Is Yiddish on-topic?

Question

As far as I was able to find and understand current policy on dialects,

• all dialects/derivates of modern German are on-topic but
• but German Hochdeutsch should be the default (on a best-effort basis, I guess).

Now I found an answer is only about Yiddish. I'm not an expert but as far as I can tell, Yiddish

• branched from Middle High German in the 9th century,
• has developed to include elements from many other languages (from other families even) and
• uses Hebrew script.

Thus, I don't think Yiddish qualifies as a dialect or variant of (modern) German and it should thus not be ontopic. For what it's worth, I'd also say that questions about Middle High German are offtopic here.

What does the wider resp. more established community think?

To make my intention more explicit: please define which languages are ontopic here and which are not, preferably in a way that can be concisely and objectively defined so that a reader of the FAQ can quickly decide if their given question is ontopic.

Answer 1

I consider the formalist attitude in some of the answers misguided and would argue for a pragmatic approach that doesn't make questions on Yiddish completely homeless.

Raphael linked two earlier discussions as if they established in a quasi-legal definition that just needs interpreting that German dialects are on-topic and other languages are off-topic. That's not what I am seeing. Under the first link there is a question with one immediate consensus answer and no discussion whatsoever: that Swiss German is on-topic. Under the second link I see a consensus that without evidence to the contrary, questions are assumed to be about modern standard German, but that speakers of the Austrian or Swiss variant of standard German are welcome to volunteer information on how it diverges.

The definition of German Language Stack Exchange basically just says "questions about German". This gives us a lot of space for interpretation. It is not appropriate to just deny that this maneuvering space exists and claim that unfortunately, for purely formal reasons, questions about Yiddish and other speech varieties closely related to German must be excluded because they are languages and therefore can't be German dialects.

A language can be a dialect of another language. To quote Wikipedia's dialect article:

The terms 'language" and "dialect" are not necessarily mutually exclusive: There is nothing contradictory in the statement "the language of the Pennsylvania Dutch is a dialect of German".

(An even better example might have been Lëtzebuergesch, i.e. Luxembourgish. It is both a national language with its own writing system and a dialect of German.)

Saying that there is a 'dispute' about whether Pennsylvania Dutch is a dialect of German, and that there is no such 'dispute' about Yiddish, doesn't really nail the complex truth of the matter. Pennsylvania Dutch and Yiddish have both branched off the German continuum in the sense that they have speaker communities that are for the most part not in contact with the three large German-speaking countries. But in both cases this is a relatively recent phenomenon:

• The majority of Pennsylvania Dutch speakers are deeply religious, and bible translations to their language are a very recent phenomenon. Only a generation or so ago, for most Pennsylvania Dutch speakers the language of scripture was standard German. And so they had to learn it in their schools in much the same way that even today some children in rural Swabia, Switzerland, Bavaria and Austria have to learn standard German in school - along with reading and writing.
• Obviously, for most Yiddish speakers the language of scripture is and was Hebrew and definitely not German. (This is also how it evolved originally: Its earliest form, Judendeutsch, was simply contemporary German written in Hebrew letters by people who felt more familiar reading and writing these than Latin letters.) However, the speakers of Western Yiddish lived in German-speaking countries until almost all of them were either killed in the Holocaust or found refuge elsewhere. Due to the lively contact between speakers of Western Yiddish and Eastern Yiddish, and also between German-speaking traders and Yiddish-speaking traders in Eastern Europe, Yiddish was in close contact with the German dialect continuum until very recently.

Pennsylvania Dutch is clearly a language rather than just a dialect of German because English has taken over the role of superstrate language. (It's also not a dialect of English because it's still too different.) Yiddish is clearly a language rather than just a dialect of German because after the Holocaust something very similar has happened.

But Pennsylvania Dutch is also a dialect of German because apart from plenty of English terms related to life in the United States, it is practically identical with the German dialect spoken in the Palatinate. And Yiddish is also a dialect of German because until recently there were Middle Franconian (the varieties spoken in the area of Luxembourg, Trier and Cologne) and Alemannic areas where people basically didn't distinguish between the local dialect of German and the local dialect of Yiddish, and until recently German was the most obvious choice of language for ambitious writers whose native language was Yiddish.

Yiddish is both a language and a German dialect, though the latter classification is politically inopportune. The reason why Pennsylvania Dutch is called a German dialect more often than Yiddish is a purely political one. At the time when all the varieties of Germanic languages spoken in Germany were reclassified as German dialects because it fit into the idea of homogeneous nation states, most scholars didn't want to include Yiddish, for reasons that should be obvious if you consider how antisemitic many scholars of the era were. And conversely, the Holocaust didn't exactly make the children of the survivors want to classify their language as a dialect of German.

