "inverse stopped clock", an otherwise completely reasonable person who advocates a single crackpot idea. I do know that personally, I sympathise with some ideas myself that other people would classify as unusual at best.

The fact is that Yiddish grammar is overwhelmingly German, in all the fields that are traditionally examined to determine a language's affiliation (mainly morphology: verbs, pronouns, word-formation especially). Relexification doesn't work the way you are suggesting: irregular morphology is highly resistant to borrowing and relexification processes, that's exactly why its evidentiary value is so decisive. Maybe you should read a handbook on historical linguistics; this is completely basic stuff. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 19:14, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

How is Wexler denying the "intertwining of German and European Jewish culture"? Relexification would mean exactly that. Also, relexification and language mixing *do* (or at least can) result in the adoption of irregular morphology. We're not talking about gradual replacement of vocab until loans dominate the lexicon, but a wholesale switch from one lexicon to the other. If you start with language A, and replace all the vocab with that of language B, including their inflections, what is the genealogy of the result, A or B? That's not a straightforward question to answer. — kwami (talk) 21:04, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

That sort of "relexification" is not the definition I've ever seen anyone (apart from Wexler and his ilk) use, because it would be pointless. It reminds me of the old joke "Wow, Dexter, old friend, you have changed completely! I would never have recognised you, you look like a completely different person!" – "But I'm not Dexter, my name is Jake!" – "Oh wow! So, you've changed your name too?!" --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:54, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

Contrast mixed languages like Erromintxela or Media Lengua, where relexification does seem to have played a role, but you can still find evidence of this – but if the replacement is so thorough that it is impossible to detect, it is effectively a language shift. Which means we circle back on the original conclusion that Yiddish descends from German. Somewhere you must draw a line – there must be some core that you use to decide questions of language identity. Or, alternatively, as in creole languages, you conclude that the problem is unresolveable – that Yiddish descends from neither German nor Slavic, but that the chain of transmission has been completely broken at some point. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 23:05, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

Also, allowing this kind of "relexification" permits all kinds of ridiculous (and mutually exclusive) hypotheses, like English as relexified Old Norse/Old French/Brythonic. I don't know what you gain by that. (Is Moroccan Arabic relexified Berber, then?) For good reason, this concept of relexification is only used by cranks. In fact, I even toyed with the idea myself not long ago, but eventually abandoned it; total relexification may have some use as a learning technique, but not as a concept in historical linguistics. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 23:11, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

United Kingdom- (Greater) Manchester.

As usual, the community is said to be in "MANCHESTER". This is so not really the case, as the community lives in 3 component parts (City of Salford, City of Manchester and Bury Metropolitan Borough) of Greater Manchester, for the most part. "Jewish North Manchester" is made up of part of the city of Salford; mainly Broughton Park and Higher Broughton, and the neighbouring districts, to the north, of Prestwich and Whitefield, which are in the Borough of Bury. Only a minority of Jewish people, in the conurbation, lives within the city (of Manchester) boundaries, as such, now ! The whole area is, however, a pretty continuous one, straggling the local authority borders.

NY Times Article

Is it appropriate to include a link to the following "NY Times" article in the reference section? </http://www.nytimes.com/1996/10/29/science/scholars-debate-roots-of-yiddish-migration-of-jews.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm>

Mention of Holocaust in the Lead

I strongly believe that mention Holocaust should be in the lead of this article, given that there were 10+ million speakers before the war, and less than 2 million now. --(Moshe) מֹשֶׁה‎ 06:57, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

I did think it was somewhat tangential initially but those figures suggest it's pretty pertinent, so I agree. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 08:07, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

I disagree. The number of speakers has its own section, and is not relevant to the language per se. Debresser (talk)

I agree. That's the single biggest impact on Yiddish of all time. deisenbe (talk) 06:48, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

Then we shouldn't just mention the fact, but specify the impact of that fact om the language. Otherwise, the connection is not clear. Debresser (talk) 08:46, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

I'd say putting the maths in is the prime reason, so a succinct sentence stating the reduction in numbers before and afterwards or percentage or whatever. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 10:37, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

What do you mean " putting the maths in is the prime reason"? Debresser (talk) 21:50, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

Agreeing with you - i.e. the reason the mention of the holocaust in the lead is solely because of the numerical impact on the number of speakers - and that number/fraction/proportion needs to be there. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 04:19, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

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Requested move 16 October 2015

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved Clear consensus that the language is the primary topic. I've moved the old history at Yiddish to Yiddish (disambiguation) and then deleted it – there was nothing worth preserving there, just an attempt to turn the redirect to a dab in 2006. Jenks24 (talk) 02:54, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

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Yiddish language → Yiddish – Per WP:NCLANG, this is already the well-established WP:PRIMARYTOPIC of Yiddish. Yiddish (disambiguation) doesn't even exist, nor is there such a thing as Yiddish people. --BDD (talk) 14:32, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

• Comment Everyone, be aware of the previous the Yiddish-versus-Yiddish-language discussion at Talk:Yiddish. —Largo Plazo (talk) 16:24, 16 October 2015 (UTC)
  • Comment we will need to preserve that talk page, if this is moved. -- 70.51.44.60 (talk) 04:47, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
• Comment we have Yiddish culture and we should have a disambiguation page. So we are missing that. We do have an Yiddish people article, it's missing a redirect to Ashkenazi Jews -- 70.51.44.60 (talk) 04:46, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

• On the contrary, disambiguation pages aren't for listing every title that begins with a particular word or for acting as a "see also" article. They're for things that the title, on its own, might refer to. Yiddish culture isn't referred to as "Yiddish". —Largo Plazo (talk) 07:05, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

