Yiddish is not only a language

Yiddish is not only a language, but rather presents a whole concept on life and a world view. In situations of terrible misery the Jew looked for refuge in the teachings of Torah and sought his power out of the word. Yiddish has its roots in the Medium High German. Only about one- eighth of the language consists of Hebrew and approximately one tenth are Slavic elements. It is written with Hebrew type characters from right to the left, but makes use the mute consonants in Hebrew to directly write vowels (which are not usually spelled out in Hebrew), but it can also be read also in Latin transcription.

Till to the Holocaust Yiddish was used by the approximately 12 million Jews of Eastern European origin as their native (mother) tongue, or  “Mameloshn”, as they affectionately used to call it . In the world-known Webster encyclopedia Yiddish figured under the seven world languages. Today there are at the most 2 million, who speak Yiddish. After the literary work by Isaac Baschevis Singer 1978 was crowned with the Nobel Prize for literature, Yiddish received world-wide acknowledgment as a language and not as dialect.