Oy vey! אױ װײ!
Posted: Tue Apr 06, 2021 8:02 pm
I've gotten pretty obsessed with chess lately so I've been taking a break from language learning, but Duolingo's Yiddish course just came out in beta after many years in the incubator so I think I'll give that a try. Unlike most of Duolingo's other minority language courses, this one is absolutely massive and seems to have full audio right off the bat. Unfortunately, it's a bit buggy and as I've complained about on the forums, it has very limited support for typing. Unlike most other Yiddish resources I've come across, the Duolingo course is based off of the Hungarian dialect (which I believe falls under the more general Poylish dialect). I believe this is the dialect most commonly used by the ultra-orthodox Hasidic community and thus has the most native speakers in the US. Most courses are based on YIVO Yiddish which is closest to the Litvish spoken dialect and is modeled after the literary Yiddish that flourished in the European Jewish community up until the mid 20th century, but unfortunately secular Yiddish is basically dead at this point and only the Hasidim are keeping it alive. I think it will be good for me to be exposed to both dialects. Poylish is probably the dialect that all of my great-grandparents spoke as a first language.
Although Yiddish is my ancestral language, it died out in my family (as with most American Jewish families) and I don't think I have any relatives left that speak it. I have never had that much interest in it, but I always saw it as low-hanging fruit that I should probably get around to learning some day. I've been learning so many other people's heritage languages, so why not mine? As a strong intermediate German speaker with some basic knowledge of Hebrew, I have a very easy time understanding Yiddish so I think it's a good language for me to study at the moment without taking too much time away from learning chess.
Despite the fact that many famous chess players of the 19th and early 20th centuries were Jewish and likely native Yiddish Speakers, including the first two official world champions Wilhelm Steinitz and Emmanuel Lasker, as well as Aron Nimzowitsch, the founder of the hypermodern movement, these players all published in German, not Yiddish, so I don't think Yiddish will help my ability to read chess books in the original. Oh well.
Alongside Duolingo, I have Assimil Le Yiddish lying around and I might start going through it, and I just learned that Mango Languages has made certain minority languages (including Yiddish) free, and I believe they have a driving mode so I could do that in the car alongside Duolingo and Assimil. If I'm still interested in Yiddish in a couple months and have finished Assimil, I have a copy of Uriel Weinreich's College Yiddish that I can go through. His father was fellow linguist Max Weinreich, who co-founded YIVO and was famous for his saying, "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy" (אַ שפּראַך איז אַ דיאַלעקט מיט אַן אַרמיי און פֿלאָט).
Although Yiddish is my ancestral language, it died out in my family (as with most American Jewish families) and I don't think I have any relatives left that speak it. I have never had that much interest in it, but I always saw it as low-hanging fruit that I should probably get around to learning some day. I've been learning so many other people's heritage languages, so why not mine? As a strong intermediate German speaker with some basic knowledge of Hebrew, I have a very easy time understanding Yiddish so I think it's a good language for me to study at the moment without taking too much time away from learning chess.
Despite the fact that many famous chess players of the 19th and early 20th centuries were Jewish and likely native Yiddish Speakers, including the first two official world champions Wilhelm Steinitz and Emmanuel Lasker, as well as Aron Nimzowitsch, the founder of the hypermodern movement, these players all published in German, not Yiddish, so I don't think Yiddish will help my ability to read chess books in the original. Oh well.
Alongside Duolingo, I have Assimil Le Yiddish lying around and I might start going through it, and I just learned that Mango Languages has made certain minority languages (including Yiddish) free, and I believe they have a driving mode so I could do that in the car alongside Duolingo and Assimil. If I'm still interested in Yiddish in a couple months and have finished Assimil, I have a copy of Uriel Weinreich's College Yiddish that I can go through. His father was fellow linguist Max Weinreich, who co-founded YIVO and was famous for his saying, "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy" (אַ שפּראַך איז אַ דיאַלעקט מיט אַן אַרמיי און פֿלאָט).