German Reacts to Yiddish! | Feli from Germany

[@FelifromGermany]

How much could YOU understand? And what's your linguistic background? 😊 Let me know in the comments!👇 Check out these videos I mentioned: ▸20 German words AMERICANS USE all the time! kzbin.info/www/bejne/l4vShZt6bbN8oLc ▸German Reacts to Pennsylvania Dutch kzbin.info/www/bejne/mJi9hK2irtN9h5I ▸German Reacts to Texas German kzbin.info/www/bejne/bIDdh4qVoM-Iqs0

[@waelfaraj6705]

I speak Arabic as a first language and it has some common words with both Hebrew and Spanish ...

[@josueveguilla9069]

Off-Topic. What are your thoughts about the Climate Alarmists targeting a Monet painting in Germany/Deutschland?

[@yuvalrottem]

So im an Israeli (Ashkenazi Jewish) living in Berlin. When my father comes to visit us here, he speaks Yiddish to locals and they answer in German, and usually it works. The Yiddish in the American (ex hasssidi) video is definitely American Yiddish, different from the version of my grandparents.

[@michaelgrabner8977]

She said "Tata" which is father/"Dad"basically and not "aunt"...and "Baba" is grandfather...both is originally slavic..and I think a mealmart is where you buy kosher meat. trachten = altes deutsches Wort für "etwas erreichen wollen"/"streben nach"..zB ."Ich trachte nach Erfolg"

[@josephhummel798]

Hello how are you doing today my dear friend..??😇🤗

[@mar4kl]

Speaking as a Jewish man, I want to say I was touched by this video. You clearly put a lot of time and effort into learning about Yiddish, and to understand Yiddish is to understand Jews, at least the Ashkenazic ones. There are a few things I'll point out that may help clear up the things that don't really translate from Yiddish to German (or any other language, for that matter): 1. Yiddish was - and still is, for those who still speak it - a live language. Your research correctly said that Yiddish was initially derived from German, as it was spoken in the 9th and 10th centuries, mixed with Hebrew and Aramaic. (Incidentally, Sephardic Jews also developed a language of their own, called Ladino, which was initially derived from Hebrew, Aramaic and Spanish as it was spoken around the same time, as those Jews migrated to the region including and around Spain and Portugal.) Why Aramaic? Because Aramaic wasn't simply "the language of learning". It was the vernacular of the Jewish people starting from the time of the Babylonian expulsion. You might say that the dialect of Aramaic in which the Talmud (the expansive, 64-volume anthology of Jewish law, which includes the discussions/arguments of the rabbis quoted within it) is written was the "original Yiddish", as it includes words and phrases from Hebrew as well as some from French, German and other languages spoken by Jews at the time. Yiddish and Ladino speakers have done the same. Since our first expulsion from Israel, Jews have developed and maintained insider languages. This served several purposes, including a means to evade persecution, a way to identify one another and a way to keep our heritage alive (more on that coming up). And wherever Jews have lived, they have incorporated words of the languages spoken around them into Yiddish. That was the way they dealt with the need to come up with new words for new things and new situations. That's why, in addition to Hebrew, Aramaic and German words, Yiddish now includes Russian, Polish, Hungarian, Latvian and even English words -- and that list isn't exhaustive! So, when Suri from Williamsburg seemed to drop a few recognizable English words, she was still speaking Yiddish. 2. Yiddish is more than just a simple language. It's infused with Jewish law, customs, heritage and culture. Many of the phrases you find confusing are actually references to interpretations of Bible stories, lessons that most religious Jews learned as children in "shul" (more on *that* in moment) and Jewish customs. For example, Suri mentioned a wedding - the word she used was "khassineh". The Hebrew word for a bridegroom is a "khatan", pronounced "khassan" in Ashkenazic Hebrew pronunciation, and in texts of Jewish law, one of the words used for a wedding is "khatunah"; "khassunah" in Ashkenazic pronunciation, which was slurred to "khassineh" in Yiddish. One of the words she used for "right", as in "correct", was "tahkeh". That word comes from the Aramaic used in the Talmud, and a better translation of it, both in Aramaic and Yiddish, would be "Precisely!" Yiddish borrowed that word from Aramaic because pretty much every religious Jewish child born in the last 2000 years knew what it meant. The next segment you played reminded me of another phrase that a Yiddish speaker might use that would probably not make any sense to you: "klop en al kheit". In Yiddish, "klop" means to hit. (In German as well?) But the "al kheit" in that phrase would be unfamiliar because it refers to a lengthy confession of sins that is recited eight times on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. Each line in that confession begins with the words "al kheit", which is Hebrew for "for the sin...", and then goes on to name the sin. When we say each line, we hit the left side of the chest, in the vicinity of the heart, hence, "klop en al kheit". But there is still something lost in translation, because a Yiddish speaker using that phrase in day-to-day conversation probably isn't talking about Yom Kippur services, confessing sins or even sincerely apologizing. Most often, that phrase is used to facetiously describe someone going over the top to mask an INsincere apology. For example, "The storekeeper who ripped me off yesterday was crying and moaning and really *klopping en al kheit*, but he wouldn't offer me a refund." 3. The Yiddish word "shul" refers both to a synagogue and a school, specifically, a school of Jewish religious studies. That's because in many Jewish communities, both Jewish prayer services and Jewish learning takes place in the synagogue. In smaller Jewish communities, the synagogue may provide the only Jewish school. In larger ones, the community supports one or more separate Jewish schools, which usually combine both secular studies and Jewish ones, but the synagogue still hosts many educational activities, both for children and adults. 4. German and English aren't the only languages into which Yiddish words have crept. Jews have historically had an outsize impact in the countries we've lived in, including contributions to the economy, academia, sports and entertainment. I suspect if you look at all the languages of countries that have ever had significant Ashkenazic Jewish populations, you'll find Yiddish words here and there. Of course, the adoption of words always went in both directions, so it can be hard to tell if, say, Polish got the word from Yiddish or Yiddish got the word from Polish! Looking forward to your next video!

[@Valariot]

Thank you for writing this interesting comment. :)

[@davidstokar887]

Terrific response

[@davidstokar887]

I was surprised to learn that a Yiddish word made it into modern German!

[@Icewolf81]

Thanks for the explanation.

[@StephenRosenbach]

Thank you Mark, yours is one of the most useful and beautiful comments I've ever found on KZbin. Also, I agree with you - I was also touched by Feli's wonderful video. I've been taking German lessons at community college (I'm now 72 years old,) and my professor has enjoyed my bringing examples of Yiddish to her. Our cantor asked me to sing "Zog Nit Kayn Mol" (Partizaner Lied) during our Yom Kipper service, and afterwards, I brought the transliterated lyrics to show my professor. She could understand almost all of it (except for the occasional Hebrew or Slavic word, e.g., "...unzser gvure un unzer mut..." "Mut" is perfectly good modern German, but I had to explain "gvure" as a derivation from Hebrew "gevurah."

[@burnham4557]

I'm a Yiddish native learning German rn. I'm gonna say at the beginning I was only able to catch a few words but after 4 months I was able to hold entire conversations in German

[@Rufio_Cristiforus_Tucarus]

Isn't the grammar mostly the same? Yiddish is basically a High German dialect with a bunch of Hebrew thrown into it.

[@oliverschmid605]

A lot of the yiddish words still a part of the swabian dialect. I heared here a lot of words my grandparents used a lot. For example in swabian a onion is a zwiebele like yiddisch

[@hayati6374]

@@oliverschmid605 In Hamburg onion is Zwiebel so it’s also just an e less 😅 it’s all pretty understandable. If your ear is trained to listen to different dialects it’s quick to learn Also for as a Spanish and German speaker it’s harder to understand Portuguese through Spanish than Yiddish through German :) (you didn’t ask but I always find these comparisons interesting)

[@reuvenlax4635]

@@oliverschmid605 In Yiddish adding an el on the end of a word makes it a diminutive. You can also add ele to make it an even stronger diminutive

[@philipptielmann]

@@reuvenlax4635 that’s the swabian way of doing it :-)

[@AdamCooperman]

I'm a secular Jew who's been learning Yiddish for the last few years and I just wanted to thank you for making this video and bringing more attention to the wonderful language.

[@AdamCooperman]

BTW, one of the words you struggled to understand several times and is fairly common in Yiddish is 'mishpokhe' (which comes from Hebrew, so 100% understandable) and means 'family'. If you hang around Ashkenazi Jews, even when they're speaking English, it's a pretty common word.

[@hello-cn5nh]

"Secular Jew" 😅😅😅

[@larrybell1859]

What is a secular Jew?

[@AdamCooperman]

@@larrybell1859 on the off chance you're actually respectfully asking, Judaism is what's called an ethno-religion. I have Jewish family, I celebrate Jewish holidays, I even pray sometimes, but I don't consider myself religious and I don't believe in G-d.

[@larrybell1859]

@@AdamCooperman Okay, it is just Judaism is a religion and not an ethnic or cultural thing. But other sources say other wise.