• It's not PTM, it's actual real world usage of the term "Yiddish" alone, to refer to the people and the culture and the language, thus a true DAB situation. -- 70.51.44.60 (talk) 03:55, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

• I'm skeptical. In real world usage I've never heard or read anything resembling "I like Yiddish" or "he's studying Yiddish" where it was intended to mean the Yiddish culture rather than the Yiddish language. I have never heard or read anything resembling "the Yiddish" or "the Yiddishes", to refer to the Jewish people. Can you point us to examples of such usage? —Largo Plazo (talk) 12:12, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Largo Plazo on this as well. Debresser (talk) 13:45, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

• Largoplazo linked to the previous discussion about this proposal, which refers Wikipedia:WikiProject_Languages#Article_names, where it says "Most language articles should be on a page titled XXX language." So I think we should keep this here. Debresser (talk) 16:39, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
• Support per both WP:PRIMARYTOPIC and WP:COMMONNAME. Calidum 20:47, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

WP:LANG specifically says not to follow those in cases of languages, as I cited above. Debresser (talk) 11:55, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

• Support. @Debresser:, the relevant guideline is WP:NCLANG, whose first sentence is Articles on languages can be titled with the bare name of the language where this is unambiguous. Wikipedia:WikiProject Languages is a rather inactive project, and the paragraph in question stems from before 2006; it should be updated to reflect the current practice. Anyway, per WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, global guidelines take precedence over local consensus. As Largoplazo stated, there is no plausible ambiguity, because a) Yiddish culture is culture written in Yiddish, thus can be treated as a sub-article and b) it is never referred to as just "Yiddish", so is a WP:PTM. No such user (talk) 10:07, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
• Support per WP:COMMONNAME and WP:NCLANG. Thank you, No such user, for pointing out WP:NCLANG. Debresser (talk) 10:38, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
• Support per COMMONNAME -- Ypnypn (talk) 02:56, 20 October 2015 (UTC)
• Support per nom's analysis. Cavarrone 18:54, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Yiddish is a Creole language.

Yiddish is by definition a Creole language. Jews who spoke/wrote in Hebrew or Hebrew dialects (e.g. Aramaic) migrated/were brought as slaves to Eastern Europe/Russia, where they creolized their versions of Hebrew to adapt to the dominant languages (i.e. German language, Polish, and Russian). Several sources already cited in this article attest to that. From the Yiddish Institute of Jewish Research: [2] From the Journal of Language Contact: [3] Yiddish, like other creoles, features code-switching, for which Jews could understand similar Hebrew-derived words that non-Jews in Eastern-Europe could not understand—this idea is noted in Joseph Dorman's 2011 documentary, "Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness." Therefore, this page should include the description and categories Creole language and Category:Pidgins and creoles In addition, the language family tree should include the Afroasiatic languages that co-parented Yiddish—also cited in the above and already included sources.

What do you think? Jeffgr9 (talk) 20:06, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

well no -- you need a RS to make that claim. There is a refutation online here at a linguistics site: "In short: No, Yiddish is not a creole. A creole is a stable language developed from the mixing of parent languages. A creole develops if (and, AFAIK, only if) its speakers were children who grew up speaking what used to be a pidgin as their first language....Yiddish was not a language that developed from two language groups trying to communicate with each other." Rjensen (talk) 20:14, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

Why do you not consider the sources provided above reliable? Jeffgr9 (talk) 20:18, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

The pidgin aspect of this has been discussed here before, and if it wasn't a pidgin it can't be creole: Talk:Yiddish/Archive_3#Yiddish_is_a_pidgin --Futhark|Talk 20:26, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

I don't even understand the motivation for hypothesizing that Yiddish arose from a pidgin. Were Jews arriving in German-speaking areas centuries ago, picking up German with certain typical grammatical errors and making their own alterations to it any different from Jews arriving in New York in 1895, learning to speak English with certain typical grammatical errors and making their own alterations to it? Does anybody claim that a Jew who says something like "You think you should maybe talk to him a bisl before he does something meshugge?" is speaking a creole preceded by an earlier pidgin? —Largo Plazo (talk) 20:50, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

As I asked in the archive referenced by Futhark, if Yiddish were ever a pidgin, which, by definition, would have had the inflectional complexities of German stripped out of it, then isn't it a miracle that Yiddish today has developed into an inflected language that are largely all the same as the ones that German has? —Largo Plazo (talk) 20:54, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

Where is the analysis of the sources previously provided by this very article?

Here is a separate, related source, and it is clear that because Yiddish (and Ladino for that matter) was originally written in Hebrew, and was specifically created by Jews who adapted to the dominant languages of regions in which they arrived after various Jewish diasporas:

"As these Central European communities grew, local Jews developed their own unique hybrid of medieval German dialects, combining them with Hebrew and Aramaic. From this sprang Yiddish: a rugged vernacular, destined to bind millions of distinct European Jews - both secular and religious - into a common Jewish culture that would define Ashkenazi life in Eastern Europe until the Holocaust..."

