This hub has been written in collaboration of eYiddish.org, the leading Yiddish distant learning program.

Many Yiddish words have been integrated in many modern languages and especially English. Sometimes, this is referred as Yinglish!

Yiddish language originates from European's Germanic area between the 11th and 13th Century, and has evolved in the Slavic area between the 14th and 16th century.

Yiddish is the youngest and the most developed of the Jewish languages. Among other Jewish languages are Judezmo, Jewish-Italian, Jewish-Arabic and others of less importance. Yiddish words combine old Hebrew-Aramaic heritage and languages from surrounding non-Jewish populations where Jews used to live.

Among these languages, there is a clear influence of Roman medieval languages, various Germanic dialects, Ukrainian, Polish, Byelorussian and Russian. In modern times, Yiddish has also adopted many internationally used words. Even today, Yiddish continues to include new words from languages where Jews are living and speak Yiddish.

Yiddish is written from right to left. It makes use of the 22 letters of the traditional hebrew alphabet, but the usage of the letters differs from Hebrew. Yiddish uses some of the letters as vowels, groups some letters in combinations representing diphthongs or consonants that don't exist in Hebrew. Yiddish makes also distinctions between letters through diacritical signs other than those used in Hebrew. (The usage of diacritical signs in Yiddish words is a bit similar with the usage of accents in some language using Latin alphabet).

Yiddish words of Hebrew-Aramaic origin are generally written according to the traditional rules of Hebrew writing, which includes the use of some particular letters otherwise not used in Yiddish.

There is a growing revival of interest in Yiddish, Yiddish theatre is now flourishing and young people are taking courses in Yiddish.

Many students are taking university classes of Yiddish language. While the level is generally high, in many cases these classes are rather inaccessible to others than linguistic related scholars. Moreover, the location of the university, as well as the inflexible time schedules of the classes makes it even more difficult to attend.

As a result, many students choose to study Yiddish on their own by using textbooks. While this can fit for rare autodidact students, learning with a textbook is pretty difficult and often the students gives up before really acquiring a satisfying level.

The ultimate solution would be to hire a private tutor, which will teach the students at his own pace. But rare are the students willing to the pay the price of a private teacher for studying Yiddish.

How could students to have lessons at home, without paying a private teacher? How to make sure the students learns correctly Yiddish words pronunciation? How to be able to have exercises corrected and explained by a real teacher?

The answer to these requirements exists thanks to the application of the new technologies and internet that enables distant learning, or also commonly called e-learning. With today's generally available broadband, and easy communication methods, teachers located thousands kilometres away are teaching their students at home, and at the time that fit them best.

What are the tools needed to teach and learn with distant learning methodology?

Anyone having a computer and a broadband can teach or learn easily and effectively. At eYiddish.org, students are learning Yiddish with distant learning methodology using Skype communication and a whiteboard application. The teacher communicates with the students via voice and video conference with Skype, while, at the same time, the whiteboard application helps to support the teacher's explanation. Students are corrected their pronunciation mistake from the beginning as the lessons, held in small group makes it very comfortable for full interactivity.