Yiddish
Yiddish is a Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews, written in Hebrew script and shaped by Hebrew, Aramaic, and Slavic languages.
High German: A group of West Germanic dialects distinguished by the High German consonant shift. Yiddish developed from medieval High German varieties.
Old Yiddish: The early historical stage of Yiddish, attested in texts from the medieval period. Its documents trace Yiddish before its major modern regional divisions.
Mendele Mocher Sforim: The pen name of Sholem Yankev Abramovitsh, a foundational Yiddish and Hebrew writer. His fiction helped establish modern Yiddish prose.
Yiddish literature: Literary works written in Yiddish, including fiction, poetry, drama, and journalism. Its writers turned a communal vernacular into a modern literary language.
Holocaust: The systematic persecution and murder of six million Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators. The destruction of European Jewish communities devastated Yiddish’s historic speaker base.
Hebrew alphabet: A writing system used for Hebrew and several other languages, including Yiddish. Yiddish writes its Germanic words with this adapted script.
Middle High German: A group of German dialects spoken from about 1050 to 1350. Yiddish emerged from varieties of this medieval German language.
Sholem Aleichem: The pen name of Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich, a major Yiddish writer and humorist. His stories made Yiddish-speaking life widely known beyond its communities.
Yiddish press: Newspapers and periodicals published in Yiddish for Jewish communities. Print connected Yiddish speakers across cities and political movements.
Yiddishism: A cultural and political movement promoting Yiddish as a modern Jewish national language. Its advocates organized education, scholarship, and public life around Yiddish.