Table of Contents
Why is Yiddish so like German?
Yiddish is derived from early High German. German developed umlauts after Yiddish split off. When Jews from the Rhineland moved into Poland, they took their language, German, with them. Yiddish has about 10\% of its vocabulary from Hebrew, and has borrowed some words from Polish and other languages.
Is there a Yiddish keyboard?
Yiddish Klal and Yiddish Klal Ligatur are free Standard Yiddish keyboard layouts created by Isaac L. Bleaman (ibleaman [shtrudl] nyu.edu).
Are there different Hebrew accents?
The two main accents of modern Hebrew are Oriental and Non-Oriental. Oriental Hebrew was chosen as the preferred accent for Israel by the Academy of the Hebrew Language, but has since declined in popularity.
Where do stressed vowels come from in the Yiddish language?
Stressed vowels in the Yiddish dialects may be understood by considering their common origins in the Proto-Yiddish sound system. Yiddish linguistic scholarship uses a system developed by Max Weinreich in 1960 to indicate the descendent diaphonemes of the Proto-Yiddish stressed vowels.
How do you identify a Proto-Yiddish vowel?
Each Proto-Yiddish vowel is given a unique two-digit identifier, and its reflexes use it as a subscript, for example Southeastern o11 is the vowel /o/, descended from Proto-Yiddish */a/.
Is there a distinction between German and Yiddish vowels?
The vowel length distinctions of German do not exist in the Northeastern (Lithuanian) varieties of Yiddish, which form the phonetic basis for Standard Yiddish. In these varieties, the vowel qualities in most long/short vowel pairs diverged, so that the phonemic distinction remained.
Does Yiddish have a diphthong ou?
Lastly, the Standard German /aʊ/ corresponds to both the MHG diphthong ou and the long vowel û, but in Yiddish, they have not merged. Although Standard Yiddish doesn’t distinguish between these two diphthongs, rendering both as /ɔɪ/, the distinction becomes apparent when the two diphthongs undergo Germanic umlaut, e.g. in forming plurals: