A comparison between Yiddish and German. I made up a bunch of sentences to highlight some of the differences between German and Yiddish with respect to vocabulary, grammar (especially word order), phonology (sounds) and vowels. The sentences were read aloud in English and my friend Frank, a native German speaker from Bavaria (but speaking Hochdeutsch/standard German) translated them into German and I translated them into my nonnative Ukrainian Yiddish. Even if you don't speak either language you can hear where the two are different and perhaps pick up a bit of either one or both. German speakers should note that other Yiddish dialects (Litvak, northern Ukrainian) pronounce "u" the same way as in German so "und" (and) is "und" but in my dialect it becomes "in". Otherwise all of the differences in the vowels between the two languages are pretty normal. You may also notice that there are words in Yiddish that exist in German dialects but not Hochdeutsch ("epes" for "etvas", "do" for "hier") and there are words in German that Frank uses that are also used in Yiddish (Geschaft, Stunde) but which I don't use. Of all the German dialects Yiddish is probably closest to some forms of Badisch and Swiss German. Yiddish was the language of Eastern European (Ashkenazi) Jews until the Holocaust and is now primarily spoken in Hasidic communities in Israel, the USA, England, Australia, Canada and Belgium. It is written in the Hebrew alphabet.

, דײַטש, ייִדיש, אידיש, שפּראַך, דיִאַלעקט, דײַטשיש , גרמנית, ידיש, דיאלקט, שפה, מדגישה, בלשנות