The Yiddish foundation

3.1 The source language

Yiddish is a language with its own literature, dialects, and grammatical traditions. Its historical components include Germanic, Hebrew and Aramaic, Slavic, and smaller contributions from other languages. Yuddish takes this existing linguistic material as its foundation; it does not treat Yiddish as English with Hebrew letters. For an introductory account, see YIVO's Basic Facts about Yiddish.

The ordinary lexicon supplies words such as velt “world,” gleybn “believe,” zen “see,” zogn “say,” gefil “feeling,” and emes “truth.” Compounding and grammatical specialization turn such material toward new purposes. A technical compound should be transparent when possible, while remaining distinguishable from a historical dictionary entry.

3.2 A small root text

The following short teaching text was composed for this reference. It illustrates the source-language layer rather than quoting a historical Yiddish work.

Yiddish: איך זע אַ ליכט. איך װײס ניט װאָס עס איז. איך פֿרעג דיך.

Transliteration: Ikh ze a likht. Ikh veys nit vos es iz. Ikh freg dikh.

English: “I see a light. I do not know what it is. I ask you.”

An experimental Yuddish adaptation separates the perceptual assertion, a refusal to invent an identification, and a direct question:

Reading: “I see a light, at +6 bits on perceptual evidence. I suspend judgment about what the light is. What is it?”

The repetition zen … zen is intentional: the clitic marks evidence, while the lexical verb says what occurred. Halt is the abstention operator, specified in section 8. It expresses suspension of judgment, so this is an adaptation of the teaching text rather than a word-for-word restatement of “I do not know.”

3.3 No gender and no case inflection

Core. All nouns belong to one undifferentiated class. “Neuter by default” means that the forms formerly associated with the neuter supply useful defaults; it does not leave masculine or feminine exceptions in the lexicon. People, objects, abstractions, and new compounds follow the same grammar. Sex or gender can still be described when relevant, and lexical meanings such as “brother” remain possible, without controlling agreement.

Dos / דאָס is the invariant definite article for singular and plural nouns in every syntactic role. A / אַ is the indefinite singular article, with an / אַן before a vowel as a pronunciation rule, not an inflection. Indefinite plurals have no article. Keyn / קײן is an invariant negative determiner. It can carry the negation in a construction such as dos kestl hot keyn diamant, “the box has no diamond”; a separate nit is not compulsory in that construction.

Nouns still distinguish singular and plural where the lexicon supplies different forms: gefil → gefiln, velt → veltn, mentsh → mentshn. Irregular plurals remain lexical. Number is not case or gender: dos mentsh ef… and dos mentshn efn… retain their different verb agreement. No noun changes its ending because it is an object, recipient, possessor, or complement of a preposition.

The former article forms der, di, and dem are not productive alternatives to dos. Case-bearing contractions are expanded: use tsu dos, fun dos, in dos, and oyf dos, rather than inherited forms such as tsum or funem. This does not split unrelated lexical words that merely start with similar sounds.

3.4 Invariant pronouns and possession

Core. Pronouns have the same form as subjects, objects, and after prepositions. Word order identifies subject and object; prepositions identify recipients and other relations.

Zey is the default personal third-person pronoun, independent of sex or gender. It extends the inherited plural form to one human or other being presented as sentient. This singular use is a Yuddish innovation. Es remains available for any singular referent, including a person where personal reference is not being foregrounded. Choosing a pronoun does not introduce noun classes or agreement on articles and adjectives. A speaking animal or AI character can receive zey. Uncertainty about sentience can be expressed separately; a pronoun is not a numerical consciousness assessment.

Number agreement follows the referent: zey ef for one, zey efn for several. In nonassertive inherited verb forms, use zey lernt for one and zey lernen for several. Zey itself never inflects for number or case. A newly introduced unspecified individual takes singular agreement. A plural group takes plural agreement. Where the listener cannot recover number, repeat a noun or count; there is no arbitrary number-unknown agreement form. A plural clause also needs a clear collective or distributive interpretation.

Gendered er and zi are absent. Mir means only “we/us,” not inherited dative “to me.” Forms such as mikh, dikh, dir, im, undz, and aykh survive in actual Yiddish quotations and historical specimens only. No new personal ment or referent-index paradigm is adopted.

Possession always permits fun + noun phrase/pronoun: dos model fun ikh, dos model fun zey. The invariant short possessives remain mayn, dayn, zayn, undzer, ayer, zeyer. Zayn covers any singular third-person possessor, including singular zey; zeyer covers plural possessors. Thus fun zey needs contextual number, while zayn model versus zeyer model can make it explicit. No possessive ending agrees with the possessed noun. Context distinguishes possessive zayn from infinitive zayn, “be.”

