5 Jewish Languages You Didn't Know Were a Thing
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- Опубліковано 31 тра 2024
- You might know about Yiddish, but have you come across other Jewish languages like Ladino, Aramaic, Judeo-Persian, Judeo-Arabic, and several more that are spoken across the Diaspora and Israel? It's true that all Jews connect through the same religion, culture, and history, but it doesn't mean they all speak the same "Jewish" languages (we're pretty sure there are at least 5 Jewish languages you've never even heard of).
Throughout history, Jewish communities have made their mark all over the world, and their languages reflect the cultures they've interacted with. Take Yiddish for example, which originated in medieval Germany, or Ladino, shaped by Sephardic Jews after they were expelled from Spain, or the variety of Judeo-Arabic dialects. These languages aren't just about communication-they offer a unique window into a diverse linguistic heritage that's been evolving for centuries.
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Chapters
00:00 - Introduction
00:38 - What is the German Jewish language
2:42 - What is Jewish Spanish language
4:09 - What is the ancient Middle Eastern language
4:50 - What are Judeo languages
6:00 - What is the language of Israel
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Image and footage credits:
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USHMM courtesy of Dr. Dov Kischinovsky
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ד"ר איציק לוי הרשות הלאומית לתרבות הלאדינו
Autoridad Nasionala del Ladino i su Kultura הרשות הלאומית לתרבות הלאדינו
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Dorotheum
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Also my country Thailand. The Thai language it come from Sanskrit, Hebrew,and Aramaic
My grandmother when she spoke English always said that she grew up speaking "Jewish" and she was from Ukraine.
My grandparents spoke “Jewish,” too.
It wasn’t until I was in my late teens that I found out that speaking Jewish was Yiddish.
You got it right, יא. Yiddiš is literally Jewiš. Yiddiš = יידיש. Jewiš = יידיש.
Because "Yiddish" literally means "Jewish" in Yiddish.
@@Kurtlane I know this now, of course.
I did not know this back then. ❤️
Yep, my Mom referred to Yiddish, her native tongue, as "Jewish", since to her, that's simply what it was. It was what her family spoke at home and in their community -- before they snuck out of the Tsar's empire -- and completely distinct from what they spoke with non-Jews.
I adore Hebrew. While I’m not fluent yet I love the feeling of oneness with my community when praying and the feeling of connecting with centuries of Jews before me.
What a lovely way of putting it.
What a fantastic posting. I spoke onlyHebrew s. while attending Hebrew school as a very young boy. Unfortunately, I have lost most of my knowledge. I😢 have always wanted to learn Yiddish which his. What my parents ad grandparents spoke and reffered to it as speaking Jewish. Unfortunately, I cannot find. A legitimate place that teaches Yiddish. The spokesman inn this intro is super😢b! I look fore to more in this wonderful series. Shalom
my mother is also button the orginal is de butoon
אני עצובה שאנחנו לא מבטאים את האותיות השמיות (ח, ע, ט, ק) כמו שצריך יותר.
Wow if you truely want a challenging read in yiddish try reading the talmud its a classic fictional comedy 😂
I am from Tangier. I remember we spoke at home Haketia which is a blend of Spanish, Hebrew and Moroccan Arabic. There are also a lot of songs written in Haketia.
sounds like a folk music album from your town would be just Epic!
@@Kotazo85 you speak yiditsh
Luu😊😊😊😊
😊😊L
Luu😊
😊😊L
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.lo
Lol loo like last Koopl
😅😅😅😅😅
I'm a Spaniard and, even though some of the consonant sounds are different, I find Ladino relatively easy to understand, especially compared to Portuguese, Italian or Romanian. Medieval Spanish seems to be its main ingredient. I can listen to Flory Jagoda singing "Ocho Kandelikas" and understand the lyrics quite well.
Me too
And the other way around. My mother speaks Ladino and can understand Spanish rather well.
Very true. I am Spanish too and I've read a lot of Medieval and Renaissance Spanish, and Ladino is perfectly clear to me, and it has great charm. Ocho Kandelikas would mean "Eight Little Candles".
"Muchas fiestas vo fazer, kon alegria i plazer" sounds a lot like a mix of spoken Brazilian Portuguese and Spanish to me
How cool! Thank you for sharing this!
I've sent UA-cam videos of Ladino to non-Jewish Hispanic friends of mine and they said they were able to easily understand it. It does sound like a sweet language; a bit more musical than Spanish, maybe a bit more towards Portuguese.
And thank you Eliezer Ben Yehuda.
Um Eliezer Ben yehuda has nothing to do with ladino
You are right. My mother speaks Ladino and is able to communicate very well with any Hispanic here in the States.
@@levyman566 Of course he doesn't.
The video is about Jewish languages, not just Ladino.
I was thanking him for his role in reviving Hebrew, the national language and the most important language of our people.
@@shevetlevi2821 ok just saying though people still knew Hebrew
@@levyman566 True. But glad it ended up being Hebrew as there's no Ashkenazi, Sephardic or Mizrachi bias. Hebrew unites us all.
I am from Holland and we have many Jiddisch words in our language. And I love that. Alas many of our jews are killed in the war, so the Jiddisch has not survived in our country.
