Why was Yiddish created if Jews traditionally spoke Hebrew?

Question

Shouldn't Diasporian Jews have been like the Jews in Egypt who did not change their national tongue?

Answer 1

Jews had to function with the surrounding culture, therefore they had to learn the local language. Yiddish is German, but written with Hebrew letters.

Ladino is a very early form of Spanish, but written with Hebrew letters. There are still a few Ladino speakers and Spanish speakers love to hear them because it is the purest form of Spanish spoken today.
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Answer 2

Actually Jews in Egypt did not speak Hebrew as a common language either.

The practice of using Hebrew as a common language died out about 2,300 years ago with Mishnaic Hebrew. After that primarily spoke Aramaic.


After a while the belief became reinforced that Hebrew was to holy of a language for common use and that is why languages such as Yiddish and Landio formed.

Though the work of early Zionist groups who were largely not religious modern Hebrew developed and became the national language when Israel was established.

Answer 3

Wellll, some time in Jewish history, the Jews decided that Hebrew is a holy language that was used to write all of the holy books and everything, and thought it wrong to speak it publicly just like that, so they created Yiddish so that they could speak without worrying about all of that mishkabable (I think that word's made up though lol).

Answer 4

The Torah is written in Hebrew. All Jews examine it in Hebrew. Yiddish is the langague that stepped forward in eastern Europe. it somewhat is a mix of German, Russian, Polish etc. it somewhat is well known from different Germanic languages in basic terms on the grounds it somewhat is written with the Hebrew alphabet. you does not would desire to earnings Yiddish. Many Jews do not comprehend Yiddish. Many Jews do not comprehend Ladino. researching Hebrew is sufficient. in fact, while coming to the US, many human beings did not prefer their toddlers speaking Yiddish. It had a stigma. After WW2, would desire to of the Yiddish international grew to become into wiped out and the language has in basic terms in the near previous made a partial revival. it purely isn't as known grew to become into it as quickly as as quickly as. learn Hebrew Now to make sparkling there are Yiddish Tanakhs purely as there are some in English, Spanish, Russiah etc. the easily scroll itself is and would desire to constantly be and has forver been, written in Hebrew

Answer 5

That is nearly as brilliant as suggesting that Americans ought to have kept speaking English instead of developing some 'weird' funky regional dialect. Actually Jews continued to learn and speak Hebrew but the avaerage citizen not wishing to be a scholar adapted to the local scene. And besides Yiddish is so much fun. WIthout Yiddish how would we say Smuck, Putz or Schmeiser?

Peace---------------------

Answer 6

As far as I know, Jews in Egypt, as with the rest of the Muslim world, usually spoke Ladino, a mixture of Hebrew, Arabic, and Spanish.

Jews were in Europe for a couple of thousand years. It only makes sense that they were influenced in various ways by the cultures and languages around them.

Answer 7

The study of Yiddish origins -- and especially the touchy issue of its relationship to German -- has sometimes been criticized as one in which rational analysis has been overwhelmed by emotion. But a number of recent studies are now being welcomed by linguists as evidence that the field is turning into a solid science.

By trying to reconstruct the original Yiddish, linguists hope to explain the origins of this rich language, in which a largely Germanic grammar and vocabulary is mixed with Hebrew and Aramaic, and sprinkled with words from Slavic and ancient Romance languages. The question they hope to answer is whether Yiddish began in Western Europe and spread eastward, as the common wisdom holds -- or whether, as an increasing number of scholars now believe, its origins lie farther east. One linguist has recently argued that Yiddish began as a Slavic language that was "relexified," with most of its vocabulary replaced with German words.

Arching over these questions is the central mystery of just where the Jews of Eastern Europe came from. Many historians believe that there were not nearly enough Jews in Western Europe to account for the huge population that later flourished in Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine and nearby areas.

By reconstructing the Yiddish mother tongue, linguists hope to plot the migration of the Jews and their language with a precision never possible before. It has even been suggested, on the basis of linguistic evidence, that the Jews of Eastern Europe were not predominantly part of the diaspora from the Middle East, but were members of another ethnic group that adopted Judaism.

http://www.santafe.edu/~johnson/articles.yiddish.html
For nearly a thousand years, Yiddish was the primary, sometimes the only language that Ashkenazi Jews spoke. Unlike most languages, which are spoken by the residents of a particular area, or by members of a particular nationality, Yiddish, at the height of its usage, was spoken by millions of Jews of different nationalities all over the globe. While the mid-twentieth century marked the end of Yiddish as a widely spoken language, and of the unique culture the language generated, some groups continue to use Yiddish as their primary language to this day. In addition, the language is now fully acknowledged and widely studied in the non-Jewish and academic worlds.

The Development of Yiddish: Four Stages
Linguists have divided the evolution of Yiddish into four amorphous periods. Over the course of the greater part of a millennium, Yiddish went from a Germanic dialect to a full-fledged language that incorporated elements of Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic languages, and Romance languages. Because no decisive dates are known that contributed to modifications in the languages, the history can be charted using general dates as turning points: 1250, 1500, and 1750.

Early History ...http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/yiddish.html
Yiddish has historically been the language of the Ashkenazim, the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe and their descendants around the world. At its peak, in the years immediately preceding the Holocaust, there were perhaps ten or eleven million Yiddish speakers worldwide, making Yiddish the most widely spoken Jewish language. As a combined result of genocide in Europe, cultural assimilation in America, and official and unofficial pressure to shift to Hebrew in Israel and Russian in the Soviet Union, today there are probably fewer than two million speakers, most of whom no longer use it as their primary language. With the rare exceptions of young Yiddish activists, it is only in certain Orthodox and Hasidic communities that Yiddish remains the language of everyday discourse and is still learned by children. However, there has been a resurgence of interest in Ashkenazic culture generally in recent decades, and Yiddish courses are now offered by many universities and Jewish cultural organizations
http://www.jewish-languages.org/yiddish.html
The Yiddish Language
Yiddish was at one time the international language of Ashkenazic Jews (the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe and their descendants). A hybrid of Hebrew and medieval German, Yiddish takes about three-quarters of its vocabulary from German, but borrows words liberally from Hebrew and many other languages from the many lands where Ashkenazic Jews have lived. It has a grammatical structure all its own, and is written in an alphabet based on Hebrew characters. Scholars and universities classify Yiddish as a Germanic language, though some have questioned that classification.

Yiddish was never a part of Sephardic Jewish culture (the culture of the Jews of Spain, Portugal, the Balkans, North Africa and the Middle East). They had their own international language known as Ladino or Judesmo, which is a hybrid of medieval Spanish and Hebrew in much the same way that Yiddish combines German and Hebrew.
http://www.jewfaq.org/yiddish.htm

and much much more on the web.

Answer 8

The yiddish people leaved in a far part of eastern europe i beleive.

There culture was largely influenced by judaism to the point where it became to dominate it. But before judaism was there they had there own language (yedish) and instead of adopting hebrew they adopted the hebrew alphabet and kept there native tongue.

I would presume that the hebrew language had its influences on yedish aswell.

No biggie

Answer 9

oye ve.....again with the Jewish questions.