Editing Yiddish (section)

=== Origins ===
By the 10th century, a distinctive Jewish culture had formed in Central Europe.<ref name=kriwaczek>{{cite book |last=Kriwaczek |first=Paul |title=Yiddish Civilization: The Rise and Fall of a Forgotten Nation |publisher=Weidenfeld & Nicolson |location= London |year=2005 |isbn=0-297-82941-6}}</ref>{{rp|151|q=As early evidence for Jewish presence in Germany mentions that [[Abraham ben Jacob]] (fl. 961) states that there were "Jews operating a salt mine in Halle in Germany" in his day.}} By the [[High Middle Ages|high medieval period]], their area of settlement, centered on the [[Rhineland]] ([[Mainz]]) and the [[Palatinate (region)|Palatinate]] (notably [[Worms, Germany|Worms]] and [[Speyer]]), came to be known as ''[[Ashkenaz]]'',<ref>{{bibleverse || Genesis|10:3|HE}}</ref> a term also used for [[Scythia]], and later of various areas of Eastern Europe and Anatolia. In the [[medieval Hebrew]] of [[Rashi]] (d. 1105), ''Ashkenaz'' becomes a term for Germany, and {{lang|he|אשכּנזי|rtl=yes}} ''[[Ashkenazi]]'' for the Jews settling in this area.<ref name=kriwaczek/>{{rp|Chapter 3, endnote 9}}{{request quotation|date=September 2021}}<!-- the book has endnotes, not footnotes. Endnote 9 refers to p. 47 and is on p. 329, but it consists only of a citation of Ben-Sasson, "A History of the Jewish People" (1976), so that it isn't clear what is being referenced here --><ref>"Thus in Rashi's (1040–1105) commentary on the Talmud, German expressions appear as ''leshon Ashkenaz''. Similarly when Rashi writes: "But in Ashkenaz I saw [...]"  he no doubt meant the communities of Mainz and Worms in which he had dwelt." {{cite EJ|title=Ashkenaz|volume=2|pages=569–571}}</ref>
Ashkenaz bordered on the area inhabited by another distinctive Jewish cultural group, the [[Sephardi Jews]], who ranged into [[southern France]]. Ashkenazi culture later spread into Eastern Europe with large-scale population migrations.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/ashkenazim|title=Judaism: Ashkenazism|first=Shira|last=Schoenberg|access-date=December 10, 2019}}</ref>

Nothing is known with certainty about the vernacular of the earliest Jews in Germany, but several theories have been put forward. As noted above, the first language of the Ashkenazim may have been [[Aramaic]], the vernacular of the Jews in [[Judaea (Roman province)|Roman-era Judea]] and ancient and early medieval [[Mesopotamia]]. The widespread use of Aramaic among the large non-Jewish [[Syrians|Syrian]] trading population of the Roman provinces, including those in Europe, would have reinforced the use of Aramaic among Jews engaged in trade. In Roman times, many of the Jews living in [[Rome]] and [[Southern Italy]] appear to have been [[Greek language|Greek]]-speakers, and this is reflected in some Ashkenazi personal names (such as ''Kalonymos'' and Yiddish ''Todres''). Hebrew, on the other hand, was regarded as a holy language reserved for ritual and spiritual purposes and not for common use.

The established view is that, as with other [[Jewish languages]], Jews speaking distinct languages learned new co-territorial vernaculars, which they then Judaized. In the case of Yiddish, this scenario sees it as emerging when speakers of [[Zarphatic language|Zarphatic]] (Judeo-French) and other Judeo-Romance languages began to acquire varieties of [[Middle High German]], and from these groups the Ashkenazi community took shape.<ref name=ELL>{{ELL2| |Yiddish}}</ref><ref name="Spolsky" >{{cite book |last= Spolsky |first=Bernard |author-link=Bernard Spolsky |title=The Languages of the Jews: A Sociolinguistic History |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5Xk9AwAAQBAJ&pg=PA183 |year=2014 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-139-91714-8 |page= 183}}</ref> Exactly what German substrate underlies the earliest form of Yiddish is disputed. The Jewish community in the Rhineland would have encountered the Middle High German dialects from which the [[Rhenish Franconian languages|Rhenish German]] dialects of the modern period would emerge. Jewish communities of the high medieval period would have been speaking their own versions of these German dialects, mixed with linguistic elements that they themselves brought into the region, including many Hebrew and Aramaic words, but there is also Romance.<ref>Traces remain in the contemporary Yiddish vocabulary: for example, {{lang|yi|בענטשן|rtl=yes}} (''bentshn'', "to bless"), ultimately from the Latin ''{{lang|la|benedicere}}''; {{lang|yi|לייענען|rtl=yes}} (''leyenen'', "to read"), from the Old French ''lei(e)re''; and the personal names {{lang|yi|בונים|rtl=yes}} Bunim (related to French ''bon nom'', good name) and Yentl (Old French ''gentil'', "noble"). Western Yiddish includes additional words of ultimate Latin derivation (but still very few): for example, {{lang|yi|אָרן|rtl=yes}} ''orn'' (to pray), cf. Old French ''orer''. Beider, Alexander (2015). Origins of Yiddish Dialects. {{ISBN|978-0-19-873931-9}}, pp. 382–402.</ref>