These Jews were mostly Sephardic, righg?
@@saguntum-iberian-greekkons7014 - Non after Polish jewish immigration into Holland the Askenazi population outgrew the Sefardic one.
Aramaic is not jewish but taken from the Assyrians. Jews speak English in USA. Not a jewish language. Berber is Berber. Sorry. You, again, are stretching it again.
Dutch Jiddisch is the same as Jeckisch/Alsatian and French Jiddisch :) Western Ashkenazim ❤❤
@@saguntum-iberian-greekkons7014 I don't know the ratio of sephardic and ashkenazim Jews in the Netherlands before the war, but there were a lot more ashkenazim than sephardic Jews. I am from Amsterdam and Jewish and it is true that there were/are a lot of Jiddish words in the Dutch language and Amsterdam slang, but it is slowly disappearing in our daily conversations .
Good video but "Fiddler on the Roof" isn't an English translation of the Yiddish "פידלער אויפן דאך" ("Fiddler oifen dach"), as you imply. Rather, it's the opposite. The English name came first and was later translated into Yiddish and other languages. Of course, the English musical is based on Sholom Aleichem's "טביה דער מילכיקער" ("Tevye der milkhiker," Tevye the Milkman). which was written in Yiddish.
A very, very, very, very minor point, with very little to do with this lovely discussion of language that he's presenting.
Thankyou for your comment.
It is the only comment I have seen that I can relate to at all.
I am from New Zealand. I am descended from a Solomon who was sent to Australia on a convict ship in the 1800's. I wish I knew more about who the Solomon brothers and their grandparents and great grandparents.
I have a record of Fiddler on the roof. I take an interest in Jewish topics.
Thankyou again for your comment. All other comments here are completely foreign to me.
I only speak English and various words of Maori.
Actually, I love your comment.
I see that 19 people like your comment. I have never had that many people like any of my comments! Lol So yours is really very good.
There is Judeo-English now, spoken by Jews in Orthodox communities. It has a huge amount of Hebrew/Aramaic words in it, and Yiddish words. It is often called "Yinglish." Sometimes it is written in Hebrew letters to teach children who have have not yet learned ABC's.
Really? 😊
Yinglish is just Anglicized Yiddish. Basically: Bad Yiddish.
It is called yeshivish. Reoccurring terms found in study finds itself in the vernacular
Nu, ain’t Yinglish just English with a bunch of Jewish words that can be found in an ENGLISH dictionary?
@Rick Jones - Where ?
When the Emperor Nicholas the II was killed, the Russian Empire exploded with pogroms. Half of my ancestors fled and ended up in Bronx and NYC, and the other half (including my great-grandmother) moved and hid the fact that they're Jewish. She and my great-grandfather changed their names, baptized and started speaking Russian even at home, just to save their children from prosecution. Eventually, our Jewish ancestry faded into oblivion.
3 generations later, I'm born. And from my pre-teenage years I used to find Jewish history, languages and faith fascinating. I researched it, I learned the customs (albeit not directly) etc. I used to think that it's just my hyperfixation and nothing more. Imagine my surprise when I found out that my family actually *used* to be Jewish. I guess my intense interest and eventual coversion into Judaism were meant to be.
My family didn't speak Yiddish. Yeah, my Mom still calls our cats "shlimazels", and we say "mazel tov" instead of "pozdravlyayu', but that's basically it. So I took it upon myself to learn Yiddish. Even if it's not the exact same dialect my ancestors spoke, even if it's clanky and lacking when I speak it - it's still a rich and beautiful language, and as a linguist and an Ashkenazi, I refuse to see the language die.
Seems you have a 'Jewish soul'
Thankfully because others, like yourself, are (re)discovering the beauty of Yiddish, it will not die.
Where do you live currently, in Russia?
You are blessed
Ladino differs from modern Spanish, in the conjugation of second person (you) verbs. The Spanish that Cervantes wrote in is more like Ladino, than modern Spanish, as they use both the formal and informal forms for 2nd person. Modern Spanish has the informal form, but just uses the 3rd person with usted or ustedes for the formal form.
Ladino is basically old castilian, who didn't evolve like the spanish from Spain did. That's why it sounds softer and more alike portuguese or galegan.
de Cervantes had Jewish Ancestry.
And how about the American addition to Latino? ABETCHAR? It is the word for gambling, and it comes from American Sephardim early 1920, from “I bet cha”.
@@trudigoodman4825 1st, just only a theory, not a real fact, probably false, that you read in a random jewish website that wants to claim everything as jewish. 2nd, who cares? Are you going to bash him or pray him for having a whatever small % of jewish blood? Like if that matter. At the end what I thought is that you are jewish if you follow judaism as a religion.
Not only that, he was baptised and it is known where. And his father aswell, and his grandfather aswell, both working at some point of their lifes in the Spanish Inquisition. And his grandmother ans her father arewell known too, and so on. If there was something jewish in him, it's non important whatsoever.
Giving importance to that is showing lack of brains.
