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The Collaborative International Dictionary
Yiddish

Yiddish \Yid"dish\, n. [G. j["u]disch, prop., Jewish, fr. Jude Jew. See Jew, Jewish.] A language used by German and other Jews, being a Middle German dialect developed under Hebrew and Slavic influence. It is written in Hebrew characters.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Yiddish

1875, from Yiddish yidish, from Middle High German jüdisch "Jewish" (in phrase jüdisch deutsch "Jewish-German"), from jude "Jew," from Old High German judo, from Latin Judaeus (see Jew). The English word has been re-borrowed in German as jiddisch. As an adjective from 1886. Related: Yiddishism.

Wikipedia
Yiddish

Yiddish (, or , yidish/idish, literally " Jewish"; in older sources ייִדיש-טײַטש "Yiddish-Taitsh" (English: Judaeo-German)) is the historical language of the Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with an extensive Germanic based vernacular fused with elements taken from Hebrew and Aramaic, as well as from Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages. Yiddish is written with a fully vocalized alphabet based on the Hebrew script.

The earliest surviving references date from the 12th century and call the language (loshn-ashknaz = "language of Ashkenaz") or (taytsh), a variant of tiutsch, the contemporary name for Middle High German. Colloquially, the language is sometimes called (mame-loshn, literally "mother tongue"), distinguishing it from (loshn-koydesh, "holy tongue"), meaning Hebrew. The term "Yiddish", short for "Yiddish-Teitsch" (Jewish German), did not become the most frequently used designation in the literature until the 18th century. In the late 19th and into the 20th century the language was more commonly called "Jewish", especially in non-Jewish contexts, but "Yiddish" is again the more common designation.

Modern Yiddish has two major forms. Eastern Yiddish is far more common today. It includes Southeastern (Ukrainian–Romanian), Mideastern (Polish–Galician–Eastern Hungarian), and Northeastern (Lithuanian–Belarusian) dialects. Eastern Yiddish differs from Western both by its far greater size and by the extensive inclusion of words of Slavic origin. Western Yiddish is divided into Southwestern (Swiss–Alsatian–Southern German), Midwestern (Central German), and Northwestern (Netherlandic–Northern German) dialects. Yiddish is used in a large number of Orthodox Jewish communities worldwide and is the first language of the home, school, and in many social settings among most Haredi Judaism, and is used in Hasidic and Lithuanian Yeshivas.

The term Yiddish is also used in the adjectival sense, synonymously with Jewish, to designate attributes of Ashkenazi culture (for example, Yiddish cooking and Yiddish music).

Prior to the Holocaust, there were over 10 million speakers of Yiddish; 85% of the Jews who died in the Holocaust were Yiddish speakers, leading to a massive decline in the use of the language. Assimilation following World War II further decreased the use of Yiddish both among survivors and Yiddish-speakers from other countries (such as in the Americas). However, the number of speakers is increasing in global Hasidic communities.

Usage examples of "yiddish".

That sign was written in Yiddish, Byelorussian, and, as an afterthought, in Polish in letters half the size of those of the other two languages.

As for the encipherment in Yiddish transliteration, the SS here would penetrate the poor mask instantly.

For unlike my other grandmother, Runyeh, who avidly followed the serialized novels in the Yiddish papers every day, Esther Malkah was barely, if at all, literate.

Abe Jones when Eugene first knew him: dreary, tortured, melancholy, dully intellectual and joylessly poetic, his spirit gloomily engulfed in a great cloud of Yiddish murk, a grey pavement cipher, an atom of the slums, a blind sea-crawl in the drowning tides of the man-swarm, and yet, pitifully, tremendously, with a million other dreary Hebrew yearners, convinced that he was the Messiah for which the earth was groaning.

My grandmother wrote back in her Yiddish scrawl, letters squiggled on the page, that I could not decipher without I N S I L E N C E 217 the aid of my teacher.

And color, too, in the language of the streets, the profanity interlaced with the pseudo-musical jargon, the English of the underprivileged, and the bastardized Spanish, the Jewish peddler shouting his wares with a heavy Yiddish accent, the woman on the street corner wailing psalms to the indifferent blue sky of April.

He bursts out in another voice, startling Natalie by shifting to Yiddish, in which he has never lectured before.

Swearing in English and Yiddish, he dashed for the trench right outside the Nissen hut and jumped down into it.

Moishe Russie had written Goldfarb's name and address in the Roman alphabet, but the letter inside the envelope was in Yiddish.

Mickey went around the twist then, spraying spit like a rabid dog, spitting obscenities in Yiddish, making his Jew strongarms squirm.

Mokkeh was the lady's nickname (it is Yiddish for plague or pestilence) and suggested the bloodchilling imprecations she could toss off with spectacular fluency.