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But why do you claim the article "leaves out" German grammar, if the mention of it is clearly there, as an explicitly called out base, in the very first sentences of the article?

"With its German grammatical structure and the bulk of its vocabulary coming from German, Yiddish is usually classified as a Germanic tongue. [...]"

Given this unambiguous note at the beginning, I find it easy to understand that the author of the article wants to focus on an aspect of the language that he sees as less blatantly obvious, and thus potentially more interesting to a reader. Would you find an article explaining that "the Sun is bright" more interesting than exploring some nuances of it, e.g. how the Sun can become less bright during a rare event of an eclipse?

Now this makes me confused if there's some "intent" behind your comment, given that it takes a demonstrably incorrect claim and builds a vague accusation on it; not to mention that even if there was any truth to this false claim, a sprinkle of a good will assumption can still lead the reader in a direction of completely benign motive.

With that said, given that I prefer to start with an assumption of good will, I hope and suspect you probably just skipped or forgotten the first paragraphs of the article; I just wish you made sure to re-read them before jumping to accusations.

edit: looking into the history of your comments, I would recommend reconsidering if a more constructive and less trolling/inflammatory approach could make your contributions to the community & discussions a better long-term strategy.

> What also feels construed is the part about the diminutives

I don't think they meant to say -el/-ele were slavic influence. They just mentioned them and then went on to obviously slavic ones like -chki,-chik,-yu and -nyu.

> multiple negation is still used in south west Germany

I don't think it works the same way though? In south German dialects it puts "no" at the end: "Das macht KEINEN Spaß NICHT".

In Polish (and in Yiddish AFAIU) it puts "no" before the verb: "To NIE sprawia ŻADNEJ frajdy" is a little more natural but "To ŻADNEJ frajdy NIE sprawia" is perfectly fine as well. I don't know Yiddish well enough to translate that but I think it would be closer to the Polish sentence in word order.

> And hearing Yiddish (if you still can) is usually closer to modern high German attuned ears than say Suisse German.

There’s Yiddish as a first language kids to this day in haradi (ultra-orthodox) communities. I’m told that it’s a slightly different variant then the version my secular grandparents spoke, but it’s still out there.

I still see lots of orthodox Jewish speakers of Yiddish here in Brooklyn, NY; I even sometimes see their small kids speaking Yiddish, though pretty rarely.

The language is definitely not dead yet. I am not Jewish in any way, so my exposure is random encounters on the street / in parks, unlikely an overestimation.

"not dead yet" is a good summery. The trajectory is very clear.

Nah this isn't true. Among Haredi Jewish communities it's still very often the mame loshn (mother tongue), and they're growing in number.

Secular Yiddish has been having a revival for a couple of decades, but to me it seems like more of an academic object of study than a living language, like it is for the Haredim.

On the secular Yiddish side, I don’t know anyone of my generation (holocaust +2) that speaks it even haltingly. Just maybe a few words and phases more than the average goyishe New Yorker.

The prior generation is a mixed bag but I have no relatives that had it as a first language. I have an uncle that’s fluent enough to listen to podcasts and the like, but he’s in his mid 70s.

Fluency was near universal in the generation before that (i.e. people alive during the holocaust), but from what I understand even in Europe before the war it was common by then to also know another language—-German, Russian, Polish, Etc.

Don't doubt that you don't know anyone secular who does, but there is a very vibrant secular Yiddish revival scene out there where you could meet people who do. For example

https://www.yivo.org/

https://www.yiddishnewyork.com/

https://klezkanada.org/

https://www.centre-medem.org/

https://www.jmi.org.uk/event/otazoyonline2021/

To name just a few.

I mean there are people out there that speak Esperanto fluently. It’s a question of how many. A few people’s (very cool) hobby isn’t the same as a living language.

If you had to guess, what would you say the percentage of American Jews under the age of 45 who are not and never been haredi speak Yiddish fluently?

<0% ! It's obviously collapsed (khurbn, assimilation, Zionism ).

