Departments & Related Programs
Department of German
Studies
Institute for Jewish Studies
Emory Favorites
Yiddish Forward (newspaper)
National Yiddish
Book Center
The World
of Yiddish
The Yiddish Voice
Yiddish Music
Yiddish Radio
Project
YIVO Institute for
Jewish Research
Medem Library
Mendele
- Online Forum for Yiddish
Shtetl - Yiddish
Language and Culture
Derbay - The Anglo-Yiddish
Newsletter
Alexander
Harkavy's Yiddish Dictionary
Yiddish Google
Yungntruf (Youth for Yiddish)
Daf Yomi in Yiddish
Yiddish
Introduction
Yiddish belongs to the Germanic group of Indo-European languages. It is also referred to as Judeo-German and is spoken by about three million people in Israel, United States, and throughout Europe and Russia. Linguists believe that the Yiddish language arose around the eleventh century in Germany and Central Europe, where Ashkenazic Jews began writing Middle German with Hebrew letters. The language continued to develop through Judaic poetry, song, and daily use in through late Middle Ages and into the modern period, borrowing from German, Hebrew, and Slavic languages. It is estimated that the number of Jews speaking Yiddish before World War II and the Holocaust was close to 11 million.