[@ravinmarokef]

As someone who partially knows Hebrew and knows functionally no German, it was amusing when the only things you didn't understand were the only things I did understand. Thank you so much for this video!

[@Proud_Troll]

I'm currently trying to learn Hebrew and German at the same time, but I already have a running start since I speak Yiddish and grew up learning the Torah.

Same

[@mateusz_szlomo_gryciuk]

same here mate i mean, technically i used to study german a little bit, but it was long time ago, so even tho i got some things (english helped too), i too would say the hebrew bits were the easiest ones דרך אגבהספקולציה על ה"חשבון" שזה "בעל" גרמה לי לחייך ביותר, במיוחד אם חושבים על זה מנקודת המבט של בן האדם שאינו דובר עברית, זה בעצם לא אי-הגיוני

[@spvillano]

@@mateusz_szlomo_gryciuk the owner of the business my father worked many decades for used to bounce me on his lap and asked me to call him Zadeh. An interesting word, as that originated in Persia. So many languages went into making Yiddish, reflecting some very, very hard travels over the millennia. Yiddish can provide a toehold on an amazing number of languages, easing learning those novel languages. And learning is always a laudable goal, I figure I'll stop learning a week after I'm dead - unless I'm too busy learning and forget to stop. ;)

[@vesperblack7391]

As a native Yiddish speaker of the dialogue from the first video, and a German speaker I first must say that you did a great job. And that tate, is indeed father. But tante does mean aunt in Yiddish as well. It’s so interesting to see someone exploring my native language. Thank you for making this video 😊

[@Lagolop]

But sometimes the use of "mumma" (not sure of the spelling) is used for aunt as well. I once used tante when talking to one Yiddish speaker and she said "THAT'S German". But my own family fluent native Yiddish speakers until my generation and they used TANTE for aunt.

[@miamorg2352]

In my German dialect (tyrolian) we call dad tattå with a very similar pronunciation.

@@miamorg2352nice å you got there

[@RunawayTrain2502]

Tante also means aunt in Dutch actually

[@bobbolondz2701]

Is "tate" synonymous with "foter?"

[@StephenRosenbach]

I very much enjoyed this one, Feli! I am 72 years old, born in Amberg (Bavaria) in 1950, at that time in the zone of American occupation. My mother's family were Jews from Poland who had managed to avoid capture in WWII, and we were displaced persons in Germany when I was born. My parents told me I spoke German until age 2, and I imaging also Yiddish, although I probably could not distinguish between the two at such an early age. I continued to speak Yiddish with my grandparents and great-aunts and -uncles probably until age 7 or 8, at which time, I would answer in English to their Yiddish. Over the following few years, I lost my ability to converse in Yiddish. I always knew a lot of German vocabulary, but never knew even a bit of German grammar until I started taking courses at community college the last few years. I can now carry a simple conversation in Yiddish and German. As time goes on, I"m finding that many new German vocabulary words are also good Yiddish, and that is delightful for me.

[@FelifromGermany]

YESSS thank you haha I just blocked the account. They keep popping up like crazy...

[@lightwarrior1]

Feli thank you❤🤗 I was born in South America after my family flew from Germany in 1939, my grandfather never taught us German or Yiddish. and really wanted to know the difference between them. You did it perfectly 💕 also the input about the history of the language was great 🤓😎💕 watching the video I noticed that the things you didn't understand were the only ones I understood 😃😅 the Hebrew words, the Aramaic words and the names given to people only as part of the custom/tradition, it's really not something you can know without being in an ashkenazy community. Thank you very much 🙂💕🙏 this video has an additional value for me 😊🌻 Thanks for the great videos, I really like your channel 😎💐 Greetings from Israel.

[@nudlezo.4627]

As a swiss german speaker, I understand quite much (beside the Hebrew and Aramaic expressions). You definitely should do a Swiss German one next

[@jessicaely2521]

I can answer this pretty quickly. People who live close to the Swiss boarder (Lörrach) yes they do understand Swiss German. The people from Northern Germany (Hamburg) most likely they don't understand. My husband is Swiss and we lived in Basel so he had people from Lörrach or Weil am Rhein area working with him and he spoke Swiss German. Usually people understood him. Basel Deutsch isnt to far of a stretch from Hochdeutsch. It isnt like Bern Deutsch or Valais Deutsch or something like that. One time he went to a customer's desk (he was in the IT business and set up computers etc) and started to speak his normal dialect and the woman looked at him like he had 6 heads. She had no clue what he was saying. She was from Hamburg. I feel like native Swiss are better at understanding dialects than a lot of Germans. My husband and his friends amaze me. They knew Plattdeutsch and even Pennsylvania and Texas Deutsch.

[@nudlezo.4627]

@@jessicaely2521 yeah northern germany is hard. Only the turkish kebab vendor understood us (even speaking what we consider standard German), because he had family in Switzerland

[@jonjon5137]

so you don't speak standard german in switzerland?

[@MAKgargos]

@@jonjon5137 Absolutely not

[@nudlezo.4627]

@@jonjon5137 I can if I absolutely have to, mostly because I did an erasmus semester in Berlin, but we mostly use Swiss german sentence structure and a lot of helvetisms even then. I was just laughing out loud at the supermarket. They sell German oat milk which according to the packing can be used for small mice 🐁 (müsli). My generation and younger only uses dialect in written communication

[@rayconstantine6761]

My genetic makeup is 100% Ashkenazi Jewish. My parents spoke a good deal of Yiddish in the home, though I really have a limited ability to speak the language myself. My son-in-law is from a small town near Munich, and we've had many conversations about the similarities and differences between the two languages. I was amazed at how much German I knew. I've since visited Germany several times, and I feel I would fit in perfectly with the German mindset, both in terms of quality over quantity and of simple pragmatism (I learned that word is about the same in German). I have, in fact, purchased three BMWs over the years. Unfortunately, my parents (they're both gone now) retained their animosity towards Germany long after the war, as our family lost many in the concentration camps. Knowing what I know of Germany today, were my parents still alive (I'm 70 years old, by the way), I'm sure I could provide them with a more up-to-date perspective. My best to you, and keep up the good work. Your videos are infinitely enjoyable, and it is clear you enjoy what you're doing.

[@Eysenbeiss]

BULLSHIT. There is NO actual DNA-test that could show that, cause being jewish is NOTHING genetical and even "ashkenazi" is NOT. What can be found are semitite traces, or those of other regions and tribes, but what you wrote is a complete LIE - that would be like someone saying "I am 100 percent roman-catholic Venetian" Even down in Israel, there are only but a few families left, whose members have more than 80 percent of semite DNA.

[@mariascheu817]

Greetings from Germany. If you ever have the chance to listen old German, as it was spoken in the middle age, you might understand all. Our nowadays German is called high German. Search for middle high German - Mittelhochdeutsch. It is very similar to yiddish. And if you like to find out something about your lost relatives, look at the Arolsen archives. There are all documents of the fashists times. Be sure, no name of the victims never will be forgotten.

[@Sara88890]

I was one of the people who requested a video on Yiddish after watching your great Pennsylvania Dutch and Texas German videos. This was even better than I expected, I loved learning the history, and your insight as a native German speaker was awesome. Duolingo recently came out with a Yiddish course and I've been learning it's and it's a lot of fun. I took German in high school and while not fluent by any means, once getting a hang of some of the pronunciation differences of certain sounds, and reading the phonetic sentences, I could hear/see the similarities much more.

[@Joseph-on7nf]

I'm native Yiddish speaker but I only started German recently. I can watch German video's and somewhat understand with captions but pretty early in this (I also speak Hebräisch) I was pleasantly surprised with this video because most of what I've watched on this including the ones you reacted to, they barley understood anything but you you understand basically everything, maybe because you are better at finding the root of the word, I'm not quite sure but great video! Really enjoyed it!

[@justus6632]

finding the roots of the words is really what makes me enjoy this kind of contet too! maybe a person from the netherlands would have a good shot in geussing the context too! Learning languages is great for every person it trains your brain and also helps connecting whith other cultures so much. Greetings from Germany!

[@Toddel1234567]

I know a few Yiddish words, such as you are Meschugge. This one is still used. I'm from Germany and I can understand Yiddish well if it's not spoken too quickly. Many greetings

[@jasonwiley798]

Williamsburg is a neighborhood in Brooklyn

[@justus6632]

@@Toddel1234567 me too i could not really call them out but i am guessing there might be quite a lot of them in the german language

[@johnjacobs7426]

@@Toddel1234567 fun fact... Meshuga is actually a Hebrew word..

[@zeldadeutsch3957]

Yiddish is my first language, but I now speak primarily English. My family is from Hungary originally, so I decided to learn Hungarian recently, which is a tough language to learn. Whenever I’m too tired to focus but don’t want to lose my Duolingo streak, I do a few German lessons. Super easy for me, feels kind of like cheating.