[PS: I can write in this discussion that Yiddish is in some sense (also) a dialect of German because I am just a random guy on the internet that nobody takes seriously. But if I were a linguistic scholar who has to take care of his reputation, then I would be very careful to tiptoe around the issue to avoid stepping on other people's toes. Political sensitivities can be an important factor even in academia, and it really doesn't feel right for German speakers to first distance themselves from Yiddish speakers, then try hard to kill them all, and then finally annex the few remaining ones.]

Some questions that should be asked.

• Is it legitimate to ask for a place on Stack Exchange where questions on Yiddish can be asked? - Obviously yes.
• Are questions about Yiddish "questions about German" in the widest sense? - As I explained above, the answer is yes.
• Is there another place that could be well suited to questions on Yiddish? - Judaism has been proposed, but it is really about Jewish law and tradition and therefore only fits for questions related to Yiddish and Judaism. Linguistics has been proposed, but most questions on details of an individual language just don't fit "linguistic research and theory" and most users there are unlikely to have much to contribute.
• Will there ever be enough activity on Yiddish to warrant a Yiddish Stack Exchange or to overrun German Language Stack Exchange? - Obviously no.
• Are questions on Yiddish likely to be incomprehensible to users of German Language Stack Exchange? - Experience so far indicates no.
• Is it always clear a priori whether a question is about Yiddish or German? - Absolutely not, as some of the prior questions demonstrate. A typical question about Yiddish is: I heard ... Is it German or Yiddish, and what does it mean?
• What community at existing Stack Exchange sites is most qualified to answer questions on Yiddish? - I would say that in general it is split between the two very different communities at Judaism and at German language. Sometimes one fits better, sometimes the other. The Yiddish tag over at Judaism has questions whose flavour is totally different from the Yiddish-related questions asked at German Language.

Conclusion. My conclusion to all this is that questions on Yiddish, and also on East and North Frisian, on Pennsylvania Dutch, on Luxembourgish, Swiss German and Alsatian German, should all be considered on-topic at the German Language Stack Exchange because it is the best fit for them just like it is for every German dialect. Except in case of religious relevance, but those questions don't seem to need help finding their way to Judaism SE.

PS: As Hubert Schölnast has demonstrated, the majority of Yiddish-related questions asked at the German Language SE are on-topic there even under a strict definition. Since Yiddish doesn't have the activity required for splitting it off and there is no other appropriate site for these questions, any rare instance of a similar question that is not technically related to German should be admitted there as well, for reasons of expediency, efficiency, and friendliness.

PPS: Taking up the comments below, yes, for questions concerning the large body of Hebrew loanwords in Yiddish the above arguments don't really apply and they are probably better placed at Judaism. Since most Hebrew words in Yiddish are related to Judaic tradition, I would expect that they are welcome there. If there are ever any questions regarding how Yiddish is written, I think they can go either way on a case-by-case basis. (Yiddish uses appropriately modified Hebrew letters as if they were Latin letters. E.g. aleph gets a diacritic sign marking it as a or another marking it as o. The Hebrew letter vov is used for u. Used twice it becomes the Yiddish letter tsvey vovn standing for v and w, just like Latin w evolved out of double v and Latin u was just a different way to write v.)

Answer 2

please define which languages are ontopic here and which are not, preferably in a way that can be concisely and objectively defined so that a reader of the FAQ can quickly decide if their given question is ontopic.

For further explanations and justifications see my previous answer. I don't want to add the following to it after some people have supported it, as some might consider it a substantial extension.

In real life there is usually a grey zone between social prohibitions ("you just don't do that!") and legal prohibitions. This is by design. Whenever that grey zone is too small or completely absent (e.g. copyright), it leads to conflict. The purpose of laws is to prevent frequent conflict between citizens through the deterrent effect of occasional conflict between citizen and state. This goal cannot be reached if too many citizens consider a law unjust because it regulates things beyond their own personal judgement. Social prohibitions don't closely mirror legal prohibitions - even laws always have edge cases that need interpretation, and this is even more true for social prohibitions, which are just statistical phenomena.

There is also another grey zone between legal prohibitions and their enforcement. If I technically break the law it's still quite possible that police and prosecutors have no interest in pursuing the matter because they consider it a trifle and a waste of time.

In our case, social prohibitions correspond to how questions that are actually asked on German Language SE are restricted. This restriction is in part a consequence of how people interpret the site's name. But it also has a dynamic component: If I google for a specific question and I find a very similar one that was answered on Stack Exchange, I am likely to ask my question on the same site provided that it isn't obviously out of scope. Legal prohibitions correspond to the scope rule we are looking for.