"Likewise, Hebrew remained the sacred language of prayer and scripture and of responsa literature (rabbinic dialogues regarding law), while Yiddish was used as the everyday vernacular, assuring that Eastern Jews would continue to maintain ties to Jews in German lands, just as they would remain distinct from their non-Jewish hosts. Within the Polish settlement experience - this is noteworthy as a special case Yiddish was not abandoned for the dominant Polish. It remained a most significant and distinguishing factor of Jewish life and culture well into the 20th century." (YIVO 2004).

that Yiddish should be considered a Creole language, under the category of Category:Pidgins and creoles Category:Pidgins and creoles, and have Afro-Asiatic, Semitic, Central Semitic, Northwest Semitic, Canaanite, and Hebrew added to the Language family tree of the Wikipedia page Yiddish. Otherwise, it does not make sense why all of a sudden non-Jewish Europeans would begin speaking/writing in Hebrew. Therefore, Yiddish is a Creole language from both Hebrew and the various Eastern European languages that Jews encountered. Jeffgr9 (talk) 00:04, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but there are syntactical and narrative problems with what you've written here, including the "Hebrew language Hebrew" part, and I'm not able to follow your train of logic so I can't respond directly.

We know that Yiddish is largely German with elements from other languages, Hebrew as well as Eastern European. This is not a revelation. It is also not, in and of itself, what determines that a language is a creole, because that is not what "creole" means. —Largo Plazo (talk) 00:57, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

I just looked at the YIVO and JLC sources above. The first doesn't use the word "creole" anywhere, and the second considers whether Modern Israeli Hebrew, not Yiddish, is a creole. —Largo Plazo (talk) 01:01, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your input —Largo Plazo (talk)! I repaired the broken links/grammar. In relation to the shared Semitic and Indo-Aryan (European) parenting of Yiddish, the YIVO PDF source says the following:

The language is characterized by a synthesis of Germanic (the majority component, derived from medieval German city dialects, themselves recombined) with Hebrew and Aramaic. (pg. 1).

From the 1970s on, some linguists, using evidence from both Germanic and Semitic components, began opting for a more easterly Danube-region origin, around Jewish centers in Regensburg, Nuremberg, and Rothenburg. (pg. 2).

By all accounts, Yiddish was from very early on the universal spoken language of Jews in the Germanic-speaking territory known as Ashkenaz in Jewish culture. It was one of the major new European Jewish cultures that arose in medieval Europe. The others include Sepharad (Seforad) on the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal); Tsarfat (Tsorfas) on French soil; Kenaan (Knaan) in the Slavic lands; Loe(y)z in Italy; Yavan (Yovon) in Greece; and Hagar (Hogor) in Hungary.

From earliest times, Yiddish was written using the same alphabet as Hebrew and Aramaic. Semitic alphabets have only consonants (many, including Hebrew and Aramaic, eventually developed systems for indicating vowels via diacritic marks). The loss of some ancient consonants in actual pronunciation “freed up” a number of letters to function in Yiddish as European-style vowel-letters, most famously ayin for e; alef for a and o sounds; and various combinations of yud and vov for diphthongs. Some of these devices were further developments of Aramaic-era usages. In Yiddish, the consonant-only Semitic script evolved into a vowel-plus-consonant European-type alphabet that provided a good (eventually, for modern standard Yiddish perfect) phonetic match between letter and sound. Words of Hebrew and Aramaic origin continued, however, to be spelled historically. They also maintain a unique sound pattern within the language; words are usually accented on the syllable before the last (the penult), rather than on the root syllable as in the Germanic parts of the language. (pg. 3).

Eleventh-century “glosses” (translations of “hard words” into the vernacular) are early manifestations of a written tradition that used Yiddish to explain Hebrew and Aramaic texts. The oldest known complete Yiddish sentence, dated 1272, occurs in an illuminated festival prayerbook manuscript known as the Worms Mahzor (Vórmser mákhzer); the words contain a blessing for the person who will carry the book to the synagogue. Its text is written into the hollows of a large calligraphic Hebrew word. (pg. 3-4).

In the east, the original Germanic and Semitic components were enriched by a Slavic component, which gave the language a new layer. (6).

In the early Soviet Union, Yiddish became a government-supported language and literature, and the state financed school systems, advanced research institutes, and literature. But Soviet rule, after some years of freedom in the earlier 1920s, made for a highly “straightjacketed Yiddish” with dictates on spelling (banishing the historic spelling of Semitic-origin words in the late 1920s), vocabulary, and, most importantly, content. Then, in the 1930s, Stalinist orders closed most of the extant institutions. In the purges of 1937, leading Yiddish writers and cultural leaders were arrested and executed; later, in the major postwar purge, the greatest surviving authors were murdered in 1952. (pg. 6).

Hasidism enhanced the status of Yiddish among the three languages of Ashkenaz. A new layer of sacred words that derived from Hebrew or Aramaic came into the everyday language, for example, dvéykes (literally, a cleaving; reinvigorated as a form of Hasidic rapture and cleavage to God); histálkes (disappearance, adapted to refer to the death of a Hasidic holy person—a tsadik or rebbe). (pg. 6-7).

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, the cultural affinity of most American and other Western Jews was for the emerging State of Israel and Israeli Hebrew. Moreover, Yiddish often had an image of “greenhorn” lack of sophistication and lowbrow humor; its use was associated with failure to climb on board the American socioeconomic ladder of success. Starting in the 1960s, attitudes toward Yiddish began to change, influenced by several factors including the gradual death of the last masters (and of Yiddish- speaking parents and relatives) that evoked nostalgia for the “old country”; growing consciousness (and knowledge) of the Holocaust; a recognition that Israeli Hebrew was now secure and that its proponents need not “fear” Yiddish; the changing evaluation in the United States of black and other ethnic cultures; and, a growing scholarly movement that saw a great world literature in Yiddish prose, poetry, and drama in 150 years that can schematically be dated from 1850 to 2000. (pg. 11).