[@akoden2667]

Omg Hungarian is so hard! Ppl said it's their 'superpower' and as a linguist I was like... Yeah ok. It's prolly not that hard. It's harder for me to grasp than Japanese is

[@Proud_Troll]

Agreed. The difficulty for me, a Yiddish speaker, in german is the overly gendered language. I can't stand it. The sentence structure is also confusing. Some words are also structured differently in german, like, in yiddish, you might say, "Ich gehe jetzt essen frishtig." But on German you'd say "Ich gehe jetzt frühstücken" or something.

[@alex.profi27]

​@@akoden2667uhm,hungarian is a hard language. You should check out romanian or slavic languages or nordic ones. Japanese is only hard when it comes to pronunciation and the grammar not being a familiar one for people who speak european languages.

[@giacomocasanova4058]

If your ancestors we're hungarian jews then they Spike German.

[@akoden2667]

I love that we live in a time where German and Yiddish speakers can converse freely. Like others have said, I am touched by your video. It shows you want to understand more about the Jewish community. In a time with so much antisemitism (well there's never been a time without a lot of antisemitism really), building bridges is key.

[@MichaelHoare-bh5pg]

German speakers can understand about 80% of Yiddish when spoken but not when it's written down because of the Hebrew alphabet.

[@KelikakuCoutin]

In Yiddish there's also a word for "mothertongue," it's pretty common, (מאמע לשון) "mama loshen." Literally "mother's language." The German/English/Yiddish word "original" are all the same, except that the 'g' is a hard 'g' in German/Yiddish - which gets the English pronunciation here. Just her accent took the American pronunciation. The Yiddish for 'daddy' (טאטע) "tateh" and the German word for 'aunt' (tante) sound the same. In Yiddish, 'tante' is also a way to say "aunt." The word for "synagogue" is the same as the word for "school" which is schul or shul, which is 'Schule'. Jews pray in a "school" in other words! 'Gonif' is the word for "thief" in Yiddish. Thanks for the content. Keep up the good work. בס״ד

[@amham48]

Very well done and researched. Many years ago my friend and I went to Austria to ski and stayed in a guest house. My friend spoke Yiddish and he was able to converse with the owner for all the basics we needed. The owner spoke no other language than Austrian German.

[@arimermelstein9167]

You did very well, Feli. You basically got tripped up by the Hebrew words. As someone who speaks Hebrew and am learning yiddish now, those are actually the easiest words for me to understand and the more German words are still tricky for me.

[@heinrich.hitzinger]

This comment has attracted a bunch of fancy shmancy bots...

[@arimermelstein9167]

@@heinrich.hitzinger yeah, and my comment was made in good faith. G-d bless the Internet.

[@birgithofe-haidbauer3610]

I am currently practising Yiddish on Duolingo and it's surprisingly easy to pick up for me (my Austrian dialect helps), the challenge is using the Hebrew characters but I really enjoy practising it. I wish I could practise speaking it with someone.

[@heinrich.hitzinger]

@@birgithofe-haidbauer3610 At least Yiddish has an alphabet as opposed to Hebrew using an abjad...

[@markdavid1208]

Also tripped up on the proper names such as MEALMART, which nobody should be expected to know.

[@lisahirschlozano823]

So interesting! My father's family were German immigrants who came to the New York area from the late 1800s through the 1930s. They were not Jewish but many in their community were, and my father used many Yiddish words that I picked up and now my daughter even uses. I ended up moving to Los Angeles with many Jewish friends and picked up even more Yiddish. Some of my favorite words are in Yiddish!

[@Lagolop]

Hirsch is a very common Jewish name.

[@herrlotzloffel2141]

Hirsch is the german word for deer. It’s a common name in Germany.

[@Lagolop]

@@herrlotzloffel2141 It's a common Jewish name too. I have relatives with that surname.

[@KelikakuCoutin]

@@Lagolop It's also a given name, the Yiddish version of צְבִי, which in English means 'deer', so anyone named 'Herschel' or 'Hersh' in Yiddish is often צְבִי in Hebrew.

[@PalemoonTwilight]

I learned to speak German in high school. My best friends mom spoke Yiddish. Much to our surprise, I was practicing my German, and she answered me and Yiddish and we could understand each other. I do worry about Yiddish being a lost language because most of the speakers are quite a bit older and the language isn’t spoken that much.🌙💜☮️

[@brightbkh07]

I am trying to learn to speak German and your channel popped up here and I subscribed immediately. Your English is so awesome I thought you were born here when I first heard you speak (until I listened to your intro) haha! Great job with your American accent! Thanks for all the interesting facts and videos!

[@ProjectEnglishII]

I'm Jewish, so grew up with Yiddish expressions. I studied German in university. Later, I took Yiddish lessons. I could understand everything my teacher said to me, but would answer in German. He told me that my German was good, but my Yiddish was crap. I had to learn to actually read the Hebrew characters, so that I could see the vowel shifts (I'm a visual learner). That was a long time ago and I've forgotten how to read it, but I can still understand some of it, especially the words that are closer to German.

[@kenhenderson1762]

Williamsburg is a predominantly Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn. Mel Brooks was born and raised there. He sometimes used Yiddish words and phrases in his movies for comic effects. For example in Blazing Saddles he played an Indian chief who spoke Yiddish.

[@chancemiller9340]

Sometimes?... SOMETIMES??? He ALWAYS dropped in Yiddish in his movies. (Though he is hardly the only one in the entertainment industry to do so.)

[@matirolland6180]

האסו געזעען אין דיינע לעבן? Such a good scene

[@matirolland6180]

*האסטו

[@RandomNonsense1985]

"THEY'RE DARKER THAN US!"

[@chancemiller9340]

@@RandomNonsense1985 kzbin.info/www/bejne/pJC9oKabgrWLnKc

[@stevenskorich7878]

As always, most entertaining! I am a native of Minnesota, so I speak English (flavored with Canadian, Finnish, German, Serbo-Croatian, Swedish, and Norwegian). I have high school French, university German, and I can curse a bit in Serbian from listening to my father. There are so many Yiddish words floating around in novels, film, and TV especially. My favorites are: gonif (thief), starker (bad-ass), klutz, putz, schlemiel, schmuck, and zaftig. Zaftig refers often to an opulently endowed female, but it can also mean rich or ample. Literally, it's like saftig - Juicy. Keep it coming, Feli! Thank you!😎😎

[@heinrich.hitzinger]

Don't forget bronfen. :)

[@johnp8131]

Interresting? I'm English my Wife is German from the Dutch border area, I'll have to ask her what she make of those words. Some actually translate quite well into older London slang (not rhyming slang). Quite a strong Jewish influence in London over the centuries for sure.

[@billrener4897]

Years ago, when I still lived in New Jersey, a business burned down. A Jewish police detective at the scene was able to identify the arsonist. The guy's personalized license plate read FINOG. The detective realized that the word was gonif backwards.

[@heinrich.hitzinger]

@@billrener4897 What a thief...

[@billrener4897]

@@heinrich.hitzinger The arsonist was paid by the business owner. The businessman was attempting to commit insurance fraud. Anyway, Heinrich, I hope you stay honest and are never tempted to become a finog.

[@morcowitz]

Hey Feli 😇 My name is Almog and I am from Israel 🇮🇱 so I am native Hebrew speaker 😇😇😇 First I hope you enjoy in the October Fest🍺🍺🍺🍻🍻🍻 At the end of your video you mentioned 5 German words which derived from Yiddish. As a Hebrew speaker I can recognize the Hebrew root of 4 out of the 5 words. The words are: Ganove, knast, zoff and Tacheles. Ganove is very easy one to explain. The Hebrew word for a steal is Gneva and basically every Hebrew word with the 3 radicals G-N-V mean something of stealing. Knast is also an easy one - in Hebrew the word Knas means a fine - a payment of a wrong doing. Zoff is a trickier word. Today in German you pronounce Z as a combination of an English T & Z sound, but in an earlier times while the the early Latin pronunciation was still dominant its sounded as an English Z of today. And this sound is very close to the S sound. So probably the original pronunciation was like sof (like the English word soft just with out the T). And this word sound very close to the Hebrew word Sayif (begin with a diphthong and end with an If like the English word if) This word means sword, and you can see the connection between a fight and a sword. Tacheles also a tricky one. In ancient Hebrew words that ended with the letter Tav ת ended with an English th sound (like in the word bath). The Ashkenazi Jews pronounce this ending as an English S. Today in Israel we usually pronounce it as an English T. In Hebrew there is a a word Tachlit which mean purpose and also the true essence of a thing. Also in modern Hebrew we have a slang word from Yiddish too - Tachles. Which means the straight forward meaning of a thing. Now after you read all this, I want to tell you that I really enjoy from your channel and all the knowledge you gifts us all.

[@roesi1985]

Thank you for this insight! As someone interested in learning the Hebrew language, I really enjoyed this.

[@MrPinoCavallo]

Thanks for the explanation. I'm from Frankfurt which used to be a city with a high Jewish population until the holocaust. We still have words like "Schmock" or "Babbel" (= speaking) in our dialect. Jews used to have a huge cultural impact on my region, which - unfortunately - due to historical reasons is widely lost.