The Iraqi Christians that speak Aramaic are actually Assyrian or Chaldean. The Iraqi government started calling us "Iraqi Christians" in order to deny our identity and claim to our ancestral land. My family is from Barwar in northern Iraq and up until Saddam Hussain came into power there were several Jewish villages there and they all spoke Assyrian. Assyrian is still very similar to Hebrew and uses the same alphabet. Assyrians also use ancient Hebrew Names, for example my grandparents were Shmuel and Leia Benyamin.
That script used today to write Hebrew is actually the imperial Aramaic script, among others to write Aramaic like estrangela. The names are also local Assyrian and the Jews who lived in the region naturally adopted them. Names ending with El are local names. Michael, Daniel, Samuel, Emmanuel, etc. In reference to the supreme God El. As in Babel. The gate of God.
Your ancestors could also have been Christians of Jewish ethnicity.
Judaism is a religion. Not an ethnicity. The name Hebrew itself doesn't refer to an ethnicity but to mixed groups of people who crossed to this land. That's the meaning of Hebrew in Semitic languages. To cross.
@@NicoleCzarnecki I considered that but a DNA test proved I am 90% Assyrian.
@@anytajp7419 , what is the other 10%?
*_Thank you for this excellent video about some of our other languages..._*
I have grandparents and great grandparents who immigrated to America. Paternal side came from Germany. Maternal side came from Russian Empire. They all brought their own languages, customs, and traditions with them. Several of my great grandparents never learned English as a language. My grandparents had to translate for them.
My paternal grandmother spoke English, German, and Yiddish. She was a private nurse and all her clients were Jewish. My grandparents lived in a Jewish neighborhood too. Their next door neighbors were Jewish. I can still remember some of the traditional foods they brought to America with them.
*_I subscribed to channel and look forward to learning more..._*
שלום ותודה אח יקר!
I was born in Libya and we spoke Italian and a judeo arabic dialect that have very unic words that Arabic don't have. When I have reserched about the origen of them I have found that they are from Spanish origen.
Fore exemple:
Pacadillo- a dishe made frome minced meat came frome the spanish word Pacadio.
The word Labis- pencil came frome the word Lappis.
Ect ect.
Pacadio doesn't exist, it comes from de word picadillo. Picadillo comes from picado, which means, shredded.
The lappis doesn't exist either, it's lápiz, that comes from the latin word labis, which means stone.
@@juangarcia-vu9yg Actually, in Libyan Arabic, Labis means a pencil ✏️.
@@eelmohamed It is like Biskit in English which means one thing in America and something else in British English.
Lapis (latin: stone) used to mean a pencil in Italian as well. Disused by the 1960's I believe
Thank you so much for this informative video. I am an Ashkenazi from Montreal who went to Jewish school and learned Hebrew and Yiddish and I was not aware of all these new/old Jewish languages.
Vos machst du, landsman! I am also Ashkenazi Jewish originally from Côte St. Luc, living in Toronto for many years now. My parents were fluent in Yiddish
@@factenter6787 Ich bin gut! I also lived in CSL etc...and Toronto but moved back home after 12 years (it's just not the same). My parents were both born in Mtl. but my Mother's parents spoke Yiddish as their first language. My Dad's parents were Hungarian and spoke English. P.S. I'm a landsfrau...lol Have a guten Shabbos!
my grandfather was from turkey and spoke Aramaic and Ladino And Hebrew, from Him i learned how these Languages Sound
My own family is Persian Jewish, but from a region where they spoke Aramaic. So, Aramaic and Hebrew were their only languages.
And yes, ancient Hebrew and modern Hebrew are close enough to easily understand both, if you speak one 😊
Where did your family live exactly? Mine was from Keshan and Esfahan, I think. I wonder if they spoke Judeo Farsi, or just Farsi? Nobody told me, I only found out we were Jewish almost by accident.
@@SYA357 there's TONS of Persian Jews from Kashan and Esfahan. Very common in the Jewish community 😊
My family was more of an exception, from Sanandaj, near Kurdistan.
True, but if you speak modern Hebrew you probably have no idea how to read antient Hebrew with proper vowels or "nikud". You'll get the ideas though.
@@danieljmarvin Ironically, the vowels have been in contention for so long that you see fights about them in the Greek gospels between Jesus and the Pharisees--where you won't even "get it" (what's going on) without some familiarity with the schools of Rabbinic thought back then (such as over when divorce is permissible), today which we might say "Jesus was contending for the position we know today as identified with Shammai, Judaism eventually, largely, took the side of Hillel, while the scriptures referred to by the former in saying "Moses permitted..." are used by him in a kind of Irony, as their and context indicates "immorality", so Jesus was identifying his opponents position as an intentional obvious, willful, intentional misconstruing of the vowels!!!!!!
Hence the words "... because of the hardness of your hearts..."
By the time of Massoretes adding vowel marks to their copies of the Torah it was a grave necessity: Hebrew was basically dead and soon (they knew) to be forgotten, and there's uncertainty then (centuries after that episode I refer to captured on the gospels) as to what is and isn't correct.
Just a dilettantes speculatiom but: it seems Abjads are actually awful to maintain a memory because they're in part really a reminder of material rather than a record, which is different from what is not meant by an "alphabet" which is used to record entire phonemes rather than forms that can suggest possible phonemes in order to aid recalling possible options and then wittling down to a few or one based on context.
