For example, the lack of synthetic past (or the preference to use the perfect tense as a common past)
And, due to the synthetic conjugation only can be found in the present tense, a configuration of double past pasticiple is found in the pluperfect
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Yes! As a native Afrikaans speaker, I’m always surprised at how much Yiddish I can understand.
Apart from the obvious Dutch and German, Flemish is even closer to Afrikaans.
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I have A2 level in German and A2 level in Hebrew (I’m Jewish). And, of course, my late grandparents spoke Yiddish at home…
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I find Yiddisch a fascinating language. Unfortunately i don’t know anyone who speaks it. It was never spoken a lot in the part of the Netherlands where i live now so it isn’t in the dialect.
There are several Yiddish words in the dialect of Amsterdam. And everyone in the Netherlands knows the word Gabber -as a word for friend, which came from Yiddish and from the Hebrew word Chaver (or so i have been told).
And did you find Hebrew loanwords in it? To me it sounds a lot like German/Dutch with sometimes a word i totally don’t know.
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Yiddish has 70% of High Medieval German, 12% of Hebrew, and 18% of Slavic words, all of this within a Germanic grammar. The Hebrew words, due to their difference in pattern (as it’s Semitic), in order to verbalize Hebrew nouns Yiddish uses “sein”, “hobn” (haben) and “vern” (werden) to conjugate them periphrastically. In Yiddish “werden” is only used for passive voice of transitive verbs, while future tense Yiddish uses “veln” (wollen) + infinitive: “ikh vel geyn” (Ich werde gehen, I will go).
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Matías,
I don’t have any experience with listening to Yiddish or reading Yiddish, but I think it should be somewhat comprehensible for me, as it is so closely related with German linguistically.
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That’s what I observed too! When I was a child and we visited my family in Germany and they would speak the local dialect (Hessisch) I observed that it sounded similar to the Yiddish a friend of mine was speaking and I tried to understand what they had in common. Later I acquired Swiss-German and, again, I noticed the similarities with Yiddish and Hessisch. Speaking now also Dutch and Flemish, the connections are even stronger. @hoopstats, are you researching about this, or could you share some studies about this? Das würde mich sehr interessieren 
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I think Yiddisch is most similar to the almost extinct Silesian ( Schläsisch) dialects because of the former regional proximity in Central Europe.
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I know nothing about German (I speak a bit of Norwegian). Recently, I am reading this book called LINGO about European languages, by Gaston Dorren. He also mentioned the root of Yiddish being started by the Jewish community living in Germany, who, firstly, knew German. And then because they had a distinct culture, esp. from a religious perspective, their German gradually became something quite different and a new language so to speak. I recommend the book:
Hoi Ron,
Dat wist ik niet, mijn grootvader was “Schlesier” miijn familienaam “Schittko” is een silesische achternaam.
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English is my native language but I’ve never heard the word “periphrastically” before. I learnt a new word in my native language! Thank you
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