Talk:Yiddish

Why Is This Called A Germanic Language and Not A Creole Language?

It is a creole language. It is a creole of Hebrew and European languages. It is a Semitic language as much as it is a Germanic language. Yiddish speakers were reading and translating the Hebrew Torah the whole time. Speakers of modern Hebrew read from the same Torah as 3,000 years ago and can make sense of it. This is evidence of Yiddish being a semitic language. 2600:1700:2770:E9D0:C5A4:629E:2BE2:9971 (talk) 08:36, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

Please supply references to reliable sources stating in such a declarative manner that this is true. As for your reasoning, the syntax of Yiddish is unmistakably Germanic. The Yiddish speakers who could read and translate the Hebrew Torah were able to do so because they also knew Hebrew; a person who spoke only Yiddish wouldn't be able to read the Torah at all. Speakers of modern Hebrew read from the Torah because it's in Hebrew, Yiddish has nothing to do with it. Largoplazo (talk) 13:41, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

Video with speech sample, Matt vs. Suri...

I just noticed that, at some point since the last time I'd visited the article, more than a year ago, the speech sample video File:WIKITONGUES- Suri speaking Yiddish.webm was replaced with File:WIKITONGUES- Matt speaking Yiddish.webm, and I'm not sure why, as I think the Suri clip is significantly better....

First off, no offense to Matt is intended here (particularly if he is a contributor to this article). He seems to me like a nice enough guy, at least from what I can tell from the short clip there. But honestly, I find Suri's pronunciation much better, and indeed, as she details in her video, she grew up speaking Yiddish as her first language, despite living in NYC, and didn't start learning English until she started elementary school. So I think having a sample from a native speaker is inherently preferable. With Matt, although he seems to have learned Yiddish pretty well, I can still pick up an American accent in his speech, and some of the sounds (ones which aren't normally present in American English) he seems to exaggerate. This is not uncommon for people who've learned a language with sounds that are foreign to them. So all around Suri's pronunciation is better.

Additionally, the Suri clip is significantly longer, about six and a half minutes long, which gives people the chance to hear more different words and appreciate a bit of the variety of the Yiddish language. The Matt clip, by contrast, is only 43 seconds in total, and the actual Yiddish part only goes until the 38 second mark, with him saying (in English) "go ahead and learn a bit of Yiddish" in the last few seconds. So even if it weren't for the superior pronunciation in the Suri video, it would still be better based on duration alone.

So I would strongly recommend restoring the clip with Suri.....Either as a complete replacement of the Matt clip, or in addition to it, if some folks here feel strongly about keeping the Matt clip. -2003:CA:873A:1501:4488:C0A1:D143:8705 (talk) 14:10, 23 October 2025 (UTC)