Talk:Yiddish grammar

Forming the Past Tense

Does anyone out there speak Yiddish and can verify something? This article says some verbs form the past tense by using "hobn," while others form it by using "zayn," and that there is no way to know which ones use which, it is arbitrary. This seems odd, if Yiddish is a dialect of German, it would be very predictable: In German (as in old English) the past tense of transitive verbs uses "habben" while that of intransitive verbs uses "sein." This is very predictable and regular. If the verb can take an object, it is transitive "eat," because you eat and apple, the apple is the direct object. But "sleep" has no direct object, you don't do sleep to anything. Other examples would be "hit," you hit a ball, but "wake up" has no object, same for "go," etc. I imagine that Yiddish must be the same. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nealmcgrath (talk • contribs) 01:37, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Future

how do you form the future tense?

Auxiliaries

Certain verbs will take האָבן 'hobn', while others will take זײַן 'zayn'. There is no way to tell which verbs take which auxiliary.

I would tend to disagree, and instead say that the choice of auxiliary is based on unaccusativity, as it is in German. If no conversation is started on the topic after several weeks, I'll just write up a small explanation on it; I'm interested to hear any thoughts on this though.

—Firespeaker 08:57, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

I did not find anything about German in the unaccusative verb article. In Standard German, stehen, liegen etc use haben whereas gehen, laufen etc. use sein. In Southern German dialects, however, stehen, liegen etc also use sein. Predictably, Yiddish follows the Southern pattern, see http://www.verbix.com/webverbix/go.asp?D1=96&H1=103&T1=lign. It appears that the unaccusative explanation is OK with yiddish, whereas German is ambivalent. Andreas 20:34, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Hm, I'm not so sure anymore... Perhaps it's that non-Southern German uses sein for unaccusative verbs and haben for everything else, whereas Southern German and Yiddish use sein for intransitive verbs and haben for everything else. I was always told in Yiddish class that zayn was for intransitive verbs, but was told in syntax classes that German sein was for unaccusative verbs—I always ignored the difference and attributed it to an inadequate grammatical tradition in Yiddish. It might, therefor, be best to stick with the Yiddish grammatical tradition on this page, regardless of its accuracy (which I'm now more inclined to accept). —Firespeaker 06:05, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

"Intransitive verbs" doesn't cut it. You say ich bin gegangen/gelaufen/gefallen, sure, but you never say ich bin geschlafen in German (except perhaps in some dialects), it's always ich habe geschlafen. So it's a different distinction or rule. The only real difference between Southern German and the rest is that stehen, liegen, sitzen (except for metaphorical sitzen as in prison) and hängen (the strong, intransitive verb) – probably not accidentally the same four verbs as listed in German grammar#Dative – use sein instead of haben; I'm not aware of any other verbs that differ in this way. Yiddish behaves the same as Southern German here, except for hengn. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 02:37, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Interestingly, French behaves extremely similarly to (non-Southern) German in this respect: when a French verb takes être, its German counterpart will usually take sein. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 02:46, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Morphology in the Charedi sector

I would suggest (and make myself if I had the time presently) changes to this article based on current spoken Yiddish in the Charedi sector, which is much less inflected (as detailed in Jacobs 2006, Yiddish: A Linguistic Introduction). Der/dos/di are not distinguished in many cases. That is, if this article is meant to be descriptive and not prescriptive, which I think is a fair goal for an encyclopedia article. Zackary Sholem Berger 17:04, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Make those additions and not changes, and go ahead. The fact of existence of nonstandard dialects doesn't mean we shouldn't discuss the morphology of the literary dialect—descriptive of a standard is not the same as prescriptive. AJD 18:09, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Articles

It says that "It differs from German in not having a genitive case, and in the dative plural, where German uses den.".
But according to the table, it also differs in the accusative masculine definite article, because the accusative masculine definite article in German is "den" while in Yiddish it is "dem".
Is it like that? Can you fix it? Is the table correct?

This is the only one of the five tables that is accompanied by detailed narrative comparison to German morphology and it would increase the imbalance to enumerate further such distinctions. It is inappropriate, in any case, for this table to appear before notions of noun gender and casing have been described, I have therefore reordered the headings and edited comparisons to German for consistency in extent. --Futhark|Talk 08:59, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Dialectal differences?

