Yiddish phrasebook
Yiddish (ייִדיש / יידיש / אידיש, yidish/idish) is the traditional language of the Ashkenazi Jews. It is spoken as a daily language mostly by Charedi Jews in some parts of the United States, mostly in and around New York City, and in Israel. There are also smaller Yiddish-speaking communities in Canada, the United Kingdom, Russia, Australia, South Africa and Argentina. It developed out of Middle High German with many loanwords of Hebrew, Slavic, French, or other origin, making it not fully intelligible to native German speakers. As Yiddish is roughly 75% Germanic in origin, German speakers can understand a large part of it.
Yiddish is written with the same alphabet as Hebrew, with a few additional letters, and is written from right to left. However, unlike Hebrew, which uses an abjad (consonant-only alphabet), Yiddish generally uses the Hebrew alphabet as a full alphabet, vowels and all.
Pronunciation guideYiddish has several dialects which differ in their vowel sounds and certain vocabulary items. Words of European origin are spelled out phonemically.
Phrase listAs with many words in Yiddish, colors often have different names due to a difference in dialect.
Sources and licences
- Guide text adapted from the Wikivoyage article "Yiddish phrasebook" by its contributors, available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read on Wikivoyage · Contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0