Who speaks Jewish well very well not Hebrew

[JTFFan]

According to Wikipedia

"The oldest surviving literary document in Yiddish is a blessing in a Hebrew prayer book from 1272"

So Yiddish is fairly old from about maybe the 1200's?

There are also some Slavic and Polish words in Yiddish I think

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yiddish

[Vito]

yiddish sounds very annoying and irritating for me.

Aside from that, why would Jews continue to speak a language that is a result of oppression by the Germans? I say forget the Yiddish and learn Hebrew..

Who says it's the result of "opression"?  It's a beautiful language.

Yiddish
 was a secret German dialect among Jews..  they had no other reason to use a secret language other than oppression. As far as it being a beautiful langauge, to each is own I guess. I personally think it's annoying, but I like Hebrew a lot..

It's not much of a secret language.

Germans understand it very well.

Oh sure, I took courses in German and I can understand as much Yiddish as I do German, but the words that German speakers didn't understand were things like "schmuck, schlamil, putz".. etc

[jdl4ever]

Yiddish originated around the year 1000 CE so it is 1000 years old.  That is why Yiddish is so important, since it was spoken for about 1000 years by nearly all the Jews of Europe which makes it the second oldest Jewish language spoken as it is tied for Aramaic in the duration of the language spoken.

[judeanoncapta]

According to Wikipedia

"The oldest surviving literary document in Yiddish is a blessing in a Hebrew prayer book from 1272"

So Yiddish is fairly old from about maybe the 1200's?

There are also some Slavic and Polish words in Yiddish I think

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yiddish

Yes a few.

Zal is Russian, Zhabe is Polish so they are a few.

[JTFFan]

Yiddish originated around the year 1000 CE so it is 1000 years old.  That is why Yiddish is so important, since it was spoken for about 1000 years by nearly all the Jews of Europe which makes it the second oldest Jewish language spoken as it is tied for Aramaic in the duration of the language spoken.

Thanks alot, jdl4ever, I didn't know this.

It's much older than I thought

That just shows you it is righteous and the second oldest Jewish language

[judeanoncapta]

Yiddish originated around the year 1000 CE so it is 1000 years old.  That is why Yiddish is so important, since it was spoken for about 1000 years by nearly all the Jews of Europe which makes it the second oldest Jewish language spoken as it is tied for Aramaic in the duration of the language spoken.

True but parts of the Tanakh are written in Aramaic not Yiddish.

[OdKahaneChai]

Yiddish originated around the year 1000 CE so it is 1000 years old.  That is why Yiddish is so important, since it was spoken for about 1000 years by nearly all the Jews of Europe which makes it the second oldest Jewish language spoken as it is tied for Aramaic in the duration of the language spoken.

True but parts of the Tanakh are written in Aramaic not Yiddish.

Select words...

But it didn't originate as a Jewish language...