Talk:Yiddish language

It's usually spelled "Yiddish" in English... --Larry Sanger 12:08, 1 July 2008 (CDT)

The other possible problem is calling it a dialect of German, which implies that it's just a deviant form of (presumably standard) German. I know the stub qualifies this in typological terms, but it could be clearer that they are at least seen as being distinct, in some ways, and culturally are firmly distinguished (e.g. different writing systems). But I don't know enough about Yiddish to do this. John Stephenson 03:20, 2 July 2008 (CDT)

Linguistically, Yiddish is really completely German. Spoken Yiddish is still very close to some of the German dialects it derived from and remains mutually intelligible. Cultural changes and the Hebrew writing system do qualify it as a separate language, though this is really a dicey debate. Serbian and Croatian are also essentially the same language, though with different ethnic/cultural backgrounds and different spelling systems. Hindi and Urdu are in a similar relationship, or so I understand. This gets into the old debate: What makes a language and what makes a dialect? Even the old adage "A language is a dialect with an army" does not work for Yiddish. Michel van der Hoek 03:17, 14 July 2009 (UTC)