Information about Yiddish Morphology

The morphology of the Yiddish language bears many similarities to that of German, with some influence from Slavic languages.

Nouns

Yiddish nouns are divided into three classes, or genders - masculine (zokher), feminine (nekeyve) and neuter (neytral). On the whole, gender is assigned to nouns arbitrarily, though there are some regularities. Nouns denoting specifically male humans and animals are usually masculine, and nouns denoting specifically female humans and animals are usually feminine; nouns ending in an unstressed schwa are usually feminine. Nouns built on most of the common abstract-noun suffixes, such as -ung and -hayt, are feminine; diminutive nouns with the suffix -l are neuter in the standard language. Loanwords are generally assigned masculine gender by default unless they end in a schwa, in which case they are usually feminine.

Nouns are not normally inflected for case. A few exceptions exist which are optionally or obligatorily inflected for case, including certain kinship terms (tate 'father', mame 'mother') and the word harts 'heart'; among these, masculine nouns take the ending -n in the accusative and dative singular, and feminine and neuter nouns take -n only in the dative singular.

Possession is not indicated by a separate genitive case (as it is in German). When reference is to a human, possession is indicated with a suffixed ס -s, not unlike English possessive -'s. Other forms of possession are normally indicated by the preposition פון fun 'of'.

The regular plural endings for nouns are -s for a noun that ends in an unstressed r, m, n, or vowel, and -n for all other types of nouns. However, there are a very large number of nouns with irregular plural morphology; irregular manners of marking the plural include , -es, -er with umlaut, umlaut alone, and (for many words of Hebrew origin) -im with stem mutation.

Adjectives

Adjectives are inflected for case as well as gender and number. While attributive adjectives—that is, those that directly modify a noun—are inflected to agree with the noun in number, gender, and case, predicate adjectives remain uninflected. For example, one says der guter man 'the good man' with the adjective guter inflected for masculine singular nominative, but Der man iz gut 'The man is good,' with no suffix on gut. When an adjective is used absolutively—that is, to stand as the head of a noun phrase as if it were itself a noun—its ending changes as if it were followed by a noun: Der man iz a guter 'The man is a good [one].' Neuter singular attributive adjectives have no case ending unless their noun phrase is introduced by the definite article.

	Masculine	Neuter		Feminine	Plural
		Definite	Absolutive
Nominative	גוטער guter	גוטע gute	גוטס guts	גוטע gute	גוטע gute
Accusative	גוטן gutn	גוטע gute	גוטס guts	גוטע gute	גוטע gute
Dative	גוטן gutn	גוטן gutn		גוטער guter	גוטע gute

The -n ending becomes -en after a vowel, m, ng, or nk; and it becomes -em after n.

A class of pronominal adjectives, including eyn 'one', keyn 'none', and possessive pronouns such as mayn 'my, mine' and zayn 'his', display behavior opposite to that of ordinary adjectives: they are inflected for number, gender, and case when used predicatively but not when used attributively. (Absolutively, they behave as normal adjectives).

Pronouns

	First Person		Second Person		Third Person
	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural	Masculine	Neuter	Feminine	Plural
Nominative	איך ikh	מיר mir	דו du	איר ir	ער er	עס es	זי zi	זיי zey
Accusative	מיך mikh	אונדז undz	דיך dikh	אײַך aykh	אים im	עס es	זי zi	זיי zey
Dative	מיר mir	אונדז undz	דיר dir	אײַך aykh	אים im	אים im	איר ir	זיי zey

Third person pronouns must agree in gender with the noun they refer to. Thus even inanimate objects are sometimes referred to as er or zi if they are masculine or feminine respectively. Neuter nouns receive es.

Articles

The definite article agrees in gender, number, and case with the noun it is used with.

	Masculine	Neuter	Feminine	Plural
Nominative	דער der	דאָס dos	די di	די di
Accusative	דעם dem	דאָס dos	די di	די di
Dative	דעם dem	דעם dem	דער der	די di

The indefinite article is אַן an before a word beginning with a vowel and אַ a everywhere else.

Verbs

Like most Germanic languages, Yiddish employs V2 word order: the second constituent of any clause must be the finite verb, regardless of whether the first constituent is the subject, an adverb, or some other topicalized element. However, Yiddish is unusual among Germanic languages in that it employs V2 syntax in both main clauses and subordinate clauses: apart from Icelandic, other Germanic languages only employ V2 syntax in main clauses.

Conjugation

Yiddish verbs are conjugated for person and number. The present tense of verbs is conjugated thus:

	קויפֿן koyfn 'buy'	פֿאַרלירן farlirn 'lose'
איך ikh	קויף koyf	פֿאַרליר farlir
דו du	קויפֿסט koyfst	פֿאַרלירסט farlirst
ער er/זי zi/עס es	קויפֿט koyft	פֿאַרלירט farlirt
מיר mir	קויפֿן koyfn	פֿאַרלירן farlirn
איר ir	קויפֿט koyft	פֿאַרלירט farlirt
זיי zey	קויפֿן koyfn	פֿאַרלירן farlirn

Like other varieties of High German, Yiddish has ceased to use the inflected past tense (preterite) entirely, and the perfect tense, constructed periphrastically with forms of האָבן hobn 'have' (or זײַן zayn 'be') and the past participle of the verb, has taken over its function. Certain verbs will take האָבן 'hobn', while others will take זײַן 'zayn'. There is no way to tell which verbs take which auxiliary. Verbs taking hobn are more common, however; as a rule of thumb, those taking zayn are often verbs of motion. Hobn and zayn are conjugated irregularly:

	האָבן hobn	זײַן zayn
איך ikh	האָב hob	בין bin
דו du	האָסט host	ביסט bist
ער er/זי zi/עס es	האָט hot	איז iz
מיר mir	האָבן hobn	זײַנען zaynen
איר ir	האָט hot	זײַט zayt
זיי zey	האָבן hobn	זײַנען zaynen

For example, the past tense of איך קויף ikh koyf 'I buy' is איך האָב געקויפֿט ikh hob gekoyft, and the past tense of איך קום ikh kum 'I come' is איך בין געקומען ikh bin gekumen 'I came'.

Past participle

The past participle is used extensively in Yiddish. The majority of verbs (weak verbs) form the past participle with the addition of -גע ge- and ט- -t to the stem, e. g. געקויפֿט gekoyft 'bought.' However, there are also a group of verbs, called strong verbs, which form the past participle with -גע and נ- -n, accompanied by a vowel change, e. g. געהאָלפֿן geholfn 'helped' from the stem -העלפֿ helf- 'help.' The vowel change is unpredictable and simply must be learned.

The prefix -גע is omitted in past participles of verbs whose first syllable does not bear primary stress. There are two classes of verbs for which this happens: verbs with one of several unstressed stem prefixes, such as -פֿאַר far- or -באַ ba-; and verbs built on the stressed suffix יר- -ir, usually used for loanwords. Thus the past participles of פֿאַרקויפֿן farkoyfn 'sell' and אַבאָנירן abonirn 'subscribe' are, respectively, merely פֿאַרקויפֿט farkoyft and אַבאָנירט abonirt.

There is no way to tell from the infinitive whether a verb is strong or weak.

References

• Jacobs, Neil G. Yiddish: a Linguistic Introduction, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005, ISBN 0-521-77215-X.
• Katz, Dovid, Grammar of the Yiddish Language, Duckworth, London, 1987, ISBN 0-7156-2161-0.
• Mark, Yudl, A Grammar of Standard Yiddish, CYCO, New York, 1978 (in Yiddish).