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Yiddish in Winnipeg

The Ethnologue claims 5,400 first-language speakers of Western Yiddish (yih) and 1.7 million of Eastern Yiddish (ydd), though estimates vary as reported by Wikipedia.

As also reported in Wikipedia, Yiddish is a fusion of German, Hebrew and Slavic languages with borrowings from other languages. The name Yiddish itself means “Jewish.” Yiddish has made many contributions to English, and Wikipedia has a list of such words.

Today, the Mameloshen Festival of Yiddish Entertainment and Culture starts in Winnipeg, Canada. In addition to the three shows in this year’s festival, Winnipeg has a weekly Yiddish radio program on CKJS hosted by Rochelle Zucker and a women’s Yiddish reading group.

This blog post was inspired by “Yiddish is alive and well in Winnipeg” which has a lot more information about Yiddish and Yiddish in Winnipeg.

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This entry was posted on 22 May 2012 at 05:17 and is filed under Eastern Yiddish (ydd), fairs, language maintenance, radio, Western Yiddish (yih), Yiddish (yid). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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