Yiddish יידיש

It took shape among the Ashkenazi communities of Central Europe; the oldest surviving record is a blessing in the Worms machzor of 1272. The base is Middle High German; over it a Hebrew-Aramaic layer for everything touching faith and learning; in Eastern Yiddish, abundant Slavic words. It is written in Hebrew letters, and unlike Hebrew it marks all the vowels.

It divided into Western and Eastern. Western has all but vanished; Eastern is what is now called Yiddish.

A word apart about women's reading. The language of learning was Hebrew, and it was men's; Yiddish became the language women read. For them it was printed in a particular type—vaybertaytsh, women's Taytsh. In Yiddish were written the Tsene-rene—the Pentateuch with commentary for reading at home—and the tkhines, women's prayers. And the book of her life by Glikl of Hameln, who is in this reference work, is written in Yiddish.

Before the Second World War eleven to thirteen million people spoke Yiddish. Of the six million who perished in the Shoah about eighty-five per cent were Yiddish speakers. This is not 'the decline of a language'—it is its killing along with its speakers.

It survived where the old way of life survived: in Haredi communities, where it is spoken at home and taught to children. Estimates of the number of speakers today differ—from six hundred thousand to two million.