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i know a few words, and would love to become fluent. When I am around people who speak it, I pick it up. When my grandparents were living and they spoke German and Yiddish, I would pick it up in bits. I found an old sepia postcard a few years ago with printed text in Hebrew letters, and I wanted to know what it said, so I took it to shul during the week and carried it around until I found someone who could read it. Well, pretty much everyone there can read Hebrew, but as soon as they started reading it aloud, they said "It's Yiddish!" and handed it back. Eventually I found someone who could read it aloud and tell me what it said in Yiddish.
My 4 grandparents were the last in the family line to speak Yiddish in the home. I speak none. My boys are learning Aramaic (the language of the Talmud) instead - deeply relevant in our lives. My daughters will learn some Hebrew, which may come in handy when moschiach comes but otherwise isn't particularly useful.
I know a little (very very little) Yiddish by osmosis from my childhood in Brooklyn but it does not strike an emotional chord with me as I have no ancestral ties to the language.
Actually, some of the words that I know in Yiddish were English slang to me until I was older. I didn't even realize that they words from another language as so many people used them.
I am fascinated with language preservation and language study so I hope that this important language never dies. Keep speaking it to the little ones!
My experience with Yiddish is varied and uneven. Growing up I heard the words and phrases that had passed into the vernacular (don't hock me a cheinig, gey cocken affn yam and stuff like that).
I worked with students whose families spoke Yiddish in the home (both modern Orthodox -- they spoke it not out of a Chassidic allegiance to old country ways but because of a love of Yiddish). I also heard bits of Yiddish when I went places in the US and elsewhere which had sizable Chassidic communoties. I also work with and live in the area with people whose families have more Chassidic branches to some of my co-workers and friends speak some Yiddish or throw phrases around in conversations (one of the local jokes has the punchlines "mach a zoy" and another revolves around "nisht shabbes geret").
When I sat for my farher for smicha (oral exam for ordination) one of the rabbis testing me spoke only in Yiddish. As my knowledge of Yiddish was nigh on non-existent, I had to work hard to pick things up from context.
And this morning, my dad asked me if I wanted tickets to see The Golden Bride (a Yiddish Operetta).
He said father Jewish, mother a non-Orthodox convert.
so depending on her conversion, it may not be valid according to halacha, which would affect whether the children are Jewish
[halacha = Jewish law]
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