All passages refer to an essential co-parenting of Hebrew, as well as Aramaic, as a Semitic language to the various "Asheknaz" languages of Germany, Poland, and Russia, also noting several other relatives, on page 2, as above. This premise defines Yiddish and other Semitic/Hebrew-influenced Indo-Aryan languages like Ladino under the current definitions of Creole language on Wikipedia. This concept is also noted in Zuckermann's JLC article when he describes the hybridity of Yiddish: "as reflected in Slavonized, Romance/Semitic-influenced, Germanic Yiddish itself" (pg. 49). I apologize for the earlier confusion regarding the initial sources. Thank you for your help. Jeffgr9 (talk) 02:30, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

The current definition of Creole language on Wikipedia is "a stable natural language that has developed from a pidgin (i.e. a simplified language or simplified mixture of languages used by non-native speakers) becoming nativized by children as their first language, with the accompanying effect of a fully developed vocabulary and system of grammar." Nothing above indicates that Yiddish evolved from any pidgin. Also, Yiddish was Yiddish well before the 20th century, so it puzzles me greatly what we're intended to derive, in the context of a discussion of whether Yiddish is a creole, from any of the text beginning with "In the early Soviet Union". —Largo Plazo (talk) 02:41, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Your continuing theme is that Yiddish is a hybrid of contributions from multiple languages. Again, as I said above, this is beyond dispute. Not only that, it's patently obvious. It is also not tantamount to Yiddish being a creole. —Largo Plazo (talk) 02:46, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

The Wikipedia definition of Pidgin: "A pidgin /ˈpɪdʒɨn/, or pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups that do not have a language in common: typically, a mixture of simplified languages or a simplified primary language with other languages' elements included. It is most commonly employed in situations such as trade, or where both groups speak languages different from the language of the country in which they reside (but where there is no common language between the groups)."

The above articles explained that Jews who carried with them Hebrew, a Semitic, Afro-Asiatic language, adapted their language to the various Eastern European languages, as other Jews did in Spain, Greece, Morocco, etc. Therefore, Yiddish was first a pidgin, and then a creole.

Also, the YIVO PDF document began with "YIDDISH. Yiddish is the historic language of Ashkenazic (Central and East European) Jewry, and is the third principal literary language in Jewish history, after classical Hebrew and (Jewish) Aramaic." The line, "In the early Soviet Union" (pg. 6) was in the middle of the article as it explained Yiddish had stabilized in the Soviet Union (Russia and Eastern Europe) and caused Jews speaking/writing in it to face persecution and slaughter. Jeffgr9 (talk) 02:57, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

I do not know if this point has been made: Yiddish only came into existence because the Jews spoke and wrote in Hebrew and brought it to Eastern Europe, as noted above. Jeffgr9 (talk) 03:14, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Your first paragraph reads "A pidgin is an A. Yiddish is a B. Therefore Yiddish is a pidgin." It's a non-sequitur. There was no pidgin. —Largo Plazo (talk) 11:59, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

The paragraph defines pidgin, then identifies that Yiddish fits the description of pidgin when Jews first arrived in Eastern Europe. And then, when looking at the previous sources—i.e. how the Yiddish pidgin in Russia had stabilized and for which it was recognized as a distinct Hebrew-derived language—it became a creole.

So, the logic should read now: A pidgin is an A, Yiddish is an A when Jews first arrived in Eastern Europe; a creole is a B (a stabilized pidgin over time), so Yiddish changes from A to B over history. Jeffgr9 (talk) 13:39, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

No. Nothing in what you posted here says anything about Yiddish that conforms to the definition of a pidgin. It never says it's a pidgin, it never says it was a language with a restricted vocabulary and simplified grammar spoken by multiple parties with mutually incomprehensible mother tongues to enable transactions with each other. That's what defines a pidgin. Most cases of synthesis by a language of elements from other languages, whether they be vocabulary or grammar, are not examples of pidgins leading to creoles. Modern Spanish is not a creole because it includes Arabic vocabulary. Modern French is not a creole because it includes Gaulish vocabulary. Modern Japanese is not a creole because it has borrowed a lot of English words. Also, the choice of writing system that a people uses to write a language has nothing to do with it being a pidgin. —Largo Plazo (talk) 14:05, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

In response to your original question: Your reliable sources don't say that Yiddish is a creole, so you have nothing to cite in the article to support an assertion that Yiddish is a creole. Your arguing from those sources that it is a creole is your own synthesis, on which article content can't be based. —Largo Plazo (talk) 14:13, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Despite the vast trove of vocabulary in English that comes from languages that aren't Germanic, English is still properly classified as a Germanic language, and it would incorrect to add it to categories like "Romance languages". Likewise for Yiddish, which is essentially a form of German with load words. —Largo Plazo (talk) 14:17, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Largoplazo. I note that most of the RS do not call Yiddish a creole language. Rjensen (talk) 14:18, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

So do I, as my reverts of Jeffgr9's edits probably already made clear. Debresser (talk) 20:17, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

I also agree. There's not a shred of evidence supporting the contention that native Germans spoke anything but German when interacting with the Jews. --Futhark|Talk 20:45, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

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Inclusion of 2016 genetic study on Turkish origins of Yiddish

I would be interested in other editor's opinions on whether this study merits a 1-2 sentence mention at the end of the "Origins" section, e.g. as previously used:

A 2016 study used geographic population structure analysis based on the autosomes of Yiddish speakers to determine the origin of the language. Their findings suggest that Yiddish-speakers are descendants of people who originally came from areas near from four villages – Iskenaz, Eskenaz, Ashanaz, and Aschuz – in north-eastern Turkey, rather than from Germanic lands as is generally argued.