In [[Max Weinreich]]'s model, Jewish speakers of [[Old French]] or [[Old Italian]] who were literate in either liturgical [[Hebrew language|Hebrew]] or Aramaic, or both, migrated through Southern Europe to settle in the [[Rhine Valley]] in an area known as [[Lotharingia]] (later known in Yiddish as ''Loter'') extending over parts of Germany and France.<ref>{{cite book|author-link=Max Weinreich|last=Weinreich|first=Max|title=History of the Yiddish Language|editor-first=Paul|editor-last= Glasser |publisher= Yale University Press/ YIVO Institute for Jewish Research|year=2008|page=336}}</ref> There, they encountered and were influenced by Jewish speakers of [[High German languages]] and several other German dialects. Both Weinreich and [[Solomon Birnbaum]] developed this model further in the mid-1950s.<ref>{{cite book |editor1-last=Weinreich |editor1-first=Uriel |title=The Field of Yiddish |year=1954 |publisher=Linguistic Circle of New York |pages=63–101}}</ref> In Weinreich's view, this Old Yiddish substrate later bifurcated into two distinct versions of the language, Western and Eastern Yiddish.<ref name="Fleischer" >{{cite book |last1=Aptroot |first1=Marion |last2=Hansen |first2=Björn |title=Yiddish Language Structures |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=8ynoBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA108 |year=2014 |publisher=De Gruyter Mouton |isbn=978-3-11-033952-9 |page=108}}</ref> They retained the Semitic vocabulary and constructions needed for religious purposes and created a Judeo-German form of speech, sometimes not accepted as a fully autonomous language.
{{Quote box|width=246px|bgcolor=#c6dbf7|align=right|quote=Yiddish was a rich, living language, the chattering tongue of an urban population. It had the limitations of its origins. There were few Yiddish words for animals and birds. It had virtually no military vocabulary. Such voids were filled by borrowing from [[German language|German]], [[Polish language|Polish]] and [[Russian language|Russian]]. Yiddish was particularly good at borrowing: from [[Arabic]], from [[Hebrew language|Hebrew]], from [[Aramaic]] and from anything with which it intersected. On the other hand, it [[Yiddishisms|contributed]] to [[English language|English]] — [[American English|American]]. <small>[sic]</small> Its chief virtue lay in its internal subtlety, particularly in its characterization of human types and emotions. It was the language of street wisdom, of the clever underdog, of pathos, resignation and suffering, all of which it palliated by humor, intense irony and superstition. [[Isaac Bashevis Singer]], its greatest practitioner, pointed out that it is the only language never spoken by men in power.|3= –&nbsp;[[Paul Johnson (writer)|Paul Johnson]], ''A History of the Jews'' (1988)<ref>{{cite book |last1=Johnson |first1=Paul |title=A History of the Jews |date=1987 |publisher=Harper & Row |location=New York |isbn=978-0-06-091533-9 |page=339 |edition=1st U.S. |url=https://www.pdfdrive.com/a-history-of-the-jews-e159156761.html |access-date=1 February 2023}}</ref>}}
Later linguistic research has refined the Weinreich model or provided alternative approaches to the language's origins, with points of contention being the characterization of its Germanic base, the source of its Hebrew/Aramaic [[Stratum (linguistics)|adstrata]], and the means and location of this fusion. Some theorists argue that the fusion occurred with a Bavarian dialect base.<ref name="Spolsky" /><ref name=jacobs2005/>{{rp|9–15}}
The two main candidates for the germinal matrix of Yiddish, the Rhineland and Bavaria, are not necessarily incompatible. There may have been parallel developments in the two regions, seeding the Western and Eastern dialects of Modern Yiddish. [[Dovid Katz]] proposes that Yiddish emerged from contact between speakers of High German and Aramaic-speaking Jews from the Middle East.<ref name=yivoyiddish>{{cite web |last= Katz | first= Dovid |title=Yiddish |url=http://yivo.org/downloads/Yiddish.pdf |work=[[YIVO]] |access-date= December 20, 2015 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120322162722/http://yivo.org/downloads/Yiddish.pdf |archive-date=March 22, 2012}}</ref> The lines of development proposed by the different theories do not necessarily rule out the others (at least not entirely); an article in ''[[The Forward]]'' argues that "in the end, a new 'standard theory' of Yiddish's origins will probably be based on the work of Weinreich and his challengers alike."<ref>{{cite news |author1= Philologos |title=The Origins of Yiddish: Part Fir|url=http://forward.com/culture/202706/the-origins-of-yiddish-part-fir/ |work=The Forward |date=July 27, 2014}}</ref>

[[Paul Wexler (linguist)|Paul Wexler]] proposed a model in 1991 that took Yiddish, by which he means primarily eastern Yiddish,<ref name="Fleischer" /> not to be genetically grounded in a Germanic language at all, but rather as "[[Judeo-Sorbian]]" (a proposed [[West Slavic language]]) that had been [[relexification|relexified]] by High German.<ref name="Spolsky" /> In more recent work, Wexler has argued that Eastern Yiddish is unrelated genetically to Western Yiddish. Wexler's model has been met with little academic support, and strong critical challenges, especially among historical linguists.<ref name="Spolsky" /><ref name="Fleischer" />