[@starpeople134]

Yiddish is the same like alemanic and swabian languange a dialect we speak in siuth west germany , but the northern germany will not understand it or only some words. You cannot compare it to the so called hichdeutsch or written german you have to compare it with what they speak in south west germany and we can understand yiddish

[@chartreux1532]

German here, not jewish but i work as Historian for the IFZ in Munich and i currently research a lot of origins of Words that are used in Germany but adopted from Hebrew->Yiddish but also Words that Ashkenazi Jews adopted from German (like Dreck, Schlepp/Schleppen etc.) Thanks for your informative Response. I would also like to add one Mystery that Germans adopted from German Jews who spoke yiddish: On New Years Eve we Germans wish each other "Ein Guten Rutsch in das neue Jahr!" which literally translates to "A good slide into the new year!" The words in that Sentence are all German, but the Saying itself originates from German Jews and i always wondered if that's a saying originating from Hebrew in some way because the first Sources in Historical German Documents mentioning that all say it's adopted from German Jews speaking Yiddish-German. Is there a Hebrew Saying for when a New Year comes around? or something that resembles wishing someone "A good slide" ? Prost & Cheers from Berchtesgaden in the Bavarian Alps

[@roesi1985]

@@chartreux1532 Afaik, this refers to Rosch Haschana, the Jewish New Year. "Good Rosch" = "Good New Year". Basically the same as in German.

[@LaJauja]

This was so interesting! I am a speaker of Transilvanian Saxon (Siebenbürger Sächsisch), also a language / German dialect that has its origin in the German of the Middle Ages / the Franconian dialect around the Rhein and today's Luxemburg (like Eastern Yiddish, at least this is what I read). It is the language of German speaking settlers in today's Romania (along with standard German which was spoken at church or at school there) that once emigrated in the 12th century to Transilvania and kept their language alive throughout the years. Today there are very few speakers left since a lot of these settlers came back to Germany in the 90s, so their children often don't speak the language anymore. I found it astonishing that I understood a good amount of Yiddish in this video. I think it helped that both the languages have their origins in the Middle High German / the Franconian dialect of the 12th century. Then both the groups migrated to Eastern Europe but took different paths and adapted different words of the language that they were surrounded with, also Yiddish has a certain amount of Hebrew which I personally don't understand. There might still Transilvanian Saxon communities in the US (and even more in Germany), since a few migrated to the US at some point. If you find speakers nowadays it would be interesting how much you understand 🙂

[@eddihaskell]

I can understand her! I grew up with Yiddish speaking grandparents and great aunts and uncles, and I had no idea what they were saying, but I took 3 years of German in High School and could understand them. They then switched to Lithuanian. LOL!

[@mrtech2259]

As a native Yiddish speaker (from Montreal Canada), who also speaks English as well as German (that I learned from living in Zurich for a couple of years), I thoroughly enjoyed this video. Thanks Feli! 🥳🥳

[@greenmachine5600]

No French?

[@mrtech2259]

@@greenmachine5600 yes, but less fluent

[@AtlantaBill]

These guys are native to Montreal and learned Yiddish there in grade school. kzbin.info/www/bejne/n4G2fYqXqtyqkK8

[@tylersmith3139]

​@@greenmachine5600many English-speaking montrealers are of Jewish descent and and the English of Jewish Montreal is heavily influenced by Yiddish speakers/Eastern European Jews so it makes that some Montreal Jews would have Yiddish as their first language.

[@myopinions1]

I appreciate your research that you did for the video. I've never seen someone explain Yiddish so well even most yidden don't know the history of the language.

[@YoreHistory]

As a Dutch German speaker I think I have an easier time because it has a lot of Dutch words as well. Was fun video!

[@deutschmitpurple2918]

👍👍

[@germaniatv1870]

Do you mean Deutsch with Dutch? 😄

[@eddihaskell]

When I went to college in Amsterdam, they were amazed that I could do the native g gutteral sound (as in gracht) so easily! My grandparents spoke Yiddish!

[@Nitzpitz]

As a Dutch, German and Hebrew speaker I can understand almost everything when written down, but in speech it is still hard.

[@Lagolop]

@@eddihaskell It's funny tome how so many people have a hard time with the "KH" sound (unless they are Dutch or German), but it is so natural for me.

[@donrumata_]

That was so much fan! You were pretty good, understood A LOT and should not probably criticize yourself so much. Thanks for the video, you made my day!

[@anzelchen307]

I come from Lower Saxony in Germany. My grandpa was born in Breslau / Silesia (today part of Poland). One of my grandmas came from Volhynia, a region in the borderland of Poland, the Ukraine and Belarus. Both spoke a light dialect like the yddish speakers from Williamsburg and from New York. The backround of this Dialekt is, that many people in this regions were jewish and has spoken german before the World War 2 and the holocaust came over the world. So many people, who died in the Nazi concentration camps was jewish people from there. Thank you very much for this video!!

[@ArthurIsaenko]

By "tata" she mentioned her daddy, this is what that means in many slavonic languages

[@NenadTrajkovic]

True Mama-mother,Baba-grandmother,Tata-father,Deda-grandfather….for most slavonic languages

[@SethGolovin]

The interesting thing is that the most common way to say Dad in Yiddish is actually tate. (Pronounced Taa-tee), and Mom is mame, same pronunciation, grandma Bube, and so on. But I’ve seen many Yiddish speakers from Slavic nations use the Tata, mama, baba/buba, pronunciation instead. Oddly, the Yiddish word for grandfather is zaydee (I honestly have no idea how to spell that in English so that is the phonetic spelling). I’ve heard some people use Zayda but I’m not sure what if any language that is pulling from. My grandparents were Polish Yiddish speakers and they used the correct Bube and Zaydee, but I knew other Polish Jews who used Zayda despite that not being the word for Grandfather in Polish.

[@hmvollbanane1259]

I thought it might have been derived from Vater (fata) - father as she used it when describing a conversation with someone else and later also said Papa, which would be daddy in German, when talking directly about her father

[@tednemtzow2796]

@@SethGolovin The Russian word for "grandfather" is dyedushka (the "y" pronounced consonantally as in "yellow"). It's not hard to imagine the "dyeh" transformed to "zeh": "Zayda" has a Slavic origin, like "bubbe" (babushka in Russian, bobcha in misspelled Polish).

[@Lagolop]

@@SethGolovin I think Zaide (zayde) is Ukrainian and of course used in Yiddish too.

[@reuvenlax4635]

Great video! My wife is a (semi) native German speaker, and we've had a lot of conversations about the difference between Yiddish and German. Some comments: In Yiddish, mensch also generically means a person. It's also often used to mean a good person, but that depends on context (and tone of voice, etc.) A spiel also means game in Yiddish (note: Yiddish uses "a" instead of "ein") and "tzu spielen" is to play. The first person say "tell" was interesting. The word for "tell" in Yiddish is "derzeilen" and it sounded like she said "dertellen" - sort of a hybrid between the English word and the Yiddish word. "tatte" is Yiddish for dad (fater is more forma, tatte is what most people would say) - I think you heard it as tante which means aunt :) to think in Yiddish is "zu trachten" which is very different from the German denken flegt is used to say someone used to do something or tended to do something. "er flegt geyn" -> he used to go Definitely a number of Hebrew words that confused you :) Also all these speakers had different accents, and the vowel pronunciation changes quite a bit between the accents. There are also a number of words that exist in both Yiddish and German, but have different meanings! Darfen in Yiddish means to need to do something - ich darf essen means I need to eat! Very different than German. (ich muss essen also exists but is much stronger - more "I must eat"). Mir means "we" instead of "me". These differences make the language even harder for German speakers to understands.

[@malieba1443]

it's interesting. So "darfen" is similar to "es bedarf". " Tatte" and "mir' we say in Southtyrolean dialect as well

[@malieba1443]

flegt is similar to pflegt - er pflegte zu tun - also the same meaning. Trachten-betrachten.

[@reuvenlax4635]

@@malieba1443 I have very fond memories of South Tyrol! Very cool to see some of the similarities between these languages.

[@Taryag613]

Regarding the pronunciation variances, what I find very interesting is that those who use the south-eastern/galitzianer pronunciation when speaking yiddish incorporate the same vowel adjustments in Hebrew. It's also ironic, that pre-holocaust, this Galitzianer accent was seen as low-class, analogous to a deep-south drawl accent in the USA. Fast forward to today, and Duolingo has chosen this pronunciation for their Yiddish course, because it is the pronunciation used by Chassidic Jews, the only people still actually speaking Yiddish as a main language.

[@danielnmaryannyoder]

My! I think you're doing better in understanding Yiddish than I. I am a Pennsylvania Deutsch Muttersprachler and I learned standard German too. I am currently at B2 with German. Ich liebe Deutsch.

[@roesi1985]

Dann weiter so! Es freut uns, wenn jemand unsere Sprache lernen möchte.