The Origins section goes to some length to discuss the unsettled state of Yiddish origins determination, and Slavic/Turkish sources have long been discussed, so I believe this is hardly out of place nor WP:UNDUE. The study was carried out by a well-published cross-institutional team, published in a reputable journal and uses sound (as far as I can determine; I do ecology, not genomics) and extensively documented methodology; this appears to be good research, covered by mainstream media. Article is open access, btw.

So please chime in with your assessment, people.

(I'm somewhat ticked off by Debresser's hamfistedness in refusing a source twice because of a naked claim of "implausibility" and "can not take seriously", then pounding on WP:BRD instead of actually making their case while at the same time claiming that they maybe would gracefully have desisted if I had phrased that summary differently... but whatevs.)

--Elmidae (talk) 07:37, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

Of course it merits brief inclusion. One doesn't judge, as Debresser, the merits of a primary source according to one's private lights. It's a minority view, but reputably published by distinguished academics. I've tweaked your proposal.Nishidani (talk) 08:31, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

The sentence I removed repeatedly read: "Yiddish originated from four villages in north-eastern Turkey". That is ludicrous, and does not reflect the article correctly. I am not against a short mention of the main conclusions of this research, and content wise, I think it fits perfectly behind the sentence about Dovid Katz' opinion. That should give you a hint what crucial part of the article you didn't mention. Debresser (talk) 09:20, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

No it isn't ludicrous, it is overly concise,all you had to do is tweak it with one or two words: 'Yiddish-speaking Askenazi originated from (areas around) four villages in north-eastern Turkey'.'(Source:The most parsimonious explanation for our findings is that Yiddish speaking AJs have originated from Greco-Roman and mixed Irano-Turko-Slavic populations who espoused Judaism in a variety of venues throughout the first millennium A.D. in “Ashkenaz” lands centered between the Black and Caspian Seas./traced nearly all AJs to major primeval trade routes in northeastern Turkey adjacent to primeval villages, whose names may be derived from “Ashkenaz.)

This is sheer bad faith hairsplitting, Debresser.Nishidani (talk) 09:43, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

Nishidani, you have a longstanding allergy against me, and it shows. I didn't have to "tweak it", as you say, because it is missing something essential, without which the edit is unacceptable, both as an incorrect reflection of the source, as well as in that the statement as it is is ludicrous ("Yiddish comes from Turkey"!).

On your very important procedural and behavioral comment. Actually, I am under no obligation to invest from my time to fix other people's mistakes or improve their bad edits: I can simply remove them till such time as they comply with the encyclopedic standards of Wikipedia. I did post on the user's talkpage, explaining a bit more in detail, what was missing, and you had to meddle there as well. Not very helpful, all in all, I think. Debresser (talk) 12:58, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

I see no evidence you have read the article, and reverting is lazy. You do this frequently and your talk page comments are often unfocused. Let's stick now to the substance of the proposal, not frig around with formalisms. I.e. is a paper written by those academics, with their tenure, and in a notable RS acceptable or not. I believe the obvious answer is, yes. So if you dislike the formula that is given to summarize its Yiddish conclusions,devise one yourself and propose it as an alternative. This means, of course, doing some work, rather than wasting time.Nishidani (talk) 14:32, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

Can someone explain to me why identifying a geographical origin for people who spoke Yiddish somewhere other than central Europe at some point in history demonstrates that their development of a distinctive language has to have happened at that same time? Why could that not have happened until later, when they had moved west, with Yiddish developing among them then, quite ordinarily, as an offshoot of the ambient Germanic dialect? I don't understand how it can be a relexification, because not only is the vocabulary primarily Germanic, but so are the morphology and syntax. To call it a relexification of a Slavic or Turkic language is like the woodsman who spoke of his trusty axe that he'd had his whole life, other than having had its head replaced three times and its handle four times. —Largo Plazo (talk) 13:07, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

I appreciate the desire for clarification, but this is not a forum for anything other than the merits of edits that have been proposed, in terms of WP:Due, WP:RS etc. We are not allowed to presume, like the sockpuppet below (Kuzia), to know better than the authors of our reliable sources. That holds even when we do know better.Nishidani (talk) 14:36, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for calling me a sockpuppet. I am not a frequent guest here, but I doubt that ethical rulings here are any different from other Wikipedias. It is also interesting to witness such cases of lack fear of being wrong. No, this is not only my opinion, and it is not just an opinion: there are objective criteria of what qualifies as science and what is appropriate in a scientific publication (just to clarify: I am talking only about the quasi-linguistic part of the paper), and moreover Dr. William Martin, the editor-in-chief of GBE, does agree on this. This is not the right place to discuss the details - let's just see what way of solving the issue the editorial office chooses. Kuzia (talk) 15:21, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

My apologies, but your first wiki handle gave no indication you have ever edited here, and my inference, though based on long experience, was incorrect, now that you clarified your record.Nishidani (talk) 17:39, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

If you are saying a top molecular biologist Dr. William Martin disagrees with the material in the paper from Paul Wexler (but not that from his colleagues in his own field), then you are saying a molecular biologist disagrees with one of the world's foremost authorities of Yiddish, regarding Yiddish. You will appreciate the absurdity of this, I'm sure.Nishidani (talk) 19:04, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

