jewish mother tongue?

Question

would it be yiddidh or hebrew? Or could it be the language of their host country. My jewish grandparents who were from hungary said their mother tongue is hungarian.

Answer 1

If your grandparents say that their mother tongue is Hungarian, then Hungarian is their mother tongue, as "mother tongue" refers to the language that one's mother speaks to them (and so, logically, the first language one hears and learns).

Answer 2

Smile. Hebrew is the oldest language of Jewish people of the world. However, in course of the turbulent history and forced re-locations of the people this language has been lost for many centuries and was considered dead ( just like Latin ). In its absence, Yiddish was created for communication purposes ( it is a dialect of German language, because a lot of Jews lived in Germany and Austria at the time ). When Israel was established, Hebrew was brought back to life as a main language of the country. They have been teaching and using it ever since. Now, not every Jewish person knows Yiddish or Hebrew. Some speak the language of the country they live in only. Translated to many languages religious texts made it easy to worship in their own tongue. So, your grandparents were Hungarian, but they were very much Jewish at the same time.

Answer 3

Jewish is no race or nationality - its a religion.
So you can have frechmen who are jewish and their mother tongue is french.
Same with greek Jews whos mother tongue is greek....
Jiddish is a dialekt, the formal language when learning the Tora and others is hebrew.

Answer 4

yes she was right - the host country language was the native -

Answer 5

Whichever language people are most comfortable with and use day-to-day.