The Hebrew Scriptures (rather notoriously given the... implications for the idea of an "Oral" Torah) actually record that at one point all Israel had FORGOTTEN the law until the book of the law was found and read aloud to the people... which serves perhaps as a counterpoint in some ways to my idea about Abjads OR the language was still well enough understood and writing/reading still strongly possessed in the language... from which one might infer that much of the culture was transmitted orally not through reading (makes sense given the cost of books), and which also seems to be verified by the evidence of teaching the law to youth via reciting-recalling (each new piece continually retried throughout the day).
If you have a culture that's "high" context and transmitted through memorization though, you don't need writing that records phonemic units, just that elicits the approximate words and the rest flows to mind. Whereas if you have a low contact culture, your writing system better tend toward transmission via the text over retrieval of what was transmitted via being taught by people.
@@danieljmarvin I mean, Hebrew is ONE language. We can understand both and read both
The singer Yasmin Levy sings in Ladino. Her song "Una Noche Mas" is quite beautiful.
We love Yasmin. I especially love her duets with concha Buika. You will not believe this combination, but Yasmin sings with many people I really like when I Noche Mas, when she sings it with a Greek singer, and he sings it in Greek, and she sings it in Ladino. It’s an old one, because she is pregnant in this video.
There's another that you don't know! Called Djuri, used for centuries between buhars (Caucasus) Azerbaijani, Georgiani, Tajikistani Jews
I think, Djuhuri is spoken mostly by Mountain Jews, who are originally from Azerbaijan. Georgian Jews speak Kivruli, which is a dialect of Georgian. Not sure about Buhari and Tajik Jews, though.
In Instagram i knew an Armenian Jew. Very underrated
@Levi Sverdlov
That is the point that there are more Jewish languages 👍
@@yurysverdlov2935 There is also Karaim in Lithuania.
Just correction,Juhuri was mentioned in the video(He called it in the video Judeo Tat),Tat are Shia Muslim Iranian subgourp(who are not Persians but Iranians)who live in border region between Iran and Azerbaijan and Jews in Caucasus speak similar dialect.Juhuri spoken in mainly in East/Central Caucasus(NOT Georgia or Armenia),this is Azerbaijan,Dagestan,Chechenya and Kabardino Balkaria(Nalchik),maybe in modern times there are more places but these are the traditional regions of Jews.
Its important to preserve the languages .They are part of rich jewish culture
Excellent 8-minute tutorial. I grew up Jewish and didn’t know a lot of what was discussed.
I don't speak Ladino, but I do remember Chad Gadya in Ladino.
It was one of my favorites.
Me too
Un cabrito
Only one mistake. Ladino didn't "end up sounding different". Ladino sounds like old spanish. Castillan pronunciation evolved (for instance in "x" sound), but not Ladino's.
You're somewhat right in that Ladino maintains phonetic distinctions found in old Spanish that modern spanish has mostly lost, but Ladino (as all languages do) has also evolved over time.
Ladino has words from other language as well. For example, ladino as spoken by Turkish Jews, will use words in Turkish, but also...French. /song: Anderlina Tzarfati ya la esta sufriendo/ la gisbe que ya la hace/ ya la está sintiendo/ le está parezendo que non se va a saber/ se quitó de la muger/ ___ en su alma El guerco le lleve el alma... *la gisbe le hace. Gisbe is the small pot where you roast Turkish coffee. Hacerle la gisbe, is to warm him up, or excite him. Another word I can think of is "acharvar" "ajarvar" to hit someone. "Si lo vas a ajarvar, ajarvame a mi primero", if your going to hit him, hit me first." / ven Hermoza ven con mi, que mi padre es cugundi (textile worker), te va a darte un brocal de crepe de Shin. (China in French, Chine, pronounced Shin.) Little things like that.
My grandma is fluent in cuhuri, which is also a Jewish language
Thank you! I am part Ashkenaz, Sephard and probably Mizrahi. I grew up around people speaking many languages including Yiddish. It was really my first language, with alot of English thrown into to it. Yinglish, really. I am musician, singer, actor and writer. I sing in a variety of languages, including Yiddish and Ladino. You gave a very good explanation of Yiddish. Most people try and call it Germanic. It isn't. It has German elements depending on where and how you learned it, but there are all kinds of languages in Yiddish. It is very polyglot. Some people don't realized that Yiddish is a real language with grammatical structures, tenses, verbs and forms. So is Ladino. So are the other Jewish Languages. I am a member of the National Yiddish Book Center. There is something like 5 main dialects of Yiddish, and maybe as many as 10-12 sub-dialects of Yiddish. I'll bet the other Jewish languages have something like this going on too. Jews ended up everywhere. I laugh when people in the South say Coniptshon Fit. It's the department of redundancies department. What they are saying is Fit Fit. Lots of Southerners say this without even knowing that Coniptshon is from Hebrew. And that Yiddish speakers use it alot.
And Ladino is just archaic Spanish. In studying for a Spanish minor it's just a centuries old dialect of Spanish, easily and interchangeably identifiable with old forms of Spanish.
What is coniptshon? I'm a native Hebrew speaker and never heard this word.
