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German Reacts to Yiddish! | Feli from Germany

Mar 11, 2024
It was a little premature of me to say that this is going much better because I only understood one word of this so far, you will grow like an onion, but I can't tell you the whole story, this is driving me a little crazy. Got it right, good job, good job, hello sales and welcome back to my YouTube channel. My name is Philadelphia. I'm originally from Munich, Germany, which is where I am now. I'm visiting for Oktoberfest, but I normally live in Cincinnati, Ohio. I moved there in 2016. Over these last six years in the US, I've actually had more encounters with the German language than I expected, whether it's all the German inscriptions on buildings in Cincinnati dating back to when parts of the city were completely German in the 19th century or hearing Americans casually use German words like Gesundheit or doppelganger or Spiel as I talked about in this video recently.
german reacts to yiddish feli from germany
I reviewed some German dialects that developed among immigrant groups in the US and that have survived to this day in particular. Pennsylvania Dutch, which is what the Amish speak, and Texas German, which not many people know, you can watch both videos here and see how much I was able to understand as a native German speaker and many of you wanted to. to do the same thing with Yiddish, so I'm going to do that today and react to clips of people speaking Yiddish and I guess I'll find out if I'm a native German speaker who has no connection to Yiddish outside of the fact.
german reacts to yiddish feli from germany

More Interesting Facts About,

german reacts to yiddish feli from germany...

Since my first language is German I can understand them and of course I would like to invite you to guess with me too, but before we get into that, let's talk about what Yiddish is. Now there is a lot of research on this and there are a few different versions of the exact story, each one of them is very complex so we're not going to go into that too much but here's a quick summary, so Yiddish simply means Jewish in Yiddish, which by the way already sounds similar to the modern German word, which is dish, is a Western language that belongs to the Indo-European language family and is just over a thousand years old.
german reacts to yiddish feli from germany
Here is a good overview of how the different West Germanic languages ​​are related. Yiddish is the language of Ashkenazi Jews. so, the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe and their descendants and is a mixture of High and Middle Medieval German, some sources even say that it began as a German dialect, Hebrew, Aramaic, as well as elements of the Slavic and Romance languages, it is written officially in the Hebrew alphabet. and along with Hebrew and Aramaic, Yiddish is considered one of the three major literary languages ​​of Jewish history. Traditionally Hebrew was the language of the Bible in Ashkenazi societies.
german reacts to yiddish feli from germany
Aramaic was the language of learning and Yiddish was the language of everyday life. The origins of Yudesh date back to the 9th and 10th centuries, when Jews from France and Italy began migrating to the German Rhine Valley, where they began to adapt the version of German spoken there at the time into their own language, the Hebrew, which led to the creation of what we know today. As Western Yiddish in literature, you will sometimes also see this language called Taich Yiddish, which means Yudesh German Jewish During the time of the Crusades and the Plague, many Jews began migrating east to the territories of Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine and others.
Countries where they added Slavic elements to their language. This new form of Yiddish is generally known as Eastern Yiddish, which is also the category in which most of the Yiddish still spoken today falls into. However, it is important to note that there are countless different Yiddishes. dialects even within Eastern Yiddish and, although they are a minority, there are still some Western Yiddish speakers. In the 19th century, Yiddish was considered one of the most widespread languages ​​in the world because it appeared in almost every country that had a Jewish population and just before World War II it is estimated that there were between 11 and 13 million Yiddish speakers. in the world today; that number has dropped to less than a million, making Yiddish a language that UNESCO has classified as definitely endangered according to an estimate by Rutgers University in 2021, there are currently around 600,000 Yiddish speakers. and most of them live in Israel, USA and different European countries.
One of the main reasons for this huge decline in the last century is, of course, the mass murder of Jews during the Holocaust. About 85 percent of the approximately 6 million Jews who were murdered were Yiddish speakers. Additionally, Jews who moved to Israel after the war were forced to speak Hebrew instead of Yiddish by early Israeli authorities. The language was also suppressed in the Soviet Union and Jews who immigrated to the United States and other countries often did not feel comfortable speaking Yiddish after World War II and instead tried to fit in. Despite everything, there are many areas in the world like New York City and the United States.
For example, you will still hear many Jews use certain Yiddish words and phrases in their daily lives and I have also read that in recent years there has been something of a Yiddish revival, especially in Orthodox Jewish communities such as Haradi and Hasidic. communities, but even among young secular Jews and non-Jews there has been an increased interest in learning the language, even on Tick Tock there is a whole Yiddish bubble with millions of clicks, some Yiddish words that I think most Americans know and that also It turns out that they are also German words, but they do not have the same meaning in modern German, they are mench, which in Yiddish refers to a good person, while in modern German it simply means person, which in German means game, but In Yiddish it refers to sales. tone or speech that is intended to persuade someone, which is also the meaning that Americans have adapted this word into their everyday language or Schmutz, which actually has the same meaning in both Yiddish and German and means dirt, of course, there are many, many more.
Yiddish words that have made their way into American English, but I just wanted to show you some examples, so I looked up some videos on YouTube of people who speak Yiddish. I haven't seen them yet, but I have a list we're going to follow. I'm not really sure what dialect of Hirosh these people speak, so I may be able to understand some of them a lot better than others, but I don't know, let's find out, so I have my laptop set up. here and I actually came up with a great idea: whenever English subtitles are available for these videos, I'll turn them on for you, but to make sure you don't see them, I just put a piece of paper on my laptop. here, super professional, okay, the first video is from wikitungs, which is a YouTube channel that we have already seen in the last two videos about Texas German and Pennsylvania Dutch as well and this one is called Suri speaking Yiddish, like this Let's see it. okay so far i could understand everything she just said her first language is

