Yiddish Language, Part One

Few languages match Yiddish in colorfulness and adaptability. It originated in the 900s A.D., when Jewish immigrants in Germany learned to speak German but used the Hebrew alphabet to write it. They added Hebrew words to their speech which was “Germanized.”

Although frowned upon by Jewish religious leaders as slang, this dialect gradually took shape as a language seperate from German. Years later when Jewish colonies in Germany moved to Poland and Russia, Yiddish survived and grew, adopting many words from Polish and Russian.

America has also played an important role in the development of Yiddish. Large numbers of Jews came from Europe around 1882, bringing with them their Yiddish language. Here their language was further enriched with English words, especially the names of things unfamiliar to the immigrants, such as ice cream, subway, and baseball.