"...Yiddish is a real language with grammatical structures, tenses, verbs and forms." As opposed to what? An unreal language? All languages, including pidgins and creoles, have grammatical structures, tenses, verbs and forms. If they didn't, people wouldn't understand one another, and thus such languages would quickly cease to exist.
@@inbarpaz8899 it means "fit" which is a mild form of seizure.
Are you a CEO of some firm?
My dads family was from Romania, and my maternal grandmother was from Russia. They always had arguments, (in Yiddish) about which one of them spoke the real Yiddish.
There was a Jewish community in Provence with a fusion language called "Shuadit." The community flourished for a time and contributed to Jewish scholarship. A friend of mine, while studying for the rabbinate, learned to read Jewish exegesis in Shuadit.
Which languages is it fused of?
@@2degucitas The name looks like "Jew-speak" in French. However, Provence was not a part of France until after the French Revolution. The south of France was a part of a linguistic continuum of post-Latin Romance languages, of which Catalan is the most prominent survivor.
@@jonlenihan4798 thank you
@@jonlenihan4798 A form of Provencal maybe?
@@infinitelink "Languedoc" and "Occitanie" refer to the language once spoken in Mediterranean France. "Oc" meant "Yes," rather than the standard French "Oui."
During the nineteenth century, variant French dialects were suppressed in order to create a unitary national linguistic community.
Just found your channel. Thank you so much for this video. I now want to know more about the Jewish people.
I love learning about things I had no idea about. Thanks!
There is also Judeo-Georgian, we call it kivruli, (ყივრული) 🇬🇪🇮🇱.
As Georgian myself, who's native language is Georgian, is really hard to understand, Judeo-Georgian, first time when i hear it, i had feelings that was familiar but was hard to understand meaning of sentences ❤😊
This was so wonderful! Thank you so much for sharing. My mother is Ethiopian Jewish.
A wonderfully researched based video. Kudos!
Loved this video! Thank you for sharing some of the lesser-known languages; it’s especially important given how many were likely lost due to the Holocaust. I love the way that the language persevered and survived, the same way that the Jewish people have. 💚
My maternal bubby and sisters spoke Yiddish, loved hearing them speak 😊
When I was a kid, my grandmother said I sounded like I was speaking Yiddish (I’m a native English speaker). At the time, I thought she made up the word. Didn’t realize it was a real thing until my teens 😅🤨🤦🏽♀️
My mother was from Ukraine too. Now I am studying Yiddish. O love it.
A wonderful 8 minute presentation .. thank you
I'd really like to give attention to Italkim: the language that was spoken by italian jews, the oldest jew community of Europe. Few people know about it...
I speak German as a second language and I really enjoy hearing Yiddish. I can understand most of it, which I find very fun and interesting.
Very informative. Thanks for sharing!
This was very educational, thank you. It's easy to take much for granted when immersed in it.
My maternal grandfather, born in Ioannina, Greece spoke Yevanic - or Judeo-Greek. He was a Romaniote Jew and NOT Sephardic as most Greek Jews are descended from Spanish or Portuguese Jews who settled there after 1492. The Romaniote Jews were the original and indigenous Jews of mainly the province of Epirus in Greece, around the Third Century BCE. It could be argued this was the first permanent settlement was by Jews in Europe.
They had a sinagogue in the old city of Jerusalem. Afterwards in the new city. We called them Yanina
It would had been odd if Yiddish became the national language of Israel. Adding the narrative and lie that “Jews comes from Europe”
Thx God Hebrew became the national one officialy
Very informative. Very well put together. Fantastic and exciting presentation. Great balance of direct speaking and use of clips.
Very much appreciate the video. I always enjoy learning about other languages. Thanks!
Interesting video. I'm 90% Chinese and 10% Dutch (from my maternal grandmother line). 2 years ago, I found out that my grandma is actually a Dutch Ashkenazi after some personal documents/records were found in her old hometown in Rotterdam. I still can't believe it even until now.
My mom, dad, and I live in Indonesia. We never talked about this because u know...anything related to "Jewish" mostly receives a bad perception by the majority of people here. (We're planning to move out tbh)
Well, from this video, Im getting more interested in the history of Jewish diaspora community. I also particularly attracted to Yiddish (I and my mom have already learnt pretty basic phrases since like 6 months ago).
If your maternal grandma is jewish, so are you! Bless you
Juhuru and Bukhori, which you called "Judeo-Tat" and "Judeo-Tajik", are still very much alive and actively spoken, with contemporary literature and media (for example, the newspaper Vatan, which is published in Dagestan to this day).
Very interesting presentation. Thank you 🌷
Thanks for a well spoken, informative video
I had no idea there were so many Jewish languages 5, amazing. I thought there were two. Very interesting and well done, Thank you!
Fun fact: the most secret jewish language is the italki, italian mixed with hebrew. Only 200-350 people know this language.
Very fascinating and educational. Thank you. I can’t imagine English having such drastic variations.
Very informative and well-presented. Excellent announcer.
Daría cualquier cosa por volver a escuchar a mis padres hablar en Idish.
