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Book: The Five-Minute Linguist

Chapter: What’s the difference between Hebrew and Yiddish?

DOI: 10.1558/equinox.20816

Blurb:

This chapter explains the fact that Yiddish and Hebrew are very different languages. Hebrew is a member of the Semitic family of languages, closely related to Aramaic (the language spoken by Jesus) and somewhat to Arabic. Yiddish is more difficult to classify genetically. Its basic grammatical structure derives from Germanic, as does most of its vocabulary.

Chapter Contributors

  • Neil G. Jacobs (Jacobs@equinoxpub.com - njacobs)