@Nishidani: I fail to see what you mean. I can only confirm the absurdity of your statement, I didn't say that Dr. Martin has anything to do with linguistics. In, fact the whole journal has nothing to do with linguistics. Another note: if you think that Paul Wexler is one of the "foremost authorities of Yiddish" than you disagree with most scholars in the field. Here is e.g. the latest summary of his activity from the Origins of Yiddish Dialects: "... this book mainly ignores various texts published by Paul Wexler, starting with 1991. The reason is simple: I read these writings and consider that their scholarly quality is so low and their methodological drawbacks so striking that they do not deserve serious discussion by authors adhering to the realistic approach to science." Kuzia (talk) 16:53, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

As the article on Paul Wexler (linguist) himself says, "Paul Wexler's theories have been criticized harshly by other scholars. The majority of scholars have rejected his theories on Yiddish." The footnote for this leads to this, which says "The majority view among Yiddish linguists—a very small but committed cadre of scholars—is that Wexler’s argument is untenable." —Largo Plazo (talk) 12:40, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

I'm suggesting that a paper with patent logical absurdities isn't a reliable source, and was attempting to see whether anyone agreed with my tentative evaluation of the paper as being as reliable as the woodsman's assertion that he still has his original axe, or a paper claiming the snowy egret must have evolved from the kangaroo because "its features are all exactly like the features of the kangaroo--if you don't count the features that are different". We certainly do discount sources here as WP:FRINGE, even when numerous people have written papers and books supporting the same fringe theory. —Largo Plazo (talk) 18:37, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

You've indicated no logical absurditiesa and secondly, the only criteria that are relevant for inclusion are the policies set forth at WP:RS. The fact is that the four scholars are all highly qualified and published in the various disciplines reflected in the study.

• Ranajit Das Manipal Centre for Natural Sciences (MCNS), Manipal University, Manipal, Karnataka, India
• Paul Wexler Department of Linguistics, Tel Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel
• Mehdi Pirooznia Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Johns Hopkins University
• Eran Elhaik Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
• The publishing venue,Genome Biology and Evolution, confirms its RS status. I suggest you examine WP:IDONTLIKEIT.Nishidani (talk) 18:57, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

I appreciate the irony in your choice to respond to me in relexified Yoruba. Yes, I recognize that you've replaced all the Yoruba words with English ones, the Yoruba morphology with English morphology, and the Yoruba syntax with English syntax, but it's unmistakably relexified Yoruba. (What I just wrote is absurd, right?) —Largo Plazo (talk) 01:52, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

"This page documents an English Wikipedia content guideline. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply." (WP:RS) I know far from everything about Yiddish, but my common sense tells me that based on what I do know about it, as well as what experience I've had with German and Slavic language, the grammar of Yiddish is fundamentally German and not Slavic: the morphology of its nouns and its adjectives and its verbs, its use of definite and indefinite articles, etc. Per P. H. Matthews in The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics (a reliable source), relexification of a language involves replacement of its vocabulary "without its grammar being affected similarly". I think one would be hard put to say Yiddish has a nearly unchanged Slavic-like grammar. —Largo Plazo (talk) 02:12, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

Actually, I don't see a big problem with the axe metaphor. Note that the paper focuses on locating the original speakers of what would become Yiddish. It doesn't claim that Yiddish sprang fully formed, German lexicon and all, from villages in modern-day Turkey - it suggests that the original speakers of what would become recognized as Yiddish came from there, slowly developing the language as a trade idiom, switching out grammar and vocabulary units over the centuries. It probably only became recognizable (to us) some time later. That doesn't strike me as far-fetched at all.--Elmidae (talk) 09:55, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

Switching out grammar = not relexification. Anyway, has anybody (Wexler included) found any record of a language spoken by Jews with primarily German vocabulary but Slavic or Turkic grammar? Anyone's claims to the contrary, genes aren't going to reveal the answer to this. —Largo Plazo (talk) 12:45, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

Just a brief comment: the article is clearly unscientific. I have contacted the chief editor of GBE: he understands the situation, and I hope the end of the story will be withdrawal of the article. Kuzia (talk) 14:05, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

Gee whizz. That must have slipped by the entire editorial staff of Genom Bio & E and at least two external reviewers, not to mention the teams at Sheffield & Tel Aviv and John Hopkins; I'm holding my breath here (and congratulations for your manifest clout with the chief editor, mate). Are you people, like, a little invested in the issue or something? I'm recalling why I don't usually bother editing these nationalistically charged topics... -- Elmidae (talk) 14:21, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

In short, ignoring sneers and bad faith faith accusations by Nishidani and Elmidae, the point here remains, that anybody who wants to add information from this article, will simply have to do a better job. I see no reason for either to continue posting here and drive this discussion into directions it shouldn't go. Debresser (talk) 21:12, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

Well, try not to hit the door with that chip on your shoulder on the way out, bucko.--Elmidae (talk) 07:15, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

I might add, before you loft off to your previous occupation of mechanically hitting 'revert', that an insistence that everyone follow your unstated preconceptions about what constitutes a "better job" (which you are apparently unable or unwilling to formulate) leaves little room for assuming good faith - it merely smacks of arrogance. I don't agree with Largoplazo re the validity of the paper, but then I know little about the subject and they may even be right; at least they make an argument. But "I don't like the write-up, keep trying until I do" posturing? Nope. - I suppose at least you aren't making blow-hard noises about getting the paper retracted... --Elmidae (talk) 09:40, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

No, I am not. That was a queer post, about getting the paper retracted. How do you "retract" a paper once it is published. I have no problem with the research itself. I just think its conclusions were misrepresented, leading to a rather absurd statement. I could rephrase it myself, but would prefer not to. That is why I posted a few ideas on your talkpage. Debresser (talk) 10:57, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

