The Yiddish or Yiddish language is a Indo-European language, belonging to the subgroup of the Germanic languages, spoken predominantly by Jews from Central and Eastern Europe.
Yiddish is a dialect spoken mainly among Jewish communities in Germany, the United States, Argentina, Belgium, France, Lithuania, Brazil, Ukraine, Russia and Canada.
It is estimated that in total there are approximately 3.2 million Yiddish speakers worldwide, mainly among ultra-Orthodox Jews and secular Jews.
Learn more about the meaning of Orthodox.
Yiddish is also known to be the language of Jewish culture-followers. Ashkenazim, who lived mainly in the region of Eastern Europe and that, after the Holocaust, spread throughout the world.
See more about the meaning of Holocaust.
The composition of the Yiddish language is diverse, consisting mainly of the phonetic basis of the Germanic language and by Hebrew and Aramaic post-classical (used in alphabet and written representation).
Quite simply, Yiddish is often considered the Germanic language written in Hebrew.
Yiddish also mixes several other dialects, such as Slavic, Polish, Ukrainian and Russian.
This language emerged between the tenth and eleventh centuries, among Jews who lived on the border between France and Germany. These created a new dialect to prevent the Christians of the time from understanding them.
Another peculiar feature of the Yiddish language is the sense of the way of writing and reading: from right to left, known as “sinister writing”.
