
How Much Polish Is There in Yiddish (and How Much Yidddish Is There in Polish)? - stared
http://culture.pl/en/article/how-much-polish-is-there-in-yiddish-and-how-much-yidddish-is-there-in-polish
======
mitchtbaum
I searched for "yiddish revival", since I miss my elders who would speak it
around me, as well as their expressions and stories (..gone are those days
when I could get a potchka on the tuchus and occasionally some gelt :), and I
found that it's far from dying:

[http://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/yiddish-
revival/](http://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/yiddish-revival/)

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/11/yiddish-
revival_n_3...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/11/yiddish-
revival_n_3734046.html)

[http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/gevalt-u-s-college-students-
le...](http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/gevalt-u-s-college-students-lead-
surprise-yiddish-revival-1.402786)

[https://yivo.org/down-with-the-revival-yiddish-is-a-
living-l...](https://yivo.org/down-with-the-revival-yiddish-is-a-living-
language)

... What a mazel! I look forward to joining in and listening to some good
klezmer music till then.

------
foobar2020
Fun fact: during the six-day war the Israeli military command decided to use
exclusively Polish in communications, as a cheap and quick method of
"encryption". Most commanders could speak Yiddish just as good as Polish. It
worked, the Arab coalition intelligence could not understand a word.

~~~
mootothemax
I'm a bit surprised by this; as tricky as the Polish language is to e.g.
native English speakers, it shares the same sounds as many Slavic languages,
plus a fair amount of vocab and grammar basics.

I mean, even though I'm pretty crappy at Polish - my only Slavic language -
_even I_ can understand a surprising amount of Russian.

It just seems a bit weird to me that no-one in the Arab coalition spoke
Russian and could work backwards from there.

~~~
Swizec
> I mean, even though I'm pretty crappy at Polish - my only Slavic language -
> even I can understand a surprising amount of Russian.

As a native speaker of Slovenian, and a passive understander of most southern
slavic languages, Russian sounds like people are messing with me. It sounds
like I _should_ understand what they're saying, but I really just don't. It
_sounds_ familiar and relatable, but it just does not parse outside a few very
simple words/phrases. Definitely not enough to even remotely hold a
conversation.

It's really quite unnerving.

Same situation as Dutch, I guess. It's so close to a mix between English and
German (I'm goot with English, was forced into 4 years of German in high
school) that reading/hearing it _sounds_ like I should be able to understand,
but it just does not parse.

I hate that feeling.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
If you want to feel _really_ confused, visit Portugal.

The soft consonant formations in Portuguese sound bizarrely similar to those
in Russian, but grammatically the language has more in common with Italian.

~~~
leaveyou
The same thing happens with romanian. It sounds a little like russian with
italian, french and latin words but the grammar is latin/italian.
youtube.com/watch?v=dGK40ykalTw

------
pliptvo
I make Yiddish keyboard maps for OSX, GNU/Linux and Windows.

[http://www.shretl.org](http://www.shretl.org)

Since moving to GNU/Linux I could really do with a hand maintaining the
Windows and OSX branches. Anyone interested?

Also - anyone have contacts at Microsoft or Apple who might be able to help
get a Yiddish keyboard map installed per default in their OSs?

------
ars
Very cool article, but I have to object to this sentence at the start:

"Nowadays it is rarely spoken"

The number of Yiddish speakers is actually growing, not shrinking and growing
at a very rapid rate. It's the mother language (first language) of many many
people, with either English or Hebrew as the second.

~~~
golergka
> It's the mother language (first language) of many many people, with either
> English or Hebrew as the second.

They are usually ultra-orthodox though.

~~~
ars
> They are usually ultra-orthodox though.

And? Does that mean they are not people?

I'm not sure what you are trying to say, or was that just badly worded?

------
V-2
Curiously enough, Yiddish affected Polish crime slang, see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grypsera](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grypsera)
\- for starters, the subculture of syndicated prisoners is known as "git
people", git being Yiddish for good, ok, etc.

------
ajuc
Another example of Yiddish influencing modern Polish (with almost no Yiddish
speakers in Poland) is using "mamełe/tatełe" to refer to parents (on purpose,
to sound funny and endearing, same thing as "pieseł"). It's not very common
but some people do it.

~~~
V-2
Not to say it's not true, but I've never ever come across these people who do
it. Could it be a regional thing?

~~~
ajuc
I've mostly seen it on wykop.pl (a website, it's like reddit had kids with
4chan).

Here some people try to trace it: [http://www.wykop.pl/wpis/6202818/kto-mowi-
do-swojej-mamy-mam...](http://www.wykop.pl/wpis/6202818/kto-mowi-do-swojej-
mamy-mamele-przez-wypok-i-powie/)

~~~
V-2
Now this explains a lot; like many major forum sites, Wykop tends to develop
its own exclusive microculture, slang, wordplays etc. and it's not
representative of everyday language, such as calling women "pink" for example,
who does that in real life.

A few commenters in the link you pasted actually recognize this figure of
speech as sort of a local meme.

Still an interesting phenomenon I agree, although probably temporary and of
limited scope.

