Germans have you ever heard anyone speak Yiddish? Could you understand them?

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Yes, I've heard people speak Yiddish and I was in situations where the only way to get by was that the person spoke Yiddish and I replied in German ... but that was EXTREMELY basic. A really funny thing was when an *Arab*, muslim old man in Akko talked to me in Yiddish. That was really weird. But because he was already so old, he had learned it from the Jewish settlers when he was young.
So yes it works to some extent. But not really. Yiddish also contains many words derived from Hebrew and the pronounciation of the words, the way they are put, is more similar to some German dialects than the standard German. So even if you studied German very well, you'd still not be able to understand Yiddish because most people who study German as a foreign language are not even able to understand German dialects. And Yiddish is not as close.
Trying to understand Yiddish is like a guessing thing :-)

so ... don't do it.

You might want to have a look here:

http://mylanguageexchange.com/Search.asp?selX3=52&selX6=1&selCountry=null&txtCity=&txtAgeMin=&txtAgeMax=&selSex=null&selIsClass=null&selX4=null&selTxtChat=null&selX13=null&txtFName=&txtDesc=&selOrder=LastLogInDate+DESC%2C+ProfileDate+DESC%2C+AddDate+DESC

and here

http://www.sharedtalk.com/

You can find a language partner there who needs your help with English and can teach you Yiddish or any other language.

mactheanimal

Yes I heard someone speak Jiddisch. I understood quite the half of that. But I find it more worse to understand a real hardcore Bavarian.
Many Words of the Jiddisch are also Slangspeech in Germany.
Like: Vermasselt (Massel), Schlamassel, Meschugge, Stuss, Zoff and many more.

Look at this:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_deutscher_W%C3%B6rter_aus_dem_Hebr%C3%A4ischen

Binie

No, I speak German, but I do not understand Yiddish. Some words are the same, but I could not have a conversation in Yiddish at all nor would I understand it ....

Alwin E

Yiddish is quite similar to German. I once listened to a Yiddish singer (no, no Klezmer sort of stuff, but she sang in Yiddish), and I understood much of it. There are, of course, Hebrew words in it, and some words from Eastern Europe, but I could follow, though it wasn't really easy.

There are, as far as I know, two groups of European Jews, the Ashkenasim and the Sephardim, the first having been mainly in Eastern Europe, the latter mainly in the South. Please correct me if I'm wrong. The singer I listened to was of Eastern European descent, so maybe her Yiddish sounds more German than other Yiddish dialects would do.

playing.forkeeps

You'll be able to see the German root of a lot of Yiddish words, but understand one doesn't make it that easy to understand the other--just as with Dutch and German.

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