Zikh / זיך is the subject reflexive for all persons and numbers. It refers to the subject of the smallest containing finite clause. =Zikh remains a separate evidential clitic: it marks the speaking voice's introspection or memory, regardless of the grammatical subject.

Zelb / זעלב is the new invariant local backward-reference pronoun, adapted from the Yiddish root meaning “same”. It refers to the most recently completed accessible referential noun phrase in the current sentence. This is a different relation from subject reflexivity. The operational rule is:

1. A completed referential noun phrase registers its whole referent, including a completed pronoun. An adjective, verb, numeral inside a noun phrase, or standalone operator does not register another referent.
2. The whole phrase Rivke's brother registers the brother when complete, overriding the internal possessor. A coordinated phrase registers the group after its final conjunct is complete.
3. Zelb resolves against the existing register before registering its own referent. It cannot resolve to the incomplete phrase containing itself or to a following word. If there is no accessible antecedent, use a name or another pronoun.
4. A quoted voice, displayed text, hypothetical, or model has a local register initialized from the accessible outer register. Its internal mentions do not overwrite the outer register when it closes. A subframe's referents cannot leak out as actual-world objects.
5. An ordinary embedded clause shares the sentence register unless a frame isolates it. Every sentence boundary clears the register, even inside a continuing paragraph or extended frame. Returning from a frame after a sentence boundary does not resurrect an antecedent from an earlier sentence.

Zelb may refer to people, objects, or groups, and takes its antecedent's number if used as a subject. Naming the full referent is the repair when accessibility or grouping is unclear. It does not replace the ordinary adjective zelb “same”: attributive position distinguishes dos zelb model from standalone pronoun zelb.

Rivke ef⁺⁴=zen Moyshe zen un zelb fotografirn. — Rivke sees Moyshe and photographs Moyshe; +4 about the combined event, perceptually.

Rivke ef⁺⁴=zen Moyshe zen un zikh fotografirn. — Rivke sees Moyshe and photographs Rivke; the same epistemic scope.

Ikh ef⁺⁴=zen du zen. — “I see you, +4 bits, perceptually.”

Ikh ef⁺⁴=zog a model tsu du gebn. — “I give a model to you, +4 bits, by report.”

Case-free grammar needs recoverable roles. After a fronted time phrase and EF, the subject precedes the object. A bare object cannot freely move into the subject slot. Use an explicit topic phrase such as vegn X “about X,” with a full following clause, when topicalizing an object would otherwise be ambiguous.

3.5 Invariant adjectives and determiners

Core. Adjectives use one uninflected lexical base in attributive and predicative positions, for every noun and number: a gut model, dos gut model, dos gut modeln, and dos model … gut zayn. The language does not keep the inherited agreement alternation guter/gute/guts/gutn. The base is gut, not a new universal guts ending.

Possessives and demonstrative modifiers are also invariant: mayn gut modeln, dos dozik model, dos dozik modeln. Interrogative modifiers use invariant velkh “which”; no velkhe agreement alternant is needed. The quantifiers are invariant al “all,” yed “each/every,” epes “something,” and keyn in negative constructions. An explicit count precedes the noun: eyn model, tsve modeln. Zero and plural counts take the plural for count nouns. With fractional quantities, use a mass/measure construction such as “half of a model” rather than forcing a new agreement rule.

Comparative meanings remain available. Shtarker “stronger” and beser “better” are lexical comparative forms, not gender or case endings; they are themselves invariant. Thus dos shtarker model and dos shtarker modeln both mean “the stronger model(s).” A useful analytic alternative is mer or veniker plus the base adjective. Derivational endings in words such as troyerik remain part of those words.

3.6 Verbs and clause shape

Inherited verb stems and person/number conjugations remain available in questions and nonassertive frames, using the current invariant pronouns. A regular present-tense illustration is lernen: ikh lern, du lernst, es lernt, mir lernen, ir lernt, zey lernen. The copula has bin, bist, iz, zenen, zent, zenen. Lexical irregularities are retained.

In an asserted Yuddish clause, the epistemic auxiliary occupies the finite slot and the lexical predicate takes a nonfinite form. Thus inherited ikh ze “I see” becomes ikh ef⁺⁶=zen … zen. The new auxiliary takes familiar-looking agreement endings, but it is an invented paradigm.

The main-clause pattern keeps a finite verb in second constituent position. A fronted time expression counts as one constituent:

Ikh ef⁺²=zog morgn kumen. — “I will come tomorrow, +2 bits, by report.”

Morgn ef⁺²=zog ikh kumen. — “Tomorrow I will come, +2 bits, by report.”

The auxiliary, strength marker, and clitic together form one grammatical complex. Their internal pieces do not each occupy a separate word-order position. Operator-led clauses have their own patterns; section 8 explains them.