Is it true that this article only covers the grammar of Eastern Yiddish (or actually a particular Eastern Yiddish dialect)? I don't know very much about Yiddish dialectology, but I find it hard to believe that there should be so few dialect differences, especially between Eastern and Western Yiddish dialects. There is indeed a short section mentioning dialectal differences, but it doesn't even make clear what the dialect described here is. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 02:52, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm new to wikipedia, but as a Chassidish Yiddish speaker I'll explain it a bit. Wikipedia mainly focuses on the YIVO dialect of Yiddish, even though it has less speakers than the Chassidish dialect. They skip all Chassidish grammar rules, such as ignoring the fact that we have even different pronouns! For example, we say "eynk zenin" for you (plural) are, but according to the grammar page, it only states that we say ihr zent, which is not true, because that's usually the second person singular/plural formal way. Also, I would add my dialect's grammar but I'm not sure how to do so. I added a ton of new info on our dialect. Hopefully someone who knows how wikipedia works better than me can edit the information to follow the correct formatting. i'd greatly appreciate it. Also, please don't delete the work I've added, as there's barely any current sources for the Hasidic dialect. Hopefully this will allow people to see that there is more than just the standard dialect (YIVO) being spoken. Thank you!

PS. Do NOT undo all of my work without **ANY** explanation whatsoever. This isn't a private page. It is a public page, and everyone should be able to add information if it is valid.

One of the basic principles of the Wikipedia is that facts presented in articles, unless they are truly common knowledge among the entire readership, need to be supported by references to reliable external sources. It is not permitted for an editor to add unsourced material even if there are no relevant sources and the editor is an expert on the topic. Such material is called "original research." This may not be the best name for it given that it can reflect things that are well known within a broader community but still can't reasonably be seen as common knowledge. It doesn't matter how useful such information might be or how qualified the editor is to provide it. If you want to open those rules up for discussion, there are channels for doing so. However, if you make contributions to a substantive article that require setting the rules aside, however valuable the additional information might be, you should be prepared to see your edits reverted. --Futhark|Talk 06:26, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

I just want to clarify that עטס/ענק (ets/eynk) is *not* formal and is just the second person plural informal, not formal. Also, not sure how to add it to the imperative, but basically in the imperative, עטס conjugation is the same as in the regular form, so עטס קויפטס ווײַן - you (all) buy wine, קויפטס ווײַן! - buy wine! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.119.212.211 (talk) 16:09, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Why is -ekh not called a regular plural?

The section on plural nouns says "Nouns built on the diminutive suffixes -l and -ele form the plural in -ekh". It classifies this as an irregular plural. Why is this fully determinable rule less regular than the -s ending for nouns ending in an unstressed vowel? Largoplazo (talk) 15:25, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Well, I'd say it's because -ekh is a unique plural suffix that only attaches to one or two morphemes (i.e., the diminutive suffixes -l and -ele). It's like how in English man~men is an irregular plural even though footman, fireman, Frenchman, etc. all form their plurals the same way: it's a property of the specific morpheme man. AJD (talk) 17:20, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: The Study of Language

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 22 August 2022 and 1 December 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): SPLL, Bguti2, Llill2, Wsehwail (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Dquin3, Zohaib Alvi, Ivanatheslayer, Liannp, Iur444.

— Assignment last updated by UICLing (talk) 10:56, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

WikiEd Students: Respond to Peer Feedback

Students: Respond to your peer feedback by posting what changes you will make and what should be made to the article based on your peers' suggestions. Click "reply" below to respond. @SPLL, @Bguti2, @Llill2, @Wsehwail UICLing (talk) 16:32, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

@Dquin3 Thanks for the review. We added a little bit to the article, but we'll keep adding to it, even thought there's only minor things that need to be done to it.

@Zohaib Alvi Thanks for the review. Sorry if it was confusing, our group is reviewing to articles, and we thought it would be easier just to do all the work in one of the sandboxes, not both. So, all the work is in our other sandbox for the Yiddish article. Sorry again for the confusion.

@Iur444 Thanks for the review. I will work on adding a Grammar section in the main Yiddish article. Llill2 (talk) 15:29, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

Orthography; Phonology

BS"D

While the use of YIVO orthography and pronunciation is standard, it is a bit flawed on two parts:

1) It spells Hebrew loans as pronounced, which can be confusing. Native speakers (and many non-ones) normally approach the language with some knowledge of Hebrew, and when hearing a word like Shabbs Kawydesh, understand it to mean Shabbos Kodesh, for example, and might also prefer writing it like that to avoid the next problem.

2) It conveys Northern Yiddish pronunciation, which is 1) far less popular today than Southern Yiddish - albeit still spoken and used; 2) has markedly different pronunciations of the vowels than Southern Yiddish. These two reasons make the article's use of YIVO orthography confusing for someone trying to understand Southern Yiddish.

While using the YIVO standard is necessary (on the converse, for someone trying to read older secular Yiddish works, the YIVO orthography is great), maybe the other pronunciations should be noted alongside it.

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That being the case, how would we transcribe Southern Yiddish? The vowels that appear are not easily conveyed in Latin script, especially if one wants to note the allophony found in the dialect.

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As an aside, maybe we should add a section explaining the vowels in both Northern and Southern Yiddish, because they can be confusing also.

Shibolet Nehrd (talk) 11:21, 11 May 2023 (UTC)