The distinction came up in today’s column. So, what is the difference?
Hebrew is a middle eastern language. Yiddish is an offshoot of German.
To be more precise, Hebrew is a Semitic language: another major Semitic language is Arabic. They are both written with the Hebrew alphabet, and both spoken mainly by Jews, but linguistically (apart from some shared vocabulary) they are unrelated.
Yiddish is an Indo-European Germanic language. It is very closely related to modern standard German and more distantly, but still closely, related to English and Dutch. Hebrew is an Afro-Asiatic Semitic language and closely related to Arabic, Amharic, and Aramaic.
Additional differences between Yiddish and Hebrew: Yiddish developed in Germany as a spoken and written language for everyday use; from the 2nd century until the 19th century, Hebrew was a liturgical language, not for everyday use.
The “they” which begins your second sentence refers, of course, to Hebrew and Yiddish. (I did adoubletake when it followed close on your mention of Arabic; I thought it might be worthwhile to post a clarifying post.)
You’re correct: I should have proofread more thoroughly before posting
Which is funny because, besides the elderly, I rarely hear anyone speak Yiddish anymore. All the cool kids speak Hebrew these days.
Yeah, the story of how Hebrew was revived as a living language is very interesting. The book “In the Land of Invented Languages” talks about that story (and compares it with the couple of successful (ish) creations of artificial languages).
As an example of how the language derivations…
I speak very little Hebrew, other than random phrases and pieces I can pick from prayers. I took four years of German in high school, and three semesters in college. I was able to roughly follow conversations my grandparents would have in Yiddish.
-D/a
To be exact, Hebrew had become strictly a liturgical language by the time of Jesus. Jesus spoke Aramaic. Hebrew had died out as a living language several centuries before. A couple thousand years later, in the nineteenth century or thereabouts, it was revived as a living language and eventually became the national language of Israel. Yiddish is close enough to German that it’s more or less mutually intelligible. It was the dialect spoken by Jews in Germany. Not surprisingly, it’s borrowed a number of words from Hebrew.
And Hebrew was chosen as the language of Israel, instead of Yiddish, because not all Jews are Eastern European in descent, but they can all trace back to Hebrew. So it was a way of being inclusive of all of them, without playing favorites.
That, and it was a political statement, too. Yiddish was seen as sort of a “slave language”, and Hebrew as the language of free Jews.
Aramaic (at least a language of that name, descended from the Aramaic of biblical days) is still spoken in Southern Iraq. The language never died out.
Yiddish is still spoken in the Hasidic community in Montreal and elsewhere, for example in the Mea Sha’arim district of Jerusalem. With my halting German I was able to communicate with someone there to get a stroller repaired. I think they refuse to speak the “sacred language” Hebrew.
The word “yiddish” is derived from “jüdisch deutsch” aka jewish german.
My understanding is that “yiddish” is simply that language’s word for “Jewish”. It is not unusual for someone who speaks both Yiddish and English, to ask – in English – “Do you speak Jewish?” and what they mean is not “Are you fluent in Jewish cultural and religious idioms?”, but what they mean is “Do you speak Yiddish?”
I may be mistaken, but Yiddish may be unique in this regard. Anglophones refer to the language spoken in Madrid as “Spanish”, not as “Espanol”, and to the language spoken in Paris as “French”, not as “Francais”, and to the language spoken in Jerusalem as “Hebrew”, not as “Ivrit”. In other words, we use an English word as the name of the language. But the vast majority of English-speakers refer to this language as the native speakers would, namely as “Yiddish”, not as “Jewish”. I suppose this is to avoid confusing the language with the religion.
Another interesting point, relevant to Qadgop’s post: The Yiddish word for “translation” is “teitch”, which I understand to be derived from “deutsch”. It seems the etymology to be that originally people might ask, “Vos is der Deutsch? – What is the German [for that]?”, and that evolved into “Vos is der teitch? - What is the translation [into whatever language we’re talking about]?”
To oversimplify: Yiddish is the same as German , but written with the Hebrew alphabet.
Hebrew and Yiddish are totally unrelated linguistically, but they are often used in a common culture
Hebrew uses the Hebrew alphabet, too. (duh!) But the two languages have nothing in common.
But virtually all Yiddish speakers are members of the Jewish religion. And Jewish religious rituals use a lot of Hebrew, (sort of like Catholics (used to) use Latin.)
Therefore, non-speakers get confused , because the two languages look similar on the printed page, and are often heard being spoken by the same person.A family may speak Yiddish around the dinner table, and then speak Hebrew to say the grace after meals.
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Yes, there is still a large Hasidic community in New York City which speaks Yiddish primarily.
And just to confuse the issue more, there is also Judaeo-Spanish, a/k/a “Ladino”
The references I found (through Wikipedia, sorry!) stating that Hebrew lasted as a non-liturgical language into 2nd century AD - here are a couple of them
A quote: "“Hebrew” in The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, edit. F.L. Cross, first edition (Oxford, 1958), 3rd edition (Oxford 1997). The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church which once said, in 1958 in its first edition, that Hebrew “ceased to be a spoken language around the fourth century BCE”, now says, in its 1997 (third) edition, that Hebrew “continued to be used as a spoken and written language in the New Testament period”.
and a link Readings in the Sociology of Jewish Languages - Google Books