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7 Answers 7



*edit: Slovak/Czech, not Slovak/Croatian.

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Do you know the famous Yiddish quote by Max Weinreich?




Edit: The big W suggests this criteria to distinguish:

Language varieties are often called dialects rather than languages:

  • because they have no standard or codified form,


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  • Salcia Landmann, Jiddisch - Das Abenteuer einer Sprache.


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  • Yes, Yiddish is a German dialect, and so is New High German (Neuhochdeutsch).
  • No, Yiddish is not a variant of New High German and also neither of (written) Standard German (Schriftdeutsch) nor any form of Hebrew.
  • Yes, Yiddish is a (Western Germanic) language.

You could say the same about Low German / Lower Saxon (Plattdeutsch / Niedersächsisch), Dutch (Holländisch / Niederländisch), Afrikaans, Pennsylvania Dutch, maybe Luxembourgish and even spoken Swiss German (Schwyzerdütsch), but obviously not for Swiss Standard German (Schweizer Deutsch) or Namibian German, whereas Namibian Black German (Küchendeutsch) is a pidgin, and then there is a single creole based upon Standard German called Unserdeutsch.

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Ein Dialekt ist eine lokale oder regionale Varietät einer Sprache. Daraus folgt, dass ein Dialekt als Abwandlung der vorherrschenden Standardsprache in einer örtlich begrenzten Gegend gesprochen wird. Das trifft auf Jiddisch nicht zu. Die beiden anderen Aussagen stimmen zwar (Jiddisch ist keine Varietät der deutschen Sprache; Jiddisch ist eine Westgermanische Sprache), danach wurde aber gar nicht gefragt. – Hubert Schölnast Nov 11 at 9:19
Schweizer (Hoch-)Deutsch ist eine der drei Standardvarietäten der deutschen Sprache. Schweizerdeutsch ist eine Familie einander ähnlicher deutscher Dialekte. Bei Plattdeutsch gehen die Meinungen auseinander, meiner Beobachtung nach tendiert aber die Mehrheit dazu, es zu den Dialekten zu zählen (die Alternative wäre, es als eigenständige Sprache anzusehen). Niederländisch ist kein deutscher Dialekt, sondern eine Sprache (von der es vermutlich lokale niederländische Dialekte gibt), ebenso Afrikaans, Pennsilveni-Deitsch und Luxemburgisch. – Hubert Schölnast Nov 11 at 9:27
Bei Namibia-Deutsch ist man sich uneinig, ob das eine eigene Sprache, oder eine vierte deutsche Standardvarietät ist. Jedenfalls ist Namibia-Deutsch kein deutscher Dialekt. Angeblich soll in einer der nächsten Ausgaben des deutschen Variantenwörterbuches Namibia-Deutsch als vierte Variante berücksichtigt werden. Über Namibia Black German weiß ich nichts, und Unserdeutsch hast du richtig als Creolsprache (also als eine eigenständige Sprache) klassifiziert. – Hubert Schölnast Nov 11 at 9:31
@HubertSchölnast Ein Stratalekt ist auch ein Dialekt, das ist eine soziale Varietät, z.B. Kiezdeutsch/Kanaksprak/… Jiddisch hat sich als solch ein Stratalekt von einem Regiolekt abgespalten und verselbständigt. Das trifft auf die anderen genannten Beispiele weitgehend analog zu, nur dass die soziale Gruppe nicht per Religion, sondern – grob gesagt – per Staatsangehörigkeit oder eben Wohnort, definiert ist und sich der Zeitraum der Abspaltung sowie natürlich der betreffende Regiolekt (und damit der Verwandtschaftsgrad zum Neuhochdeutschen) unterscheiden. – Crissov Nov 11 at 9:36
PS: My main point is that there is an import difference between “German dialect” and “variety of Standard German”, for instance. – Crissov Nov 11 at 9:49

The definition of language has fundamental problems that are to a large extent parallel to those of the definition of species (or other biological clades).