Currently, most questions on the Yiddish language that are unrelated to Judaism are de facto at least in the grey zone. In fact, most that have been asked are obviously on-topic in the strictest sense because they are sufficiently related to German itself. Since these questions do not, and are not likely to, present any problems for the site, it is expedient to find a scope definition that includes them. (It would also be possible to use a scope definition that excludes them but not to police it strictly. However, just like that didn't work for Wikipedia in the long run, Stack Exchange now seems to have the same problem with lack of common sense among site functionaries when it comes to application of rules. (Maybe there is a natural law of the internet that the self-governance of social communities automatically has problems similar to those described by high-functioning autists, e.g. in The Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships: Decoding Social Mysteries Through the Unique Perspectives of Autism. The strong American influence might also be a factor, since schools and the police force seem to have very similar issues in some places in the US.)

I think there haven't been many questions on North or East Frisian, but I think we can all agree that it would be very unfortunate if the scope definition included Bavarian and Swiss German but not these. (North and East Frisian varieties are often considered German dialects, and West Frisian varieties are often considered Dutch dialects. Functionally that's what they are. But genetically they are really all dialects of Frisian, a language that is placed somewhere between German/Dutch and English. It's the closest relative of English if you consider Scots a dialect as some people do.)

The smallest relatively standard linguistic category that includes German with all its dialects including North Frisian and East Frisian is called continental West Germanic. It can roughly be split into two groups: (1) Frisian (2) Dutch and German. Two offspring languages (Afrikaans and Yiddish) have been influenced by non-Indoeuropean languages but are still close enough to their ancestral languages (hardly more different than a typical pure dialect) to be included in the second group. Source.

Continental West Germanic is not an appropriate scope for pragmatic reasons, and cutting off Frisian would only make things worse. This should become clear when looking at the speaker statistics (numbers from the Wikipedia articles):

• German has about 100 million native and L2 speakers and up to another 100 million foreign language speakers. (For the other languages, the numbers of foreign language speakers are insignificant.)
• Dutch: about 30 million speakers.
• Afrikaans: about 17 million speakers.
• Swiss German: about 4.5 million speakers.
• Yiddish: about 1.5 million speakers (rough estimate).
• Frisian: about 0.5 million speakers.
• Luxembourgish: less than 0.5 million speakers.

People asking about Dutch would not be well served at German Language SE. For a major European national language one can expect better than getting opinions from a bunch of speakers of a neighbour language. While I like the idea of Dutch speakers and German speakers interacting at a single site, I am afraid both languages are too 'big', so that the friction would outweigh the synergies. It would make a lot more sense to group Dutch and Afrikaans together. By also putting the culture of Dutch-speaking countries in scope, as well as the Dutch aspects of Afrikaans-speaking countries, I think one could get critical mass for a separate site.

I might see things differently if we had a status quo of lots of Dutch-related questions being asked and answered at German Language SE. But there isn't even a tag for them, so it appears that basically it just doesn't happen.

Even in academia it is not unheard-of to exclude a subclass from a category for pragmatic reasons. E.g., instead of a clean definition of the clade dinosaur, biology uses one that specifically excludes the subclade bird. So it's perfectly fine to define our scope as follows:

Continental West Germanic with the exception of Dutch and Afrikaans.

Another way of putting this is as follows:

German in the widest sense including its origins and all its dialects that are not major national languages.

(I think it's clear that Dutch and Afrikaans are major national languages, but not Luxembourgish, which is only one of three official languages of a tiny country, and not Swiss German, which isn't an official language yet.) And yet another:

All continental West Germanic varieties on the German side of the German-Dutch subgroup. As a special exception for pragmatic reasons, also North and East Frisian.

I think these three quite different but equivalent definitions demonstrate that the scope that I am proposing is about as sharply defined as we can hope for. (Technically, some include East Frisian and some don't, but I wouldn't worry about that at all.)

PS: As has been pointed out below, questions presenting Yiddish text in Hebrew letters without transcription are problematic. I think a clarification similar to the following would make sense:

Questions related to Yiddish in the context of Judaism are usually asked over at Judaism SE. At the present site, Hebrew letters should always be accompanied by a Latin-based transcription.

Answer 3

I try a different point of view:

German-SE hat a total number of 5340 questions. 14 of them are tagged as “Yiddish”. Mi yodeya has 16k questions, 46 of them tagged “Yiddish”. I think we could keep all Yiddish questions in German-SE that really have a connection to German language, and should shift to mi yodeya (or to linguistics if that fits better) questions that don't have any connection to German language.

