We Forget How Hard It Is To Really Learn Yiddish
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- Опубліковано 1 вер 2014
- Paul (Hershl) Glasser - Forverts columnist and former Dean of the Max Weinreich Center at YIVO - discusses how hard it is for students of Yiddish to truly master the language, especially if they don't live in a Yiddish-speaking community.
To learn more about the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project, visit:
www.yiddishbookcenter.org/tell...
Hersh Glasser is an amazing Yiddish speaker despite not sounding like a native speaker. I understand 90-95% of what he is saying ignoring the more sophisticated words which was good enough for me when I was a kid listening to the Yiddish conversations of my elders. The problem is I never bothered to go past the basic ideas and words which has left me a limited Yiddish speaker sadly. Prof.Glasser has given me quite amount of work in just this conversation to improve my vocabulary.
@leonard oken On what basis do you claim that Glasser doesn't sound like a native speaker? My grandparents with whom I had extensive contact were from Russia and were native speakers, so my ear doesn't detect anything wrong with his accent. Moreover, when I was in a beginning conversation course taught by Miriam Hoffman, she said that I sounded like I had just gotten off the boat after I delivered the required self-description in Yiddish so I think I have an ear for native speakers of Russian Yiddish.
Yiddish is one of the major languages of Europe! It should be taught in schools!
Für mich ist schön zu sehen, wie ein Teil der europäischen Kultur weiterlebt und gleichzeitig ein Stück gemeinsamer Sprachkultur neu ersteht.
Why doesn't UA-cam let me invoke translate?
I agree. I'm originally from China and I have Jewish roots from my mother's side. I used to attend Jewish weekend school some 15yrs ago. I remember I had to speak English with other Jewish kids since they were all Hasidim and they didn't want to speak Hebrew with me. And I didn't speak Yiddish. I wanted to learn some Yiddish at that time but one of my friends from the class said it was not worth it given that speaking it would automatically separate myself from the world.
Fredrik Chang iu
Hersch is a very intelligent man and I agree 100%. It´s a shame that Yiddish is spoken by so few people anymore. Hersch speaks Yiddish very, very good and could or should become a Yiddish teacher. Thank you very much for this interview.
Especially hard if your native language is so much different in grammar like English. Forgetting Jiddisch means losing identity. Watch grandparent´s faces changing language. You must do something to preserve it.
Very insightful answer.
As the son of a Dutch Jew I have always been familiar with Yiddish expressions, which I still love to use myself. But Western Yiddish differs a lot from YIVO Yiddish, if only because it is more sparse and has almost no Slavic words. If I walk on the street in Belgian Antwerp where so many Hasidim live, I cannot understand a word they're saying. a ris in harzn.
Yes, one of the videos here touches on that. The man married into a family from France iirc, and as he said their Yiddish was very different from what he knew.
This is my despair when it comes to Yiddish. I'm excited and I want to try, I just don't know how I could without a community of other Jews who want to do a family pact and all learn together or something
seems to me you can learn yiddish through german. of course learning german isn't always the easiest. but the opportunity is there now. certainly more material is availiable than there was 20 years ago. maybe in 20 years there will be more material availiable in yiddish. anyway that's how I learend yiddish. to the extent that i do.
I hope this isn’t bothersome, but may you mention some Yiddish resources?
@@jomana1109 There are many, but here are a few to get you started! shop.yiddishbookcenter.org/collections/yiddish-textbooks
@@YiddishBookCenter Thanks a lot :)
I was at a talk at the U of Calgary years ago given by a non-Jewish researcher who learned Yiddish just so that he could read Jewish publications from the 40s that promoted Jewish immigration to the Jewish autonomous region in the USSR.
I‘m originally from Vienna/Austria. I watched a few „learn Yiddish“ Vids right now and i‘m really surprised how much of what i heard so far is not one Millimeter different to good ol‘ Viennese slang! Partly i can understand whole sentences, the (spoken) words are 100% (Wiener) German, also the grammar is simply German. 😄
the pronounciation and many details are different, of course... in vienna dialect you have very many yiddish loanwords (among them payes), but if you start reading literature you need a dictionary; one can listen also to yiddish audiobooks on yiddishbookcenter.org (to get an impression)...
concerning the grammar, this depends on what we see as German grammar, German is diachronically and synchronically different or diverse in grammar, Old High German and Standard German are grammatically different and thus Bavarian, Alemannic and Standard German have also grammatical differences; and, of course, Yiddish as well...
Wienerisch always seems so intriguing.
I think that Yiddish functions also as a written and not necessarily spoken language, like Latin in the past (although its much less widespread). Its still a langage of outstanding and very original literature and thus for a translaton-oriented person it may be a nice language to master.
Zeyer sheyn geredt un gedenkt--kh bin gants maskim mit ale ayere mishpotem mitn komentar!
A sakh niisht yidn hobn lib yiddish in hayntike zaytn. un vi zokt den undz ales Nobel mar Zimmerman--"they know their song before they can sing it".
Vos is a shande nokh meynung nokk is a sak profesorn in firndikn universitets lern yidisher literatur on shum kentenish fun der shprakh un ir geshikhte vi "Stories from the Olld Country' un kh'doyme baleydendike terminen vos mzalzn Zayn un afile mahhen khoyzek fun a mayerstisher kultur.
Grisn aykh
Wholeheartedly, I recommend Uriel Weinreich's "College Yiddish."
שווער? איך מיין נישט אזוי.
נו, דעפּענדס אויף דיין צוגאַנג צו דער שפּראַך, עס קען זיין גרינג