An apparently reasonable definition of species is: Two individuals belong to the same species if they or their close relatives can in principle produce fertile offspring together. This corresponds roughly to the following simple definition: Two people speak varieties of the same language if they can in principle communicate by each using their own variety. But these definitions are not discriminating enough. E.g., dogs can have fertile off-spring not only with wolves (they are arguably still the same species, after all), but also with coyotes and with jackals. The hybrid of African and European honey bees is so successful that it is known as killer bees. Most Europeans have a small admixture of Neanderthal ancestry, so we know that Homo Sapiens occasionally mated with them, and clearly had fertile offspring. On the language side, there is so little difference between colloquial Hindi and colloquial Urdu that they are arguably the same language in the same way that dogs and wolves arguably belong to the same species. Similarly, speakers of the Scandinavian languages (Danish, Swedish, the two major varieties of Norwegian, and their various dialects) have little trouble communicating with each other, and the same holds for Serbian and Croatian, and for Czech and Slovak. Russian, Ukrainian and Belarussian are also mutually intelligible to some extent, and the same is true for many pairs of Romance languages.

We can try to correct our first definitions by saying that two families belong to the same species if they have a solid chance to actually produce fertile offspring together. In other words, they must live more or less in the same region and their mating behaviours must be compatible. And since it doesn't make sense to claim that dogs at different ends of the country belong to different species (or very small dogs and very big dogs), we must take the transitive closure of this relation: I.e., if there is a good chance for fertile offspring from families A and B, from families B and C, and from families C and D, then families A and D are still part of the same species even if they live too far apart to meet or if they are incompatible for some other reason. They are still part of the same gene pool, after all.

One amazing problem with this definition is explained in the Wikipedia article on ring species. It appears that ring species may not actually exist in practice because in reality the chain is always broken in some (non-obvious) place. But this doesn't mean that ring species are impossible in principle.

Actual communication between the speakers of two varieties is a good approach to defining what it means for two varieties to belong to the same language. Yiddish and German may actually form an example of a 'ring language' if we use this definition. The two languages are mutually intelligible to some extent, but for two large groups of speakers mutual intelligibility is very limited and there is little motivation to try it out even if some of them happen to live in the same city: Orthodox Jews with no relation to Germany and Germans with no relation to Judaism. Yet pure Eastern Yiddish full of Hebrew words as spoken in some Orthodox communities is (at least to some extent) mutually intelligible with Yiddish as spoken by descendants of German Jews, some of their dialects of Yiddish are mutually intelligible with certain German dialects, and these German dialects are mutually intelligible with Standard German.

Altogether: There is a degree of mutual intelligibility, and not too long ago there were probably varieties that could be considered dialects of both German and Yiddish. But altogether actual communication between the speakers, and consequently the exchange of linguistic innovations between German and Yiddish, is too insignificant for us to have to consider them a single language. We still could consider them a single language if this were politically opportune (in much the same way as certain 'dialects' of Chinese), but it is not. Therefore: No, Yiddish is not a variety of German (let alone a dialect), even though it comes close just like Dutch does.

PS: One or two centuries ago, my answer would have been different. Speakers of Western Yiddish (then known as Judendeutsch, i.e. Jewish German) had as much or more daily contact with speakers of more 'normal' regional dialects of German than with speakers of Eastern Yiddish. Jewish emancipation initiated a great degree of affirmation of German culture. It was therefore natural to understand Yiddish as a dialect of German, and to use 'proper' German for the same reasons that speakers of regional dialects did and still do. It is no wonder that Western Yiddish became relatively insignificant even faster than regional dialects did, and that around the mid-19th century Jewish Germans stopped writing in Judendeutsch.

As far as I know, Eastern Yiddish intellectuals later got into intensive contact with German in Vienna. Apparently it was in this era that (Eastern) Yiddish became an expressive literary language quickly by adopting various words and linguistic patterns from German and consequently becoming more similar to German again. But the Nazis put a stop to this, and I guess Yiddish today is mostly in contact with English and Hebrew, so that German and Yiddish are diverging again.

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