Gracias por tu hermoso vídeo 🙌 Shalom 💙🇮🇱💙
A lot of modern languages were "constructed" by educated men from the elite who decided that they needed a national language, and that it had to take the place of whatever learned or classical language that they themselves had studied in as well as that of whatever empire they had previously belonged to.
That's how they imported all these words into their dictionaries that ordinary people did not use before, and also complex grammatical constructions from whatever classical language they used.
Before that learning to read and write often went hand-in-hand with learning a scholarly language used by administrators.
Another thing the new nation states that grew up in the 19th and 20th centuries sometimes did was to deliberately separate themselves from their neighbours, or from similar people with a different religion.
Among illiterate South Slavs, Catholic, Orthodox and Muslim might have had some different words for things relating to religion, but their schools taught them to use different alphabets (Latin, Cyrillic or Arabic) for Croatian, Serbian and Bosnian, and that helped foment the hatred that led to genocide.
In British India, Hindustani was a lingua franca in the North, but the new states of India and Pakistan encourage the switch to words of Arabic or Sanskrit origin in Urdu and Hindi which use completely different alphabets nowadays, whereas at street level and in Bollywood films they are almost the same.
Something like that has happened to "Jewish" in modern Israel.
I love this channel. I’m learning so, so much!
My Bubbee ( whom imigrated from Russia, spoke much Yiddish ( G-d Rest Her Soul) as I spent many weekends with her and Zade, ( whom immigrated from Poland ) It was a wonderful times in my life.I spoke Yiddish around them, and at home,. I miss them very much and I still use Bubbee's recipe to make our Family Brisket at home for dinner and for our Families for Speak Observances and gatgerfings ✡ Thank you for s sharing this with us , today . My children know when I speak Yiddish they are either in trouble o.o I am Kevilling. They absolutely know Yiddish, as we all ( the grown ups ) use. It daily in our conversations 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟✡🇬🇧
Growing up I thought 'szmata' was a Polish word and I thought 'kvetch' was an anglicized corruption of 'kwieczyć' which I just assumed was Polish for 'complain'.
And yes, in NYC you'll see people who present as African-American and East Asian kvetching about all the schvitzing they're doing.
Szmata doesn't ring a bell (so I guess it probably has slavic/polish origin), but Kvetch sounds the same as the German verb "quetschen" (in Dutch "kwetsen") which means "to squeeze" (a lemon) or like the noun "Quetschung" which means a bruise or pinch (like, god forbid, of body parts in an accident).
@@Long-Ball-Larry correct & schvitzing is of course schwitzen in german & sweat in english
ב''ה, the history of the diaspora as Yiddish developed will take you through, well, Prussia (and further into Slavic regions perhaps).
Scholars, at least, were settled and corresponding throughout Poland, Belarus, Ukraine and so on in that era. (For the troubled Jewish definition of throughout.)
Ladino is still very understandable to a Spanish speaker, compared to 15th century English and modern English.
That was very interesting! Thanks!
I love this content, thanks for sharing...
And you’re also forgetting places like Romania and what was the other place? Yeah they speak also Latino they’re Eastern European but they also speak Latino. I’m sorry I don’t remember countries very well at the moment my brain is not working properly, but when I came to this country I kind of got a shock when one of the ladies I work with who came from Romania was speaking and Latino and I understood every word she said because I had learned it. It was one of my many mother tongues.
I’m using voice to text in this so when you see the word Latino it should read LADINO the only reason that word is in capitals is because I had to spell it out one letter at a time and that’s how it put it. Please understand I am handicap my hands don’t work very well and I’m using voice to text, which is a big problem.
Bulgaria!
There are a bunch of Jewish Morgans from Scotland, by any chance any relation?
I was born in Brazil but,my parents came from Portugal. Our surname is Mendes. I'm now Mendes Costa. Obviously from marriage. I found that Mendes and Costa are names that are of Jewish origin. That's because the Jews that came to Portugal, think around the Medieval period were forced to change their names and religion to Christianity. They chose names that represented nature. Like,Costa which means coast and Ribeiro which means a river bank or a small stream. You were also talking about the word pencil. In the Portuguese language we say "lapis"
Really interesting. Thank-you.
Interesting video and so many interesting comments!
Queens College, a division of CUNY (City University of New York), began offering degree programs in Yiddish circa 1970. I believe that they were the first in the country.
I googled "Yiddish university programs" and found that today there are at least fifty such programs, world wide.
I had heard of the Yiddish programs at Harvard University and at Jagiellonian University in Krakow. I was surprised by some of the other locations: U of Minnesota, Ohio State, UCLA, Idaho, Tokyo, London, Vienna.
It was not Yiddish, but Jewish studies. It offered courses in Yiddish but not enough credits to graduate with a language major in Yiddish because it only went up to a certain up to credits. I was graduated QC in 1979. I took Yiddish 1 in 1977 with Pessl Semel.
@@forestrego4655 I stand corrected.
The Workmen's Circle (now: the Worker's Circle) was a Yiddishist socialist organization, with Yiddish schule scattered around the country. My cousin attended his after-public school neighborhood "elementar" for four years. Then he went on to the "mittel schule," located on East 14th Street, a few doors east of Union Square.
The father of Seth Rogen was a Workmen's Circle employee on the West Coast.
