YUDDISHיודיש
Chapters
THE YUDDISH LANGUAGE

Sources and attribution

Version 0 · 3 min read · September 2026

15.1 Source language and writing

The current morphology tables deliberately remove gender and case from the source-language baseline. They are Yuddish design rules, not descriptions of standard Yiddish. The coined epistemic paradigm, numerical grammar, and technical compounds are not attributed to these institutions. No existing Yiddish literary work is presented as an original source text for Yuddish; the short primer in section 3 is newly composed.

  • YiddishPOP. Numbers 1–10. Source forms underlying the clipped digits.

  • Elon.io. Mandarin numbers 11–99. Illustration of the coefficient–ten–remainder pattern. Yuddish's full numeral grammar is a separate design.

  • YiddishPOP. Uses of zol. Source-language uses motivating the recommendation root; the numerical specialization is Yuddish.

  • Wiktionary lexical entries: zey, zelb, lang, kenen, and darfn. These support inherited roots and meanings, not the invented singular pronoun, local-reference rule, scope modifier, or quantified modal grammar.

15.2 Philosophical sources

These sources motivate the design but do not endorse it. The language is not an official Yudkowsky or LessWrong project. Its new operators, exact credence values, dialogue examples, and AI word family are contributions of this language-design exercise.

15.3 Reuse and provenance

The 2015 book edition identifies Eliezer Yudkowsky as author, MIRI as publisher, and Said Achmiz as creator of the HTML edition. Its About page releases the edition under Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported. The separate online glossary has a different license; this document does not reproduce that glossary.

This reference and the original project compilation material are offered under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0, except where a chapter explicitly specifies a different license. The Moloch chapter is separately offered under CC BY 4.0 and retains the original author’s attribution; embedded third-party excerpts retain their own rights. The Litany of Tarski epigraph retains its source attribution; the original essay and Hodgell quotation in the translations collection retain theirs. The linked Yiddish teaching resources are cited as references and are not relicensed here. New grammar rules and lexical definitions should be credited as part of the Yuddish project, not quoted as statements made by the source authors.

This document contains the language specification, the opening Litany of Tarski, and short worked examples. The vocabulary list contains the project lexicon, a separately attributed Yiddish core-vocabulary adaptation, and the additions ledger. The translations collection contains the aligned Feeling Rational essay and the annotated Meditations on Moloch translation across all eight sections, including separately marked third-party quotation omissions and chapter-specific license notices. These three documents are the main references for future revisions; standalone essay files remain alternate reading copies. Splitting the collection does not change the grammar version or retranslate the existing prose.

15.4 Vocabulary acknowledgements

The vocabulary has been consolidated into one alphabetic list. Duplicate senses share entries; obsolete forms, source-comparison columns, and the separate surface-form index have been removed. Recorded plurals and verb forms appear with their headwords. Entry links remain stable.

Vocabulary selection and lexical facts draw in part on Wiktionary contributors’ Yiddish Swadesh list, revision 90553608, consulted 8 September 2026. Credit Wiktionary contributors and the Yuddish project for its adaptation under CC BY-SA 4.0. The current list uses only the selected Yuddish forms and meanings.

The earlier glossary explanations (stable identifiers V0001–V0305) retain their CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 notice. The later lexical documentation (V0306–V1796 and SW001–SW207, where retained) and the original consolidation notes are under CC BY-SA 4.0. These notices concern the authored documentation; words and linguistic facts are distinct from that expression. Consolidation does not relicense either translated essay. Identifiers are retained in entry links, without dividing the dictionary into different lists.

Supplementary lexical checks: trinken, kaylekhik, zoymen, arbet, tsayt, ober, ozere, and Eastern Health’s Yiddish directional vocabulary. These support the source forms checked, not an endorsement of the language.