Yiddish: Vocabulary

Yiddish is a Germanic language of Ashkenazi origin, spoken throughout the world. Belonging to the German language family, its distinctive expressiveness is also due to many Slavic and Hebrew loanwords on one side and English influences with speakers living in the US and the UK on the other.

If read aloud, German words can be spotted with ease:

Ikh hob keyn moyre nisht far keyn tigers,
Ich habe keine moyre nicht vor keinen Tigern,
I have no moyre not for no tigers,
ober a tsugvint shrekt mikh zeyer.
aber ein Zugwind schreckt mich sehr.
but a draught frightens me much.

Any unknown Hebrew words must be guessed or looked up in a dictionary…:

moyre = fear

Thus, the rose says to our little prince:

I am not afraid of tigers, but I am very much afraid of draught.

Which he then thinks is a bad thing, for a plant. He also finds her very complicated:

Shrek far tsugvintn … dos iz shlimazldik far a flants, hot bamerkt der kleyner prints. Di blum iz beemes komplitsirt …

(source)

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