Spelling Quiz: Jewish Edition! 89% Of Americans Fail

There are three major literary languages in Jewish history: Aramaic, Hebrew and Yiddish. Yiddish is a Germanic language in origin, and makes up part of the Indo-European language family. It is the language of central and Eastern European Jews and their descendants, more commonly known as Ashkenazi Jews. Yiddish is written with the Hebrew alphabet, and by the 19th century, it became one of the most common and widespread languages, making its mark on most countries with a Jewish population. Yiddish dates back to the 12th century CE, though some scholars claim to trace it back to the 9th century, as this was a time when the Ashkenazim came into being as a distinct cultural entity in Europe. Yiddish is made up of two components, which are Semitic containing Hebrew and Aramaic elements from the Middle East, and Germanic containing Middle German and High German elements. The language also features a few words from the romance languages of French, Italian and Spanish. Although Yiddish is thought to have originated from land where German was commonly spoken, it soon spread to the entirety of eastern Europe, and from there, was influenced by Slavic languages. The dominant branch of the Old Yiddish period, which ended in the mid 1300s, was Western Yiddish. Some of the countries and cultures which influenced Western Yiddish are Swiss, Alsatian, Southern German, Central German, Dutch and Northern German. During the middle ages, Eastern Yiddish was more commonly spoken, which includes present-day Yiddish. The South-eastern Yiddish dialect is spoken in Ukraine and Romania, while in Lithuania and Belarus North-eastern is spoken, and Mid-eastern in spoken in Poland and Hungary. Take this quiz to find out how well you can spell some of the most common Yiddish words!