yiddish

and she still speaks this she speaks it to her mom dad and then she said sister but she said no no sister my brother um wait what? did he really say first? language no, I think she said, she said, I think it's not necessarily the most common way we would say it in modern German, but it still makes sense, we would say um, which also works in English, but so far it's very easy.
Millions of differences from the original. Okay, so she definitely speaks some English too, what I mean is she just said she was born in Williamsburg, so New York City, um or yeah, that's still considered a New York City writer. , it considers itself its own city anyway, it's right next to New York. um so it makes sense that she has some English influence and I'm wondering if, like the other videos I chose, maybe they have other languages ​​as an influence, but I think there are mainly Americans who have videos on YouTube speaking Yiddish, so I'm sure that is so.
It's different from people in other countries who speak it as if you learned English when they were young in school. She learned English, yes and yes, and she said that in school that's funny because that's what they did at least in Pennsylvania Dutch too. I'm not really sure if they did it in Texas German as well, but I know that in Pennsylvania Dutch they also used the English word School. Well, there were a couple of things that I didn't quite understand, but she's been saying that little children or young people today don't learn it anymore, Hasidic people still do, that's what I mentioned before, but the Others don't learn it as much anymore, since only she and her older brothers learned it and the other brothers didn't.
Look, this is fine, so I think she just said that her mom speaks seven languages ​​but she speaks Yiddish basically within the family. I think she said that with dad and her and her brother they understand everything, but sometimes it's hard to remember after I pause. and then I have to do it once I keep pressing play again it's in the middle of the sentence and I don't remember what he said at the beginning of the sentence um again he used the word say instead of atzia and that's what we would say in German, so it's pretty clear and honestly it sounds like she sounds a little bit more similar to Pennsylvania Dutch right now, at least to me, because it's kind of this mix of German and English and I haven't heard that many words.
They were Hebrews until now that I didn't recognize the mention of the chef, Gerberg? okay, now I didn't understand everything, but I don't know if that was more pronunciation or if there were some words now that I didn't understand. I know I might have to back off a little. I think I'll have to turn up the volume a little but even out of context I understood that she was talking about when she goes shopping in Williamsburg or goes into the stores in Williamsburg people say something. to her and then later said something like oh yeah, I know your aunt, so I guess it was about who is known within the community or something, um, let me go back, okay, yeah, I really think that now it's getting more It's complicated for me, I think he said something like people ask him where he's from and I know it's about everyone getting to know each other in the community, something like that, but I don't really understand every sentence he says right now , so Snowman, a few minutes. then foreigner or maybe that's not an ant because now she said maybe it's a male relative Tata is that what I understood So much but maybe it's not an ant it's a type of you probably know why they have to say that in Williamsburg Virginia is well, I think she's saying that everyone knows everyone as soon as you walk around Williamsburg and speak Yiddish, it's five minutes, ten minutes, something like that, usually she talks to everyone in Williamsburg or something, okay, everyone is like third cousins ​​third like uh, Instagram has no idea what.
It's supermarket, um, okay, I think maybe foodmark is literally food, like the English word food. I don't know, I'll tell you this is a lot harder than the other two languages ​​like Pennsylvania Dutch and Texas German so far, at least with her. I don't think I'm going to finish the whole video because I want to move on to the other videos as well and I don't want this video to be an hour long, but right now I can only pick up little snippets here. and there it's like I know she just said something about the other person thinking something, but I can't really catch all the details, so this really feels more like when I was in sixth grade and overheard a conversation in English that mentioned something. other people inside your mind, okay, so I understand that people are saying something and, uh, what's your name?, but I can't tell you the whole story.