Here are the rules that I suggest (Acording to my other answer):

• Yiddish is not a German dialect
• Yiddish is a separate language
• German StackExchange deals with modern German language, its old forms and its dialects.
• German StackExchange doesn't deal with questions about other languages
• If a question brings any other language in a meaningful connection with with modern German language, its old forms or its dialects, then it is on-topc.

So, let’s analyze the 14 Yiddish questions in German-SE with my rules:

Yiddish phrase for "turn out the lights and go to sleep"
The question asks for a translation of a Yiddish sentence into English. The only connection to German language that I can see here, is the general similarity of both languages, but the concrete question is not asking for anything, that has to do with German grammar, German orthography, German vocabulary. It also does not ask for a translation of this Yiddish sentence into German.
So, in my opinion:
off-topic, should be shifted to mi yodeya.

Beziehungen: as "attitude towards"
The question asks for a translation of a Yiddish word into German. So here we have a direct connection to German language, and so, I think this question in
on-topic.

Translate this quote from The Producers?
The question asks for a translation of a Yiddish sentence into English. Same argumentation as in Question 1, and so, in my opinion:
off-topic, should be shifted to mi yodeya.

https://german.stackexchange.com/questions/18895/learning-german-and-yiddish-at-the-same-time
[closed]
The question is already closed, I don't want to debate about closed questions.

Buchstabieren = to spell?
The question asks for the different meanings of an English word and it’s German translation. The OP compares this with a Yiddish word, but this not the main aspect of this question. In fact, I think it is unclear, if the tag “Yiddish” really is suitable for this question.
But imho this question is
on-topic.

What's the matter: Yiddish "was is der mehr?"
The question asks if a Yiddish phrase (who’s English meaning is known) is equivalent to a German phrase. So here we have a direct connection to German language, and so, I think this question is
on-topic.

Is Yiddish a dialect of German?
Here we definitely have a connection to German language.
on-topic
(btw: This question has 5 answers. 4 of them say: “Yiddish is not a German dialect, it is a separate language.” The 5th answer says: “when I use my private definitions, then Yiddish and German are both dialects of the same language.”)

Spittings, shellings, etc
This question asks, if a special grammatical construction that exists in Yiddish is also used in German.
The explicit connection to German is here, so imho
on-topic.

Yiddish: common in Europe?
Asks if Yiddish is taught and used in Germany, Austria Switzerland and Liechtenstein. (I’m not sure if this part is on-topic. What if the OP would have asked if English is taught in this countries? Would this be on- or off-topic?) But this Question contains a second part, where the OP wants to know if Yiddish is a German dialect.
The second part definitely is on-topic, so I would vote to count the whole question as
on-topic.
(This question has 2 answers. Both of them say: “Yiddish is not a German dialect, it is a separate language.”)

Was "träumen" ever a reflexive verb?
The OP asks for the historic usage of a German verb and compares it with it’s Yiddish counterpart.
on-topic.

Change of meaning: are words whose meaning has been "verschlechtert" preserved in Yiddish?
The OP asks for examples of words that are similar in German and Yiddish, and who have developed from a common root, but now have different meanings in both languages. Here we have a clearly visible connection with German language, and therefor I think that this question is
on-topic.

More Yiddish: “Es Lauft die Jauch, die Millech brennt..."
Here the OP asks for a translation of a Yiddish word in a Yiddish sentence into English. He tried to interpret the Yiddish word “Jauch” as a German word “Jauche” (this phenomenon is called “false friend”) and got a weird translation. Since it is a translation-request from Not-German to Not-German it should be off-topic, but the question also implicitly asks for the etymology of the German word “Jauche”, and so we again have the connection to German language which makes the Question
on-topic.

Marmelade = Eingemachts?
The OP asks if a Yiddish word also exists in German language.
on-topic

Is "Säegermacher" the Yiddish word for "watchmaker"?
Asks, if a Yiddish word has a German origin.
on-topic

---

Counting-result:

• off-topic 2
• on-topic 11
• already closed 1

Answer 4

Questions and answers about Yiddish and its relationship to German are on topic and welcome here.

We do not have many questions tagged yiddish but quite some good answers nicely explaining common peculiarities or varieties in meaning. We also have a solid base of expert users who could answer questions about Yiddish.

Some questions may be better suited for Mi Yodea but whenever we also need experts on the German language I see no reason why this should not be on topic here.

Answer 5

Following Wrzlprmft's link, questions about Middle High German are on-topic - when tagged accordingly.

Same should apply to questions related to Yiddish - or anything else for that matter - as long as at least one major aspect concerns German!