[@ydotan]

You're marvelous. As a native Hebrew speaker who's learning German, listening to you deciphering some words which were obvious for me because of their relation to Hebrew, and vice versa. Thanks for the experience, and thanks for taking the time to educate yourself (and us) about this language to this extent! BTW (just in case no previous commenter mentioned this) - you were not at all wrong about Schul (aka synagogue). The word school (Schule) became a synonym for synagogue (still used by some English-speaking Jews) because in Ashkenazi culture synagogues were also a place where to study scripture, listen to sermons and debate conflicts of Jewish law, so there was an aspect of learning which this word emphasizes.

[@Zeyev]

Thanks very much. My mother was born in the USA and her native language (mamaloshen) was Yiddish. I grew up hearing a few words but not learning the language. 1) Mishpuchah (several spellings in English) means family. 2) Tata does indeed mean father. 3) The story about the disappearing rabbi is one my shul reads every Yom Kippur. A sceptic comes to town and hides to see where the rabbi goes. He finds that the rabbi dresses as a peasant and performs various good deeds as part of his penitential prayers. The sceptic becomes a believer and is asked if the rabbi ascends to heaven during the penitential period and responds, "If not higher." 4) A funny story: I thought "spatula" was a Yiddish term because my mother used so much of the mamaloshen in the kitchen. I was in college when I found out it was English from a Latin root. 5) Ganif does indeed come from Hebrew and means thief. 6) To hear more colloquial Yiddish, go to www.youtube.com/@yidlifecrisis

[@rolandropnack4370]

While there's still a lot I cannot understand, I could grasp much more than you, Feli. I'm northern german, and that makes quite the difference. There are some Low German words and expressions that came to my mind (e.g. "vertellen" means "erzählen"), but more important it's the grammar and the overall sound of the words that is not so unfamiliar, expecially when you take into account the dialect of former german Ostpreußen, nowadays the polish north-east and the bordering russian oblast of Kaliningrad. Also there always have been many workers from Poland, expecially Silesia, coming to the cities of the North Rhine and the harbour of Hamburg. Plus all the emigrants from the east to America came through Hamburg and Bremen. We don't hear yiddish in the streets of Hamburg usually (allthough there is an established jewish community here), but that language still echoes in our ears, if you care to listen.

[@MAKgargos]

Suse, leive Suse, watt raschelt in Strou Dat san de leive Gösken, dej hebn kei Schou. Der Schouster het's Lejder, kejn Leistn dato. Drum gan de Gösken barfoot un hebn kej Schou. Mittelostdeutsch (aka preußisch aka berlinarisch is keen Dialekt, dit is Mundart), habe mal dieses Lied gelernt, wenn ick war een Lütten.

[@henningbartels6245]

Roland, I would say, Yiddish is rather based on old Southwestern German. When a Yiddish speaker uses "tell" then it is most likely borrowed from English than from the North German "vertellen".

[@MAKgargos]

@@henningbartels6245 Beides. Es hat einfach denselben Ursprung und dann jeweils nicht die Lautverschiebung mitgemacht. T blieb T und wurde nicht zu Z. Wenn man sucht, wird man sicher viele überlappende Beispiele sowohl in Plattdeutsch als auch Englisch als auch Jiddisch finden. Ich schrieb nicht ohne Grund "Lütten", weil es zumindest direkt Englisch ist (little) und kein aktuelles deutsches Äquivalent hat. Ob es dies auch in Jiddisch gibt, weil ich nicht.

[@henningbartels6245]

@@MAKgargos wie Feli am Anfang des Videos erklärt basiert Jiddish zu großen Teilen auf Alt und Mittel-Hochdeutsch. Hochdeutsch bedeutet hier z.B. dass die Lautverschiebung vollzogen wurde.

[@MAKgargos]

@@henningbartels6245 Es gab mehrere und immer wieder kleinere Lautverschiebungen. Und da es eben unter anderem auch auf Mittelhochdeutsch basiert, wird ist dann meine Aussage falsch? Mittelhochdeutsch ist ja noch Hochdeutsch.

[@jurgenhorburger5609]

Western Austrian here - almost understood everything, but I'm also learning Hebrew at the moment so that helped too :)

[@lindaguilliaume9762]

If you‘re used to hearing Plattdeutsch (low german) you might understand even more. Like tell/erzählen/sprechen is „vertellen“ in Plattdeutsch. So fun to watch!

[@Skyfighter94]

Even in Swabian erzählen is "verzelle" which is quite close to the Plattdeutsch and English version. In general, German dialects are often much closer to English than Modern High German. For example Swabian "älleweil" = "always".

[@wimschoenmakers5463]

And 'Vertellen' is original a Dutch word and is still used today.

[@michaelgoetze2103]

@@wimschoenmakers5463 I understand a bit of Plattdeutsch and Afrikaans (have lived in South Africa a long time) and I find it easier to understand certain Dutch dialects than High Dutch although reading Dutch is not too difficult.

[@wimschoenmakers5463]

@@michaelgoetze2103 Overhere in the south of the Netherlands we speak a almost German dialect that sounds like people from Rheinland area like Aachen or Köln. So we have a lot of simular words in both German and Dutch dialects. That's also the reason we allmost all speak German on a decent level overhere. Offcourse Afrikaans is directly related to the Sount-African Boeren, so we can understand that too.

[@michaelgoetze2103]

@@wimschoenmakers5463 I find it fascinating that Europe has so many dialects in their different languages in small countries. South Africa is a huge country yet, even though you get regional accents, you can still understand the English everywhere. My mother is Brazilian and it is similar there yet there are parts in south Germany, Switzerland and Austria where, to my ears, they could be speaking a different language.

[@craigkdillon]

Your topics on language I find mildly interesting. Your enthusiasm, energy, and joy is infectious, and makes me watch. You are pretty. You are amazingly open. You are like a breath of fresh air - refreshing.

[@TheLg1985]

On the second video you watched, I always find it interesting that speakers of different languages say they don’t necessarily know how to translate a word. My husband was born in Vietnam and came here when he was 9 in 83 and he will say this often. Which then makes me wonder if since then the Vietnamese or any language in general has evolved to now incorporate words that initially didn’t have a translation. So very interesting. Love these videos.

[@qgde3rty8uiojh90]

Just a slight misprononunciation of 'plague" as "plah-g" instead of "play-g", Feli. Other than that you've once again delivered a great and informative video - this one being a delight to my nerdy linguistics heart. Love you, girl and keep up the good work. Grüße aus Holland 🇳🇱

[@charlesschlotter757]

I noticed the "Plague" misstep as well, because Feli's American English accent is so nearly perfect in every respect, not just the pronunciation but also the rhythm and the fluency. I share your nerdy linguistics sentiments. Many of Yiddish words and expressions are now part of American English, including "maven." a word that I used for years without knowing it came from Yiddish. Oy veh!

[@aislingkenny3894]

I'm fluent in Irish and English and took German for five years, been learning Yiddish for two now. Given I'm converting I understood most of the Hebrew and Aramaic terms, I was really pleased I didn't need subtitles at all for Suri or the really short one, even if they were pretty simple! I actually managed a twenty minute chat in Yiddish the other night too! 🥰

[@cheerfulturtlegirl]

Yeshua fulfills the Messianic prophecies. Isaiah 53 is about the Messiah. 💜🕎

[@chanaheszter168]

Kol hakavod!

[@chanaheszter168]

@@cheerfulturtlegirl Best to read all of Isaiah, not just verses out of context. Isaiah 44:21 "Remember these Yaacov & Yisrael, you are my servant, I have formed you, you are my own servant. " The servant is the people of Israel.

[@abdillahibasheabdi4904]

well done keep finding your true God

[@rosewein]

Hi. My birth name is Roisin Weintraub. I'm not an Irish speaker (my grandmother was but I never heard her use i) I am a Yiddish learner. Id love to talk to you further as I've been trying to find commonalities for a project I'm working on.

[@natalig099]

Just wanted to say thank you, such a thorough research for the intro, and the timing for this video is great, based on what's going on in the world. I'm a Jewish Israeli Hebrew speaker, 3 of my grandparents spoke a little Yiddish but I know almost nothing 😅

[@heinrich.hitzinger]

קענסטו כאָטש דאָס ליינען? 🤔

[@natalig099]

@@heinrich.hitzinger I definitely had to translate the whole thing... As I said, I know almost nothing. Obviously I could read the letters, but they meant nothing at all... 😶

[@heinrich.hitzinger]

@@natalig099 אפילו ווערטער ווי די אותיות, דער דיקדוק, די משפחה און דער אמת?... :(

[@tgleo1]

I so appreciate how carefully and deeply you dive into topics you present, including this one!

[@DanielKrummel-q1t]

Impressed by the research you did for this youtube video. BTW - use to live in Clifton Hts, Cincinnati; now in Chapel Hill, NC.

[@fredrickroll06]

My parents came in from the U.S. to visit me in Germany in 1972. My German friends understood much better than I did when my mother spoke Yiddish with them. After a few weeks, my mother started to understand German, so I had to watch my tongue!