The Workmen's Circle is still around and still socialist. I ran into some of their representatives at a Bernie Sanders event in Chicago in 2017. I didn't ask about the Yiddish schule.
I am proud to be a Greek my language has involved but not change for the last 3000 years!
Heyy as a jew I learn Greek
This is a good video thank you!
What a great video! Hugs from the Netherlands
Nitpick: 1:41 Golda Meir’s name was hebraicized from her married name, “Meyerson”.
Very interesting. Thanks. It is important to mention that in it's first years, Israel actually banned any Jewish language other than Hebrew. The nation's leaders (especially Ben Gurion) realized that without one language, they cannot build a nation. This was destructive for Yiddish and Ladino, but it gave a great contribution to the wonder of Hebrew revival
It also gave some Israelis that I met the lousy superior attitude of telling me that because I spoke and sang in Yiddish and Ladino that I was a bad Jew, because I didn't speak Modern Hebrew.That I had an Ashkenaz way of speaking and reading Hebrew. I hated that kind of racist, lousy attitude. That superior thinking. I was told literally, that Yiddish was the language of oppression by Israeli Jews. My response was that Yiddish is the language of love. So is Ladino.
I truly don't know what to answer, for your anti Israeli/anti Zionist approach is obvious. However, all I can say is that Hebrew revival is the greatest achievement of Zionism. Today Hebrew in not only the language of the Jews who live in Israel, but also the language of many Arabs and many other non Jews
Very nice history lesson.
Jews were reusing Hebrew as an everyday language as far back as the Safed circle in the middle seventeenth century.
Hebrew to an extent was used intercommunally without ever ceasing in written form because Jews from Spain couldn't speak to Jews from Iran in their everyday tongues.
There’s modern Israel Hebrew which is different from ancient Hebrew
There are several forms of Yiddish one version is Lithuanian and the other one is Hungarian Ukrainian for lack of a better term. There was a western German version called Yakakak I think that’s about disappeared
Ladino from Spain which is functionally like modern Spanish
Oh there’s a Judeo Italian version
There are also Baltic Jewish languages.
Thank you for your teaching
Excellent overview
A pity Scots-Yiddish never amounted to anything more than a brief hybrid vernacular.
I once met a fellow whose first language was Yiddish. He said that it was so similar to Medieval German, that he could read easily read the original William Tell in its old language.
Whoa, I was un-aware of this. Thank you!
Such an interesting report.
Ladino is my 3rd language... Been studying for around 6 years. Been working on Portuguese for about a year... English, Spanish, ladino, Portuguese, and interestingly enough I found out I understand French Creole. Let's just say never studied it, nothing, had a full conversation with someone who speaks French creole.
חג פסח שמח
Fascinating. Thank you.
I thoroughly enjoyed this video. It was informative and pointed out things I always think a good Jew or linguist or Israeli hebrew speaker automatically know. Thank you!
This might also interest you about Ladino in Israel. The version of Ladino is more of a he Blish that means it’s less Latino real Latino original Latino and more what we would call a modern take on the language, which is far more Hebrew, and far less of the original language, whether that Spanish, Arabic, etc., I know this because, like I said, I know the different dialects of this particular language to when your father is military chaplain working for the United States and you get stationed at a lot of different places you end up learning a great many things, languages of one of those things.
Everywhere you see the word Latino replace the tea with a D unfortunately voice to text doesn’t always put words down the way I’m saying them and that’s one of the common examples of what I’m talking about .
I am a mountain 🏔 Jew , I’ve been learning about my heritage since last year.. Before then I wasn’t as interested, but it took some ppl who questioned themselves about the possibility of knowing who they are. That actually got me inspired to learn more about myself . I always knew that I’m a mountain Jew and 100% Jewish on both sides. I married a Ukrainian Jewish girl on mothers side and love her with all my heart and soul. The reality for me is ppl are ppl, does not matter to me weather they race, religion or identity. As long as u a good person , DONT HAVE TO BE A RIGHTEOUS ONE 😅 just normal good that’s all that counts . Because the nature of mankind is what he is and how he is. In conclusion there are days where I love ❤️ G⭕️D and there are days that I’m pissed if at G⭕️D that’s is just my nature. שלום 🕊
hatzlacha - don't forget you're jewish , keep being jewish. maybe someday RIGHTEOUS ONE ! SHALOM (me too)
You are great speaker at such a speed yet very eloquent I enjoy your unpacked show just becouse of you thank you
I used to hear old folks refer to Yiddish as "Joosh." Ladino is a liturgical language. That of the Sefardi masses is Djudeoespanyol or Judeo-Spanish.
My grandmother and nana use various Yiddish phrases quite often, I often use them as well, but I would like to learn Yiddish.
I’m married to a Moroccan and have been struggling with Darijah (Moroccan Arabic) for years. I was surprised to hear Darajah spoken on an Israeli film a few years ago, and to learn there is a Darijah school in Israel where Moroccan Israelis can learn their families language. I also met a Moroccan Israeli on a college course I was doing years ago and we became good friends due to our Moroccan connections. When I travelled to Jerusalem to pray at the AlAqsa mosque( I’m Muslim) she was a diamond and helped me no end. In Essaouira Morocco your Synagogue and cemetary is still there being cared for by faithful Moroccans, I even saw a store holder studying Hebrew anticipating a Moroccan Jewish return. We love our Moroccan Jewish neighbours, my wife was brought up in the Mellah (Jewish quarter) of Rabat. Come home we miss you.