This is driving me a little crazy. The father's name. She liked it. She thought about it and was really thinking. difficult and I think she just said husband, so I mean it was a mix of German in English, like what is your husband doing or something, but I could be completely off base, you guys know more than me because you have the subtitles . It's really just a laughing at me thing right now I think foreign again I don't know what Tata is or whatever he's saying maybe it's his father maybe it's grandpa maybe it's and still but I don't think it's aunt I think it's a masculine thing um what's his name, oh yeah, just go and do a Vegas, okay, and I guess then they know that relative, like a chef, is a gift, foreigner, okay, someone looked at his around, so we got later in the story, but in this part I understood someone like he looked around or looked back and asked something like do you know who I am? and she said no, I don't know, they're just cousins ​​and the other person said, oh, we're cousins, but she didn't recognize it, okay, I think so.
I'll stop here and move on to the next video. One thing I definitely noticed here is that her CH sounds like we also have it in German, but obviously they also have it in Hebrew and I think in Hebrew she's even stronger and she does that. very forcefully, much more than we would do in standard modern German, so she does a lot of similar things, for example, when I said theI understood, even the first one, I'm sorry, I understood her very well at first, when it was easy and then I think it was mainly her pronunciation and maybe a couple of words here and that made me lose track of where she was in that story, Although many of the words sounded familiar, I couldn't completely follow them anymore, so it was very interesting and I think in the three languages ​​I've reacted to so far to Pennsylvania Dutch, Texas German and now Yiddish, this was definitely the one. hardest for me to understand and I would say Texas German was probably the easiest to understand because it was still very clear German.
I think what makes it so difficult to understand is really the mixture of all these different languages ​​because As I said in the introduction, there is Hebrew, there is Aramaic, there are Slavic terms, Romance languages ​​like French or Italian, for example, so I think that makes it much more difficult compared to Pennsylvania Dutch, which is primarily a regional dialect from Germany. mixed with English or Texas German, where it's basically also the same as English mixed with a certain regional dialect of Germany and those two languages ​​also don't go back as far as this one, I mean, Pennsylvania Dutch goes back a few hundred years , but he is Jewish.
It goes back like a thousand years, so I think it's also a completely different story in terms of similar differences with the German language. It's really hard to pinpoint that because most of it was like when it wasn't a German word, but I definitely noticed the similar sounds that I mentioned before and then I realized when they said things like fua, for example, where we have the hard um. I heard them say fear with a sound like e instead of fear instead of fua, which is actually something they did. and I mean from the other two languages ​​as well, so it seems like a very natural transition when you don't really have many languages ​​around you that use umlauts, so I think you just make umlauts something else.
By the way, while researching this video, I came across a really interesting article from DW deutschevela. I'll put it in the information box for you about German expressions that actually have Yiddish in them. roots and when I looked at them I was totally surprised and I think most of us probably have no idea that this is actually ganova, so it means thief or criminal, um, which is a common word in German and it's funny because in He actually ended up saying that in his example the guy on the zoom call, but I think it was used as a verb in his example, but it was related to this word, I think so, Canova, then we have knust, which in German is a colloquial term for prison I don't even know how to translate upsocket um being scammed but it's a noun a scam um tough which is a colloquial term for a fight an argument and the last one is it means like clate extreme which is just another German expression how would you say that in English?
I think I would have guessed it, but I definitely had no idea about the other words, so I'll put the link to that article in the info box below if you want to read more about it. I really hope you enjoyed this video. I definitely did. I thought it was very interesting and I learned a lot, let me know in the comments how much you can understand and what your language is, maybe you know some Hebrew or like a Slavic language and maybe that helped you a lot and also if there is another language or dialect the one you want me to do this with and the one you want me to react to and see how much I can understand.
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