[@MrPerfesser]

Hi Feli! I had a fascinating experience the first time I heard Ladino. It's the language of Sephardic Jews and is based on Spanish. not German. It has Hebrew words as well. I was watching a Tom Hanks movie called Every Tme We Say Goodbye, and there is a family speaking Ladino in part of the movie. I took a couple years of Spanish in high school, speak it occasionally in daily life, and learned a very little bit of Hebrew as a child. I had never heard Ladino before, but understood nearly every word even before the subtitles came on. When you learn multiple languages when you are young, it makes it easier to learn and adapt to even more languages.

[@jgarate-xm1wz]

Ladino is very interesting as it simply sounds like old archaic Spanish from Spain to me and my other Jewish Hispanic friends! It's extremely similar, I'd say pretty much mutually intelligible

[@dummerikan]

I used to live near South Williamsburg in Brooklyn, (Hasidic neighborhood) and when I'd walk around I would always try to see if I could make out what was being said. Mixed results 😄

[@CinCee-]

Im sorry you had to live in South Williamsburg.. my condolences

[@kathawenzel8033]

I loved this video! I liked your explanation at the end of the video where you tried to explain the difference between "für" and "fier", which makes totally sense to me to hear it that way, because it´s an eastern Europe influence. I heard it from older ppl speaking German, my ancestors came from Schlesien which is a region in Poland where Prussian people used to live. I think you couldn´t make that connection because you´re from south Germany. But you hear it still today when Polish or Czech ppl learned to speak German. There will always be more an ee (i in German) sound to the ü.

[@sabrinamorgan8677]

This is so interesting. I'm studying German (almost B1) and my father used a lot of Yiddish when I was a kid (my family is not Jewish, he just knew and used a bunch of it, along with other langauges). My German is obviously not as good as yours haha but to my surprise, maybe because of my childhood, I actually understood most of the part where you started to get lost with video 1. Tate = father. Zaftig = juicy, full. (Zaftig yiddish = rich command of Yiddish, basically). LIstening to more. Trying not to read the subtitles. Aaaand I'm also lost in the second video lol. I think I can understand conversational Yiddish a lot better than stories/literary.

[@heinrich.hitzinger]

Plot twist: Your father is a descendant of one of the authors of the dictionary written during WWI on the occupied territories of the Russian Empire.

[@leonwilkinson8124]

Most enjoyable, Feli. Thanks! My mother's generation spoke Yiddish (and Russian and some Polish), but I don't speak but a few words (2nd-generation American). In the short video, the man used "bubbe," which means grandmother. "Bubbeleh" is the diminutive, "little grandmother," which the Urban Dictionary says "is a non-sexual term of endearment for a female, frequently used by men to show their appreciation and love for a female relative or friend." I've never heard it used that way, only for one's grandmother.

[@davidkantor7978]

As I understand, and maybe remember, on The Addams Family (TV show from the 1960’s), Morticia would often use “bubbeleh”.

[@leonwilkinson8124]

@@davidkantor7978 I remember the show but not that Morticia used the word. Doesn't surprise me. That's great!

[@aaronlandgarten2499]

Bubbe in yiddish is a diminutive for grandmother and it comes from Slavic.

[@jmer9126]

Not to be confused with the American name Bubba 😂

[@ploomich]

The first time I was in Germany I was shocked hearing my friends using tacheles, it’s one of the most common Hebrew slang words, and I had no idea german borrowed it too. The funny thing is that Yiddish changed the Hebrew pronunciation of words as well, so Hebrew speakers still use the original word (in this case tachlit, meaning essence), but also the same Yiddish word, sometimes in a different meaning, without even realizing it .I think most Hebrew speakers wouldn’t know tacheles is Yiddish, and it’s used exactly as it is in German. Great video Feli, I loved it so much! The first two were very interesting as well, but this one was really funny and touching as this is my grandparents’ first language. I think you should’ve brought a Hebrew speaker who doesn’t speak German, could’ve been funny seeing you each understand a different part of what they’re saying lol. Danke! 💕

[@janaaj1an889]

As an English-speaker who once learned half-assed German (thanks US Army), I can't believe how good your English is at this stage of your life, in as short a time as you've taken to get there. I'm green with envy.

[@Unknown-gu9nf]

The younger generation also very often use the Yiddish words "Zocken(zchoken), Mies(Mis), Knast(Knas), Kaff(Kefar)". There are many more Yiddish words that we Germans use in everyday life but not every word has the same meaning. This is really interesting for me because I use these words every day and I didn't even know before that they are not German words although they sound German.

[@jhdix6731]

Many words used in Germany have Yiddish (or Rotwelsch) origins, especially in regions along the medieval traderoutes that were used by jewish traders back in the day. Of course that worked both ways, and those traders picked up many German and Slavic words along their way, and incorporated them into Yiddish.

[@PegasusNbW]

Some Yiddish words made it into the classical Viennese dialect. Mischpoche, Chuzpe, Mezzie, Mazel, Beisl (Viennese pub, from bajis), Bahö (pajhe), Ezzes, Haberer (chaver), Zores, ...

[@michaelgrabner8977]

The Viennese dialect has also uncountable Yiddish expressions used on a daily basis.

[@GalGavish]

It’s so cool that you’re using some Yiddish words in German! ‘Ganav’ in Hebrew is a thief (‘Ganove’). ‘Lignov’ is to steal 😊 Also, we use Tachles in Hebrew all the time. It roughly translates to the essence of something. The point. We also use it as something of a slang word too. For example, someone would say: “The exam this morning was so hard”. And another can reply: “Tachles”. As in “you nailed it”.

[@kaktusfrosch5039]

ich lasse dir mal liebe grüße aus brandenburg da,war heute auch total geschockt...mit dem mix,aber super ich verstehe dein englisch super gut,danke dafür,grüße aus der heimat🥰

[@Hun_Uinaq]

Very enjoyable video. It was very interesting to see how much you understood. I have also watched some of these videos. As a linguistics aficionado, I, of course read a lot of the comments to see if there were any native German speakers giving their impressions on them. What kept on coming up was that it was very helpful if you spoke a regional variant of German and not just standard German. And everybody claimed it was kind of like their dialect.Saarlanders, Salzburgers, Swabians, Platdeutsch speakers, even a Swiss German speaker all swore that they recognized elements of their own dialects somewhere in Yidish.

[@user-wr9ej6xe4j]

A lot of Jews here in the US including me and my family speak and understand some Yiddish words and phrases but dont outright speak the whole language. I grew up hearing tons of Yiddish words it was always kind of funny and cool to have it integrated into just regular English conversations

[@user-el2nh5uo1w]

My grandparents would speak Yiddish whenever they wanted to talk about us. Even after I had a few years of German I still had a difficult time understanding what they were saying.

[@SuperDrLisa]

My parents spoke German when they didn't want us to know what they were saying

[@hansmolders1066]

Two old Ladies sit on a park bench and one says "oy vey". The other says "let's not talk about the children!"

[@davidkantor7978]

It’s a common trope: the elders speak Yiddish when they don’t want the children to know what they are saying. In our family, there’s a running joke: we speak Yiddish when we don’t want the dog to understand what we are saying.

[@nudnikjeff]

Same here; I grew up in NYC and grandparents first language was Yiddish. I love hearing it spoken as it is full of feeling and emotion. I can understand some German from my Yiddish knowledge.

[@barbara-xt6cc]

There is the verb "trachten" in German, like "longing for sth". So in the second video, "a mensch tracht" could be easyly translated, if you know "higher" or more lyric German . In German, we say "der Mensch denkt, Gott lenkt". Same meaning.

[@thomasrinneberg7012]

I was searching for this exact comment. It hurt me that Feli didn't get that one right 😉

[@reuvenlax4635]

However in Yiddish, zu trachten means to think - the same as denken in German. So this expression is very similar to the German one.

[@faithlesshound5621]

Homo proponit, sed Deus disponit = Man proposes, God disposes. Thomas à Kempis, De Imitatione Christi (15th century)

[@GrifiN42]

I believe the origin of the word "tracht" from the saying "A mensch tracht" is the Hebrew root טרח, טוֹרֵחַ, טרחה = burden, trouble, hassle. If I'm correct, the most fitting translation of "tracht" לטרוח to English would be "toil" Therefore the Yiddish expression אַ⁠ מענטש טראַכט און גאָט לאַכט, is literally "(a) man toils and God laughs", HOWEVER, I've seen this expression translated "(a) man plans and God laughs", meaning God chuckles at (or is amused by) the (foolish/petty) plans of man (people). So perhaps "tracht" לטרוח or toil does not mean physical toil, it's referring to mental toil, as in thinking, planning, making designs. I believe this expression is a wry/ironic take on a verse from Proverbs רַבּוֹת מַחֲשָׁבוֹת בְּלֶב־אִישׁ וַעֲצַת ה' הִיא תָקוּם׃ Many designs are in a man’s mind, But it is the LORD’s plan that is accomplished. -- Proverbs.19.21

[@Rondo2ooo]

In German you have "Trachten" uppercase as noun. It's plural from Tracht, which is folklore clothing. The second one is "trachten" as verb, which is longing for, aiming for. It is rarely used and found sometimes in written language or quote, e.g. "nach dem Leben von jemandem trachten", which means being after somebody's life, or said differently, wanting to kill somebody.