That said, for those who are part of the secular yiddish 'revival' it doesn't matter if there isn't a huge speaker base. Its still an interesting and exciting environment to be part of, and a real counterpoint to the nationalist, orthodox and assimilationist alternative ways of being a Jew today.

there's an american "yiddish" (yinglish one might say, or "yeshivish" in certain contexts, but I'm arguing for a more generalized version) that is common amongst american jews. a mixture of english, hebrew, yiddish, aramaic that is such a part of who they are, that they have to make a conscious effort to code switch when talking to non jews and when Israelis speak english, it just sounds foreign to them. (i.e. while american jews know what the "bible" is, that is not going to be a common term used in internal communication (feels "christian") and would probably say torah or tanach depending on the context. But when an Israeli speaks english, they generally just translate into english (or perhaps speak more standard english) to the point that it sounds foreign to the american born jews' ear.

There are more native speakers of Yiddish today than there were 10, 20 or 30 years ago. The trajectory is going in the opposite direction.

But they are only using it as a colloquial language, don't they? Is there significant amount of literature and media made in yiddish by native speakers? This used to be the case in Europe before the holocaust.

They do produce literature - newspapers, magazines, posters, songs, plays, books, commentaries, and even films (Fill The Void being the pinacle), etc. But no, I don't think anyone would say this rivals the quantity and quality of the arts during the high point of Yiddish culture in the interwar period. Then again, who knows, maybe in the future they will?

They do, I'm thinking of certain Ultra Orthodox sects (not all, but Skver for example). Most of their literature is religious in nature (the plays of Sholem Aleichem would be anathema to them), and religious books are traditionally written in Hebrew (Tseno Ureno is a notable exception, but it seems the author intended it for those who aren't scholars).

But the point is that it is silly to talk about Yiddish being a dying language when it has so many native speakers with a very high birth rate (if I recall correctly approximately half the population are under the age of 18).

When the Jewish culture I grew up in disappears, which seems inevitable at this point, I wonder if there will be some other secular Jewish community in a steady state driven by inflows from off the derech haredi and outflows to assimilation.

take Israel, there are people that consider themselves "datlash" (dati l'she'avar, formerly relgious). They are a distinct subgroup from chilon (secular) israelis, as their religious upbringing is very much a part of who they are. The question will be, what will happen to their children.

Yiddish used by haredi (in Israel at least) is more and more based on Hebrew (definitely phonetics). It's not the same Yiddish my grandparents spoke (Odessa and Uman regions of modern Ukraine).

It's also got a lot of English in it nowadays too, and Dutch. It's a diasporic fusion language so it sucks in the languages of its environment, which for today's speakers means Israel, US/UK, Holland (Antwerp).

Belgium*

Woops, thank you.

Looks like it's too late for me to correct, apologies.

Yiddish always borrows from the local language.

my polish born and american (but "lithuanian" rooted) grandmothers would speak to each other in yiddish, but wouldn't always understand each other.

Culture.pl is a Polish site - hence their focus on the Polish connections. No maliciousness there I think :)

Yeah, my German Jewish friend told me that spoken Yiddish sounds like medieval peasant German, and reading Yiddish written in Hebrew script makes him feel like he’s having a stroke.

This seems to align with what the article says in:

"[...] it is estimated that the Germanic element makes up some 70 to 75% of the overall lexicon [...]"

and:

"[...] note that early Yiddish developed from Middle High German dialects [...]"

I've heard it said before that Yiddish sounds like Bavarian. Are you a native German speaker? If you hear spoken Yiddish, can you identify it as such, or does it just sound like some weird Bavarian dialect?

I’ve only heard Yiddish in movies and TV. To my ears, it does have a Bavarian flavor, but also lots of surprising stuff that you wouldn’t have in Bavarian. For example the vowel that would be long /o:/ in most German dialects comes out in Yiddish as /oi/.

I'm being a bit of a smartass here, but in some areas of Upper Austria (part of the Bavarian language area), the MHG long "o" is pronounced as "oi".

https://media04.meinbezirk.at/article/2013/01/14/7/5943487_X...

Haha, I was expecting someone would tell me that it does happen somewhere deep in Austria. Cool map!

As a Swiss German, Yiddish sounds a lot like Swiss German to me, though it's certainly easily distinguished (and I couldn't speak it easily).