If such questions bother you, ignore the corresponding tag.

I would find it sad if we narrowed our topics. In the unlikely case of such questions taking over: Area51.

Answer 6

We could send a ambassador to "Mein Judäa" and ask, if we can send all new questions over there; they already have a Tag "Yiddish" with 3 Pages of questions: https://judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/yiddish

Else, I think as long as there isn't an own Yiddish board, we should accept such questions as related, even if those questions stay open for months. If there is low interest and knowledge, there will maybe no such board for a very long time. If such a thing evolves, we could move all the questions marked Yiddish over there. If such a thing evolves, we could lead all following questions marked Yiddish over there. (correction due to hint from Martin.

There seem to be some people who think, that suitable questions should be answerable from most native speakers of German, and since most of them only know two dozens of Yiddish words but probably not knowing, that they are Yiddish, it wouldn't fit here. But look at other sites, for example SO. There you may ask questions about Plankalkül which nearly nobody can answer, but of course they are on topic.

I guess some people fear about the 100% answer quote. Don't make yourself sick.

Answer 7

The question is good and must be asked. But hey, guys! As long as we are talking about 14 questions out of thousands, some of them even obviously related to German language, this is a waste of time. I was horrified to see so many void discussions running in circles.

Does Frisian have its place in this site? Should Swiss dialects go together in a single sub-SE? Can Dutch and Afrikaans coexist under the same heading? Is Québecois too far from Europe to be handled with and by French speakers? All this is irrelevant, if it only concerns a fraction of the "mother site".

Should Alsatian be sent to the French section to ask for the meaning "Hol mer de coq ussm jaddin!" (or whatever they would say/write)? If you did not understand up to now that languages are not drawers for Erbsenzähler ("pea counters"), but a moving continuum without borders and fences, then you are not at the right place here.

If a Yiddish word or sentence needs explanation, which is requested on this (our) site, because the poster thinks that German speakers know the answer, then it must be allowed here. S/he is probably more likely to find an explanation among the millions of German natives and hundreds of language variants than in a specific Yiddish places. And if not, s/he will go look elsewhere. Don't worry, if difficult questions take more time and stay unanswered for longer. They will not spoil your nicely arranged German garden (like the cock), they will enrich it like rare flowers.

So please, close this question. Spend your time more pleasantly. Do not push out anybody. And when the number of questions deriving from the principal Contemporary High German (Modernes Hochdeutsch) exceed a couple of percents one day, then maybe come up with a proposal to group all related questions in a "Close-To-German-SE" and not just one type of them.

Answer 8

Yiddish is not a German dialect (like Schwäbisch or Bairisch), and it is not a dead, ancient variation of German (like Middle High German). Yiddish is a living language with about 1.5 million speakers, and so it is one of the 10 living Germanic languages with more than one million active speakers.

This is the list of those languages:

1. English: approximately 340 million native speakers and 1500 million people who speak it as 2^nd or 3^rd language
2. German: 95 million native speakers, 80 million as 2^nd or 3^rd language
3. Dutch: 23 million speakers
4. Swedish: 10 million speakers
5. Afrikaans: 6 million native speakers, plus 10 million as 2^nd language
6. Danish: 5.5 million speakers
7. Norwegian (counting Bokmål plus Nynorsk): 5 million speakers
8. Low German: 5 million 1^st and 2^nd language speakers (status as language is disputed)
9. Yiddish: 1.5 million speakers (before the holocaust there was 12 million speakers)
10. Scots: 1.5 million speakers (status as language is disputed)

Other living Germanic languages, each with less then 1 million speakers are: Frisian, Icelandic, Faroese, Luxembourgish, Pennsylvania Dutch and Plautdietsch. The status as language is also disputed at some of this small languages.

But the status of Yiddish as a language is not disputed. Old High German is the common root of German and Yiddish. But then, 1000 years ago from today, the German branch developed from Old High German to Middle High German and some centuries later to New High German.

But the Yiddish branch developed from Old High German 1000 years ago to Old Yiddish and later into two branches of New Yiddish, which are West Yiddish and East Yiddish. But West Yiddish died out in the 18^th century. So when you refer to modern Yiddish, you mean East Yiddish.

Yiddish and Ukrainian was the two official languages in the Ukrainian People's Republic (1917 - 1920).

Conclusio

Yiddish is a independently and living language. So Yiddish belongs to the same class a English or Dutch.

This means: If questions about Yiddish are on-toppic in German-SE, then questions about English or Dutch must be on-toppic too. But such questions are off-topic. And therefore:

Questions about Yiddish are off-topic