Origins

• While Yiddish, derived from German, borrows an alphabet and many words from Hebrew, the two languages originate in completely different places. Hebrew originated from the region of Canaan, roughly 4,000 years ago, a region now bounded by the modern state of Israel. Ancient -- or Biblical -- Hebrew was the language in which the Jewish Torah was written. The Yiddish language, in contrast was the language of the Askenazic Jews, which were the Jewish peoples who settled in central and eastern Europe. Yiddish is a far younger language than Hebrew and borrows many words from its parent language. Yiddish became recognized as a language of its own sometime between the years 900 and 1100.
  
  

Vowels

• A major difference in the written forms of the two languages is the use of vowels. When Hebrew is written, full vowel letters are not marked on the paper; instead vowels are represented with a dot or a dash following the letter that precedes them. This makes Hebrew words generally shorter than Yiddish ones as they comprise only consonant letters. In Yiddish, vowels are written out in full form, much the same way as in English, making the word longer. However, many words in the Yiddish language are borrowed directly from Hebrew; when these words are written, full vowel symbols are not added and are simply represented by a dot in the middle of the letter.
  
  

Vocabulary

• Because Yiddish is a much younger language than Hebrew, as well as a language derived in part from another language, it has been much more flexible and adaptive than its parent language. Although Yiddish developed as a hybrid between German and Hebrew, read a list of Yiddish vocabulary and you are likely to come across words borrowed directly from Aramaic, Czech, Polish, Ukrainian and Russian as well as Old Italian, Old French and of course Hebrew. Hebrew has yielded itself far less to the influence of other languages and retains a narrower vocabulary comprised almost entirely of words from a small group of ancient Afro-Asiatic languages, known as Semitic languages, which includes Arabic, Amharic and Aramaic
  
  

Intonation

• The differences between Hebrew and Yiddish extend beyond the written word and syntax and into the spoken component of both languages. When a Hebrew speaker pronounces a word with more than three syllables, he will generally place a stress on the penultimate syllable of the word. If a Yiddish speaker were to say the same word she would generally place a stress on the final symbol of the word. Although a subtle difference, these individual methods of pronunciation have helped form the identity of both languages.