[@daveogarf]

Feli, I'm glad you covered this. My aunt used to tell us Yiddish words and expressions, and to my young ears, it sounded pretty German. THANKS for the history lesson, too!

[@hijmestoffels5171]

I could understand about 50% of it. I am from Amsterdam. Many slang words here originate from Yiddish, like ‘mishpoge’ which was translated as ‘family’ but in Amsterdam means ‘business’. I am curious how well Feli understands Dutch, our language is more or less a simplified version of German, albeit with a different pronunciation.

[@Eysenbeiss]

The dutch dialect it actually too old for most germans to understand it, except for older ones from frisia but I like the fact that you know it's origins, cause many durch people are in denial when it comes to that fact. In german, it is "Mushpoke" btw. and you would come the closest you can get, if you spelled it literally.

[@LuigiLong]

Very, very interesting! I did study German in high school in England, and then later in college, almost fifty years ago now. I do speak five other languages, yet I found the Yiddish very challenging, but managed to get the gist of the sentences from just one or two words.

[@jayweiss6842]

Yiddish speaker here... the word Tata means father. Many of the words that you didn't know were different names of things. They're are also a few dialects and we can switch it up a bit that a German speaker can understand it much much better.

[@michaelagoschnik9199]

In the south and east of Austria in the old german dialects people used to say "Tatti" or "Tatte" for father. I think many jiddisch words sounds like old german dialects. A lot of jiddisch words are still in the viannese dialect.

[@supreme5580]

As a native Yiddish speaker I'm looking forward to this :)

[@sheaeisenberg2860]

Hi Feli. As a Yiddish speaking Jew I really enjoyed it. Thank you. What's interesting is that the other way around is a lot easier I have no problem reading or listening to german, I'll understand 99% of it.

[@turdferguson9923]

Languages and their commonalities are always interesting! Very well done!

[@atf300t]

"tata" is a Proto-Slavic word for "dad" or "daddy". You can find this word in some classical Russian literature (of the 19th century), as well in the etymological dictionary of the Russian language written by Max Vasmer.

[@corpi8784]

Tata is also Father in Romanian and in other Romance languages including Latin and ultimately derives from PIE. Atta ,Vater,Father,Pater are all related via PIE and Tata has the same root which is also onomatopoetic as it mimics baby talk.

[@catholicdad]

Otac (O-tats) often "tat" is Balkan Slavic for for "dad" or "pop"

[@corpi8784]

@@catholicdad Latin which means it is older.than Balkan Slavic

[@catholicdad]

@@corpi8784 don't believe otac is a Latin word. Pater is the Latin word for father. I agree Latin is an older language than Balkan Slavic, but see no relevance to this string of postings.

[@corpi8784]

@@catholicdad Tata is latin. Whether Tata was taken from Latin by Balkan Slavs or it is a mere coincidence that both languages use the same word for Father i don't know but fact is that Tata being used by Romans precedes its Slavic use. Might just be coincidental that both lamguages use it bc it might be derived from both branches of the Indo-European language family seperately from PIE or not.

[@tamarwyschogrod]

Great video! I am a New York Jew, my first language is English, and I speak Hebrew pretty well. My parents and grandparents all spoke Yiddish (on my father's side, they also spoke German and Hungarian; on my mother's side, Russian). I heard Yiddish a lot growing up, but I picked up very little. When I took Yiddish in college, there were two kinds of students in the class: Jews, and German majors taking Yiddish because they were required to study a related language. Since Yiddish is 80% German, I thought the German majors would do better than me, but actually, I did better. Because English and German are related, English speakers pick up German pretty quickly, whereas the Hebrew language and alphabet are much more alien. Since I already had English and Hebrew, plus the advantage of having grown up hearing a lot of Yiddish, I progressed faster than the German majors, who struggled with the Hebrew elements. But I found learning the cases and declensions difficult -- Yiddish has only three cases compared to German's four, but that was more than enough to drive me crazy!

[@heinrich.hitzinger]

Arabic has only three cases too. :)

[@Lagolop]

@@heinrich.hitzinger MOST languages only have 3 cases at most. There is no analogy between Yiddish and arabic.

[@heinrich.hitzinger]

@@Lagolop They both use Semitic scripts. (Yiddish has an alphabet and Arabic an abjad.)

[@Lagolop]

@@heinrich.hitzinger Actually, as an Ashkenazi Jew, I can telly that we can use and do use transliteration (latin script like English uses). Not all Jews can read or write in Hebrew script. As for arabs, who the hell knows. They do not use a Germanic language so I imagine all they have is arabic script.

[@stephenfisher3721]

​​​​​​@@Lagolop Don't be condescending or biased; be nice! As an Ashkenazi Jew, I can tell you that Yiddish is always written in Hebrew script except when Yiddish words are written in another language.

[@avishaiedenburg1102]

Familial terms in Yiddish are rather confusing because a lot come from Slavic, namely Polish it seems. So father is "tate" (Polish tata), grandfather is "zayde" (Polish dziadek) and grandmother is "bobe" (Polish baba). But then to confuse things further, aunt is "mume" and uncle is "feter".

[@estakass1482]

We used Tante for aunt but I hanged heard mine.

[@1982382]

I am from the Chabad Lubavitcher Chassidic Dynasty and what the guy was talking about was more about the experience of being with the Rebbe vs at home! Great work love your videos so entertaining

[@Chris-ji4iu]

Your comments (translations, etc.) are awesome. How you're keeping track, I'll never know. This reminds me of speaking to grandmothers of friends who had English as their 2nd (or 3rd language) when I was a kid. I'm looking forward to the Pennsylvania Dutch video - I'm told one of my great-grandmothers used to speak it to me when I was very young. Very informative - thank you.

[@gabguy]

It's so funny to know that there are words in German coming from Yiddish. Tacheles actually comes from Hebrew, it is kind of a pronunciation distortion of the word תכלית (Tachleet) which means purpose or point and is pronounced with Askenazi Jewish pronunciation. The cool thing is that we use the Yddish word in Hebrew as well :) with the same meaning you explained

[@igorjee]

Actually, neither the Sphardic nor the Ashkenatic pronunciation are the same as Tiberian Hebrew. ת was originally pronounced as 'th' in 'teeth'. The Yemenites kept that sound while it split into 't' and 's' elsewhere. In general, Temani pronunciation is the most conservative, especially the one that says 'gimel' instead of 'jimel'.

[@karinbauer3504]

Swabian here, In south west German dialects „Tacheles“ is used frequently in the dialects with the same meaning. I think it is hardly used in high German conversations.

[@Hexenkind1]

So interesting to see and hear. Languages and the history behind it really is making me understand them on a whole different level with the knowledge how they even came about. Thank you Feli for this one as well as many other ones in that vein. Greetings from michael in baden württemberg.

[@toddsmith59]

You are very entertaining while remaining educational. I began watching your channel today. After binging on you for the better half of the evening, I am now a subscriber. I hope you continue pursing your passion. You have the talent, and personality to do whatever you want. You must make a lot of people proud in Germany. Your Friend, Todd

[@dukesharingham]

I love Yiddish because it's a cool and happy language where the heart is on the tip of the tongue. Yiddish also gives me contact with my Ashkenazi ancestors. I hope that this language will become widespread again and that there will be more connection with the Europeans, especially the Germans again, because if any language can connect and heal, it is Yiddish. אַ דאַנק פֿאַר די ווידעא

[@levikorf5306]

"Heart at the tip of your tongue" גוט געזאגט

[@danielgasparek8196]

Feli, you are brilliant and your channel is fantastic! I’m from Brooklyn so just speaking understandable English for me is a reach. In Brooklyn-ese: Peanut is pronounced: “Peanit” Keep up the great content!! Danny from East Meadow New York

[@krauszefraim]

I'm a native Yiddish d Speaker, managed to communicate effectively to the proprietors of a hotel in Poland that were ethnically German and spoke no English but Polish and German. They understood me as well.

