Yiddish Dialects - Varieties

Varieties

Yiddish dialects are generally grouped into either Western Yiddish and Eastern Yiddish. Western Yiddish developed from the 10th century in Western Europe, in the region which was called Ashkenaz by Jews, while Eastern Yiddish developed its distinctive features in Eastern Europe after the movement of large numbers of Jews from western to central and eastern Europe. General references to the "Yiddish language" without qualification are normally taken to apply to Eastern Yiddish, unless the subject under consideration is Yiddish literature prior to the 19th century, in which case the focus is more likely to be on Western Yiddish.

Western Yiddish included three dialects: Northwestern (spoken in Northern Germany and the Netherlands), Midwestern (spoken in central Germany), and Southwestern (spoken in southern Germany, France, and neighboring regions extending into Northern Italy). These have a number of clearly distinguished regional varieties, such as Judeo-Alsatian, plus many local subvarieties. The language traditionally spoken by the Jews of Alsace is Yédisch-Daïtsch or Judeo-Alsatian, originally a mixture of German, Hebrew and Aramaic idioms and virtually indistinguishable from mainstream Yiddish. From the 12th century onwards, due among other things to the influence of the nearby Rashi school, French linguistic elements aggregated as well, and from the 18th century onwards, some Polish elements due to immigrants blended into Yédisch-Daïtsch too. According to C. J. Hutterer (1969), "In western and central Europe the WY dialects must have died out within a short time during the period of reforms following the Enlightenment." Western Yiddish is no longer spoken natively.

Eastern Yiddish is split into Northern and Southern dialects. Northeastern Yiddish, also known as Litvish or Lithuanian Yiddish, was spoken in the modern-day Baltic region as well as adjacent regions of Poland, Ukraine, and Russia. The Southern dialects are again subdivided: Mideastern or Polish Yiddish was spoken in Poland, western Galicia and much of Hungary, while Southeastern or Ukrainian Yiddish was spoken elsewhere in Eastern Europe. Ukrainian Yiddish was the basis for standard theater Yiddish, while Lithuanian Yiddish was the basis of standard literary and academic Yiddish. About three-quarters of contemporary Yiddish speakers speak Southern Yiddish varieties, the majority speaking Polish Yiddish. Most Hasidic communities use southern dialects, with the exception of Chabad; many Chareidim in Jerusalem also preserve Litvish Yiddish.

The primary differences between the contemporary dialects are in the quality of stressed vowels, though there are also differences in morphology, lexicon, and grammar. Northern dialects are more conservative in vowel quality, while southern dialects have preserved vowel quantity distinctions.