How do you retract a paper? I can't give you the procedural details, but this is hardly unexplored territory, as in the case of The Lancet and the vaccine-autism paper, explained at MMR vaccine controversy. —Largo Plazo (talk) 17:08, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

Update from the GBE editor: "In the meantime, several other people have written in. The paper is coming under considerable pressure. ... The fate of the paper in question is open." Kuzia (talk) 16:53, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

Eh, I'm ready to eat crow on this, but I would be very surprised if anything happened without what we like to call a "scientific debate" playing out... i.e., published rebuttals and at least one challenge-response cycle in print. This was the case even in the Lancet controversy (unless, of course, Kuzia has been collecting compromising photos of the Editor).--Elmidae (talk) 17:34, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

I also think that practically, you can't but the bird back in its cage, once it has flown out. Debresser (talk) 17:36, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

Genome Biology and Evolution is an online-only publication. Retracting a paper from such a venue is a far easier matter than dealing with hard copy. --Futhark|Talk 17:52, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

* Comment Just a comment from an observer on the sidelines here. For anyone with a "mother tongue" intuitive feeling for both languages, Yiddish and German, the connections between them, and the fact that one is a variation of the other with Hebrew words added (and some other Slavic words also added, depending on the different 'flavors' of Yiddish dialect one is using) is very much obvious, intuitive at every moment. The Wexler "theory" of the so-called Slavic relexification of Yiddish, also very obviously, should definitely be defined in Wikpedia as a Fringe theory, since it is espoused only by him and nobody else. Now, on the teaming up together now of the veteran crank/crackpot linguist adorning the academic roster of a second tier Israeli University (Wexler) with the recently famous dissenting genetics researcher Elhaik, to finally "prove" the so-called Khazar genetic origin of Ashkenazi Jews, it should raise more than eyebrows on any observing person with some knowledge of the internal Jewish and academic politics involved here. It would make perfect sense for an Israeli Sephardi genetics researcher to be now making an academic career outside of Israel, precisely on the "non-Jewish" origins of the Israeli predominant ethnic group, the so-called "oppressors" of Jewish society in Israel, namely the Ashkenazi Jews. As various editors have already observed above, this entire "genetic" (read, "scientific") charade is pretty much implausible, nay indeed ridiculous. warshy ^(¥¥) 18:35, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

Wonderful. Now, if you actually read the relevant literature, you of course will note that there is agreement between Wexler/Elhaik and everyone else. The Ashkenazi are derived from a Jewish community originating in the Middle East. That is what they and every other geneticist argues. So what's so fringe and crackpot about the consensus they endorse? Nishidani (talk) 20:08, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

What is fringe, as fringe as it comes, as I said above, is Wexler's linguistic "theory" of the so-called Slavic relexification of Yiddish origins. And, a fringe theory of linguistic origins is now also used to buttress some new genetic theories of ethnic origins. Overall, just a completely ridiculous "scientific" charade. warshy ^(¥¥) 11:56, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

Nishidani, I hope you were not suggesting a connection between the origins of Yiddish and the origins of Ashkenazi Jews? Debresser (talk) 20:52, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

A note or two

• It originated during the 9th century[4] in Central Europe

There are 3 theories: this phrasing in the lead says the dominant model by Max Weinreich is wrong.

Secondly in the origins section it is contradicted by the first line which paraphrasaes Max Weinreich’s view:

’The established view is that, as with other Jewish languages, Jews speaking distinct languages learned new co-territorial vernaculars, which they then Judaized. In the case of Yiddish, this scenario sees it as emerging when speakers of Judeo-French and Judeo-Romance languages began to acquire varieties of Middle High German, and from these groups the Ashkenazi community took shape’.

This in short asserts that the Ashkenazi and Yiddish took shape in Western, not Central, Europe.

Central Europe refers to, I presume, a Bavarian-Danubian-Czech area. Hence the lead line contradicts the origins opening sentence. There are a lot of small things here than require attentive reading to iron out such slippages.Nishidani (talk) 13:45, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

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Wexler and WP:DUE

@Debresser:, you reverted my edit without giving a reason other than "no consensus". Please give a legitimate reason for why you think it's not undue weight.--Monochrome_Monitor 08:50, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

See discussion above. Debresser (talk) 10:59, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

@Debresser: Why only test people who speak Yiddish? Speaking a language does not mean you originate where the language originated. That's just ridiculous. Also, the study is from the same people who write all of these studies accepted by literally no one other than antizionists, antisemites, and themselves.--Monochrome_Monitor 23:18, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

And that definitely doesn't answer my question, which is about DUE WEIGHT. Are you arguing that the weight given to one fringe view is not undue?--Monochrome_Monitor 23:20, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

Your criticism of an academic study is original research at best, so let's not go there. We are talking about one sentence, not in the lead, so no, I don't think that is undue weight. The discussion above also seems to have reached the conclusion that this point of view can be mentioned, which means the editors did not consider it undue, no. Debresser (talk) 00:43, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

It's not original research, there's an "academic study" study debunking its methods. And due weight does not mean "worthy of mentioning". It may be a few sentences but in effect the mainstream theory is given as much coverage as the fringe one.--Monochrome_Monitor 16:07, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

Well, that may be something to work on. But essentially that is the problem of an encyclopedia. Debresser (talk) 16:22, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

It doesn't have to be :)--Monochrome_Monitor 01:45, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