[@klaireelizabeth3499]

I’ve watched that 2nd video on KZbin. It’s such a great video 😀 it’s very interesting to see the comparison between Yiddish and German. I love all languages, but I speak French and Spanish. I’ve studied German, but I don’t know that much 😅

[@aryeh-xw7mi]

Wow! I've always wondered how well German speakers would understand Yiddish. When I was in Frankfort am Main in the '80's I tried asking directions in Yiddish with very limited success. So, I'd like to try to clarify some of this for you. The first speaker speaks a dialect from Hungary. The verb tzu redden (she says raidden) means "to speak". Tate means "father". I saw in the comments speculation that this comes from a Slavic source, but that seems a stretch to me. Like in English, there are 2 words in Yiddish for father: der tate and der fotter (like the German vatter and English father). Children address their father as "tatty", like the English "daddy". Older children shorten that and call and refer to their father as "ta", like "da" in Ireland. To me this suggests a common source in both English and Yiddish, both Western Germanic languages, which often transpose d (compare day and tag), t (water and wasser), s and th. The different Yiddish dialects all have ways that each will sound similar or different to German pronunciation. The first speaker here says "heiss" very much like German, the second speaker (who speaks a northeastern dialect, like I do) would say "haiss", like the "a" in "make". Also, where I would say a long "u", the first speaker would say "ee" and where I would say a sound that sounds similar to the "o" in "for" the first speaker would say "oo". This can get confusing. The German "wo" (where) is "vu" (rhymes with "you") in the northeastern dialect and "vi" (rhymes with "me") in the first speaker's dialect, which sounds exactly the same as the word for "how" (wie in German, the same in Yiddish). "Unz" (us) is in the first speaker's dialect becomes "inz". The second speaker says "baide" for "both" and the first speaker would say "beide" just like in German. The verb "tzu trachten" means "to think". The fourth speaker uses the Yiddish expression "shtai'en geshribbben" which I suppose literally means "stand written" and is often said as "shtait" with the same meaning. "Es shtait in possuk" means "it's written (or "it says") in the verse". Although there are case endings in Yiddish there aren't as many as in German which of course effects sentence structure. Another point that may help: the word for "we" is "wir" in German but is "mir" in Yiddish, which also means "me", although, especially in the first speakers dialect, many speakers will use "mich" for "me".

[@justafreethinker]

Love these, Feli! Maybe you could also do some contrasting of German to other languages. Have different speakers of other languages speak their languages and hear the differences between you and them (kind of like what World Friends do).. that might be fun and funny. Great content! Keep it up!

[@TheQuickSilver101]

Well this was interesting. I knew a Jewish guy who spoke Yiddish years ago and I'd chat a bit with him in Pennsylvania Dutch. I miss him. This video was a nice reminder of those times. Thank you!

[@DPStefka]

I am bilingual with Polish and German and I learned some hebrew. I just love Yiddish. I think Polish also helps a lot

[@deutschmitpurple2918]

Great ❤❤😊😊

[@richardtodd6843]

By coincidence, just a couple of weeks ago I was watching a channel where the host learns rudiments of many languages and tries out his new-found skills on native speakers. His latest video was in Yiddish, and having a limited German vocabulary, I understood more of what was being said than any other video I've seen on that channel.

[@greganthony4426]

Oh you mean Xioama. Not sure if I sidled that right though.

[@Bobbias]

@@greganthony4426 that was my guess too. His expansion to languages other than Chinese has been fascinating to watch.

[@samuelstern5593]

Thanks so much for this video! I appreciate your work on this

[@kitdubhran2968]

I’m actually learning Yiddish because of some distant Ashkenazi in my dna. And because it’s endangered. Can’t wait to see what I might know!

[@pshill69]

I am a retired software engineer and worked primarily on DoD projects. On the wall of many of the places that I worked I saw the admonition: “If you want to make God laugh, make a plan.”

[@stephengoodman9018]

So happy to see you cover Yiddish! I am an Ashkenazi Jew married to a German. We happily celebrate our heritages. Thank you!

[@rmbion]

This woman's English is flawless!

[@yarberyarber7690]

She speaks better English than we do in Manchester lol.

[@clarabarton8350]

Probably the best explanation I've heard so far, thank you.

[@strrts5135]

Hi I’m from Williamsburg it’s really a close knit community everyone knows everyone! We always play Jewish geography! When u go out shopping in the local jewfish stores people ask u who u are, who your dad is, who your mom is…… and most of the time u end up knowing the same people This is mainly done by the older generation to the young ones…..

[@anashiedler6926]

As a Viennese (Austrian) i understood quite a lot - i think more than germans, but maybe thats also because in old viennese slang there are some loanwords from the yiddish communities (nowadays most are replaces with english/german words, but some are still in use).

[@icanwatchthevideos]

What are some examples of the loan words that you are referring to?

[@anashiedler6926]

@@icanwatchthevideos Well just a few that came to my mind: Mischpoche (someones family in a bad meaning), Masel (Luck), meschugge (crazy), kosher (in the meaning of something is not right, not exactly the yiddish meaning), hawara (friend), beisl (kind of a restaurant) ...

[@icanwatchthevideos]

@@anashiedler6926 Very interesting, thank you for the response. Mazel, meshugge, kosher, and even to an extent mishpocha have all made their ways into English as well. I'm surprised to see "hawara," as I have to assume that comes from Hebrew (chaver or chavera depending on male/female), I am pretty sure friend in Yiddish sounds quite similar to "friend." What is a beisl? I would assume that means "little house" in Yiddish

[@EduardQualls]

One of the largest academic centers for Yiddish study is also the center for study/preservation of "its own," local US-German dialect: the University of Texas at Austin. BTW, the Yiddish for Muttersprache ("mother tongue") is _mamaloshen._ Tief im Herzen Texas - טיף אין די האַרץ פון טעקסאַס [tif in di harts fun Texas] (note gender shift between G. & Y.)

[@helge.]

I was born in northern Germany but grew up in Rheinhessen with the local dialect there. In Rheinhessisch a lot of words from Yiddish are used and often the ü is pronounced as an i like in „für“ and „fir“. Even the sentence structure is maybe not similar but somewhat familiar. Some of the oldest Jewish cemeteries in northern Europe can be found there too, like in Worms for example.

[@michaelmelamed9103]

Yap the massacres carried out by the crusaders

[@GTX1123]

I never ceased to be amazed at how good Feli's english is. You would never know she's from Germany.

[@RandomNonsense1985]

With certain pronunciations I can tell. And in the video where she was at the store in the German aisle her pronuncations got very "Deutch-y".

[@tfleischhauer6114]

I am American of German descent. My German great grandparents emigrated from the state of Hesse, Germany to New York City and settled in Williamsburg (Brooklyn) in the 1870s. They were not Jewish, but they settled there due to the spoken language in Williamsburg being German/Yiddish. My German grandfather grew up there speaking both German and English ("Brooklynese"), and maybe also Yiddish; I don't know. They owned and opperated a butcher shop (we are Fleischhauers, aren't we?) and it was at the corner of Rutledge & Lee streets in Williamsburg/Brooklyn, New York. I do very much enjoy your videos.

[@manub.3847]

20:08 -The saying is also available in 2 forms in High German: a)"Der Mensch denkt und Gott lenkt"( "Man thinks, God directs") b)"Der Mensch dachte und Gott lachte"( "Man thought and God laughed".)

[@AdamCooperman]

The way I've seen this translated into English is "Man plans, and God laughs".

[@loremipsum2989]

It seems to me that the German translation of this sentence - the most near to the Yiddish original - is: "Der Mensch tracht'(et) [old German: zielt darauf ab, plant, ] und Gott lacht ."

[@leavingundad6903]

The same root as it is in Yiddish word 'tata' ('father') is also survived in modern Russian, in two words actually, although both of them got other meanings compared to its original Old Slavonic meaning (which is also 'father'). Дядя (dyA-dya) means 'uncle' and дед (dyed) means 'grandfather'. Also you can encounter word тятя (tyA-tya) with the meaning of 'father, dad(dy)' in classic Russian literature, for example in a well-known (in Russia) citation from a poem "Утопленник" (U-tOp-lyen-nik) - "The Drowned" by notorious Russian poet A.S. Pushkin: 'Тятя, тятя! Наши сети Притащили мертвеца.' (literally 'Daddy, daddy! Our (fish)nets Have brought us a corpse.'). Also there is word батя (bA-tya) which means 'father', but it is used only in daily spoken Russian in southern Russian regions bordering with Ukraine and Belarus (and also by the immigrants from those countries). It must be also said that word батя is also used as a slang word in Russian Army with a wide meaning of 'commander for soldiers as father for children'.

[@ryee86]

The ü and ii (sometimes written as y(y)) are both high vowels, where ü is in the front and ii is further back. It is actually a common phonological phenomenon for these 2 sounds to evolve into each other. For example, older speakers of Baseldütsch and traditional ways of writing out Basel dialect Swiss German may say "Baseldyytsch", although today most speakers will just speak with the ü. It is an expected linguistic pathway.

[@yaakov22]

Feli put a lot of effort into this video. I watched it twice as it was so much information!

[@shimonbrandsdorfer9427]

Hey, I'm a native Yiddish speaker. One comment, you mentioned the words Mentch and Spiel, and you said they have a special meaning in Yiddish. As far as I know, they have the same meaning as in Modern German. Mentch is a person and Shpiel is a Game. Though, I guess the way it made into English (or Jewish non Yiddish Speakers) was with the special meaning. Thank you so much for the content

[@FelifromGermany]

Oh interesting! When I researched this, I found that they have the "special meaning" in Yiddish. Thanks for correcting that!