Great job!
Can you please do a video about the Golan heights, Hi from the UK 🇬🇧💙🇮🇱
Yeah! I second that!
Taken and not to be given back.
I third that
I also want to learn about ye Golan Heights. 🇷🇺 🇯🇴 🇸🇾
@@louisdewit4429 Israel has been controlling the Heights since 67 (55yrs). It will remain part of Israel, Trump or no Trump.
I’m other people like me who pick many of these languages of his children and because I suffered blows to my head in recent years, I’m lucky and that I can even speak in English. I lose words a lot it’s no longer write. My hands are crippled from like I said this accident the fact that I’m still here is considered a miracle, but I have no problem interpreting for other people even people who speak those languages sometimes are shocked that I understand them it’s because I’ve learned a great many other languages so I can pick up the gist of what’s being said none of all of them are some that I don’t know, and I probably won’t know, and I won’t comprehend because I haven’t heard them but if I hear them enough and I see what’s being done in reference. I have no problem picking things up and example of what I’m talking about is the fact that I’m elation couple were talking to friends on the telephone, and my brain interpreted it as a form of Spanish, it wasn’t, but I understood what they were saying. In fact, I said you just I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, I know it’s not Spanish but I don’t know what language you’re speaking but this is what you said the gentleman and question his wife turned around and said you know Malay and I said what is the language and he said we’re from Malaysia do you understand her language and I said you know you know a language I said well my brain picks it up as a pattern. Inuit wasn’t Spanish, but it was close enough that I could decipher what you were saying, I thought it was an interesting that they couldn’t believe that somebody had never heard their language spoken understood what they were saying. My brain works in patterns and it’s season patterns if she has language as vocal patterns that’s why I’ve always been interested in language, how it’s spoken how it sounds and it’s very interesting. A lot of languages sound a lot like their fortifications, I mean my brain sees them a lot is the way there fortifications used to be with the exception of antique Spanish. I called Antica there’s no other way of putting it. Nobody speaks that Spanish anymore although you can find pieces of it in certain languages from Latin America whatever the Spanish went pretty much, the same thing with other languages, wherever there was an influence of certain countries, you will find the same sort of language patterns. And no biblical Hebrew is not the same as modern Hebrew at all. I mean they have a lot in common and if you know modern Hebrew, you can pretty much decipher biblical Hebrew, but there is a lot of things you will miss, unless you know both things get lost in translation a lot but I think you for this video because it’s nice to know there’s still some places that are keeping the various forms and I will always call them all Yiddish because the word Harish means Jewish for once of a practical description that’s pretty much what they are OK Cushite language really isn’t Jewish, but it shows so much in common with how and why we developed our own forms of our language during occupations of various and sundry outsiders, and it explains why we have very good terms with them to apparently nobody could speak their language except other Cushites, but they could speak to languages of everyone they did business with which was pretty much most of the countries in the world that did battle with each other. If you wanted to weapon, you went to them so they were doing business as far field as I leave besides Israel near Syria they did some deals with Egypt. Not many didn’t like the Gyptian’s very much Libya and Persia and apparently China where among those that they did trade with Israel also did trade with many of those countries as well so it’s interesting how much those things share in common.
Brilliant video.
Very informative.
My moms parents were Sephardic Jews and spoke Spanish , Ladino , Italian , french and Turkish . My mom once helped a college masters language student Studying Ladino . My mom worked as a Spanish/ Italian/ french translator for the OSS in WW2
Correction! Modern Hebrew is NOT loshon hakodesh. Far from it. True, Modern Hebrew is built on loshon hakodesh, but they are NOT the same thing AT ALL. I read, write and speak both. Anyone else who does will tell you the same. So really, the language count is SIX! Thanks for this video!
That is true. It is no the same langauge.
The words are the same. Only the grammar is different. The biblibal grammar is more complex. If you understand the biblical hebrew, you understand the modern hebrew
This is absolutely fascinating.
TODAH FOR SHARING …🤗💚💚💚
German is my first language but honestly it is easier for me to understand Ladino in comparison with yiddish😮 I am German and studied Spanish and Latinamerican Literature. I read the emblematic Don Quijote de la Mancha (1604) in the original version (with comments- of course). I do speak and read fluently Catalan, a language older than Standard Spanish. Yiddish is a language with so much distance to German. Of course I get the meaning of single words and even concepts. But it is very hard for me to catch the meaning of a text or communication in Yiddish. The distance between castillian and ladino is so much shorter. Much easier from r me to get the meaning.
I‘m German and I understand most in the Yiddish example. But I know how to read medieval German, maybe that’s why.
@@BlueberryDragon13 oh yeas german and Jews in my opinion are one and the same
@@mustsphamatto3601 Do you?
I am German and I am learning Yiddish and i find it quite similar to German. I also like a lot the the alphabet which is close to Hebrew..