As a minority language

Many countries are listed in the infobox, yet in the body of the article it's mentioned that only some of them have it as an official minority language. There should be a source to confirm or deny these claims (infobox and section). —Hexafluoride ^{Ping me if you need help, or post on my talk} 14:39, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

It is sourced in the text only for Sweden. For the Ukraine it says from 1917-1921, so I would remove the Ukrainian flag from the infobox. Debresser (talk) 16:19, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I know Slavic isn't Russian

To the IP user who has removed "Slavic languages" from the list of languages from which Yiddish has drawn in this edit, yes, I know Slavic "isn't" Russian. Russian is a Slavic language, and one of the Slavic languages from which Yiddish has drawn, along with Polish, Ukrainian, etc. Your edit summary doesn't make sense, sorry. I'm restoring the text again. Largoplazo (talk) 15:13, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

I agree with Largoplazo on this. Debresser (talk) 15:27, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

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History section contains wrong information

In the History section it says, "The Jewish community in the Rhineland would have encountered the many dialects from which Standard German would emerge a few centuries later." Unfortunately this is simply not true. Standard German derives more or less entirely from The East Central German varieties located several hundred miles away and Rhinelanders would have been influenced by this the same as everyone else. --Pfold (talk) 11:55, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

You are correct, this is nonsense. If you read Yiddish it's easily recognizable as a Franconian dialect. That makes sense because most of the cities from where the Jews where evicted to Eastern Europe where in Franconian speaking areas, both in modern Germany, Belgium and France. — Preceding unsigned comment added by JRB-Europe (talk • contribs) 00:36, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Disagree – as far as I can discern, the dialectal foundation of Yiddish is indeed primarily East Central German (compare here), with Bavarian influences (as pointed out by Dovid Katz) such as (regionally) old dual for plural forms of the second person. (To me, the Bavarian-like sound of Yiddish is striking. There are no specifically Franconian features I could pinpoint.) Presumably, its origin lies in the regions where, in the high medieval period, East Central German dialects were spoken side by side with Bavarian and West Slavic dialects, such as in (Northwestern) Bohemia and adjacent areas – where there are also East Franconian influences, especially in the Vogtland region –, unless the Bavarian (and Slavic) influences are significantly more recent than the origin of Yiddish (presumably in the High Middle Ages); it appears that the Slavic loans are mainly from East Slavic and Polish, so maybe West Slavic did not play a significant role in the initial genesis of Yiddish and this genesis took place further west, such as in Thuringia west of the Mulde. It is essential to study the Middle High German dialects – or the medieval ancestral stages of the modern dialects – for this purpose, and compare them with "Proto-Yiddish", rather than compare the modern dialects directly with modern Standard Yiddish. The medieval German dialects were considerably less divergent from each other than the modern dialects are, and East Central German in particular was much more limited and mainly spoken west of the Mulde. Western Yiddish in particular is notoriously neglected, and appears to have few Slavic influences. Eastern Yiddish, on the other hand, functions essentially as a language island dialect, first in Slavic environment, now in environments like English. Frankly, there are still many open questions about the origins of Yiddish, and it is an area of active research. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:09, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

This is a good/interesting short essay that would be a solid basis, in my view, for new linguistics research into the origins in Yiddish. Thank you, warshy ^(¥¥) 18:46, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

Just a hint for Non-Europeans: As higher nobility and language at courts had been similar in Rhineland, Alsace, old 'Lotharinga', Frankish Duchy and Bavarian Duchy (in that time including today's Austria), this common language MUST have massively affected this new dialect of Middle High German. Original source of both, nobility and language, in the relevant regions at the very beginning of Frankish kingdom, had been south-west Germanic language, including some Latin and Greek vocabulary (religious and administrative expressions). --138.180.194.2 (talk) 09:46, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Yiddish poster/sticker

I'm not entirely sure how to attach this photo as an example of yiddish being used in the daily life of hasidic people; however, it's a photo I took in Borough Park, New York back in 2018. Roughly translating it, it's saying that "nobody should doubt that someone who takes out a smartphone in public has "evilness and cruelty" because "he" (referring to the person) knows how strongly it irritates all the kids from the surrounding? and he doesn't even care that all ?? because of him destruction and ?? god forbid" please correct my mistakes too https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Yiddish_poster.jpg#filehistory

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Ispitwhenitalk (talk • contribs) 02:13, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure that it belongs on the page, especially as there is not even a full translation of it. I'm sure there's thousands of other, and more neutral, subjects of Yiddish used in storefronts, on the sides of schoolbuses, in newspapers, etc, in 2019 Brooklyn other than this. JesseRafe (talk) 13:33, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

Isny?

The first paragraph of § Printing includes this sentence:

One particularly popular work was Elia Levita's Bovo-Bukh (בָּבָֿא-בּוך), composed around 1507–08 and printed several times, beginning in 1541 (Isny) (under the title Bovo d'Antona).

This is the only occurrence of "Isny" in the entire article and talk page. It's not in a standard bibliographic format, but it may refer to the place of that first printing. There is a community of that name in the appropriate region:

Isny im Allgäu is a town in south-eastern Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is part of the district of Ravensburg, in the western, Württembergish part of the Allgäu region. (From Isny im Allgäu)

But since that's just a hypothesis unsupported by any direct evidence, I'm deleting the mention from the article. --Thnidu (talk) 00:29, 24 June 2019 (UTC) (edited 18:27, 25 June 2019 (UTC), Thnidu)

@Thnidu: According to de-WP, the book was indeed printed in Isny im Allgäu. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:21, 30 April 2020 (UTC)