Written in the Hebrew alphabet, Yiddish is still spoken and written in many Orthodox Jewish communities around the world, though not by most of those in Portland. Stephen Simons, has launched a new enterprise helping those who don’t know Yiddish. He has begun a translation business to help Jews learn more about their Jewish family heritage.

Switzerland is at the intersection of three major European cultures – German, French and Italian – and the only language it can truly call its own, Romansh, is spoken by less than 0.5 per cent of the population.

In multicultural South Florida, where the number of foreign language speakers is rising, those speaking Yiddish is down dramatically in the last decade, according to the most recent census surveys. Also spoken less often at home is Italian, Hungarian, Polish, Thai and Greek. But their losses are dwarfed by Yiddish, which went from about 16,390 speakers in South Florida in 2000 to about 5,880 in 2010.

Sadan pegs the number of Japanese proficient in Yiddish at fewer than 20, though more have partial knowledge of the language. All, he says, are driven by “healthy intellectual curiosity and interest in traditional Ashkenazic culture, which, unlike modern Israeli culture, seems to have much in common with traditional Japanese culture.”

Experts estimate there are between 1 million and 2 million native Yiddish speakers in the world, but only about 500,000 speak it in the home — mostly orthodox Jews. When YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York City began offering summer programs in Yiddish in 1968, they were the only such program in the world.

Students may not expect to study up on devil folklore and sexuality for a Yiddish course, but new university language instructor Agi Legutko is determined to revive the traditional Ashkenazi Jewish language on the campus in a new way.

...While many consider it to be a dying language, Yiddish is being preserved, not only by scholars in universities, but also by laymen such as Sol Toder. Toder, who runs the club in the South Hills, says the main purpose of the club is entertainment.

For some Jewish day schools, there is no teaching Yiddishkeit without Yiddish. Buoyed by the Yiddish renaissance of the past two decades, which has produced an increased interest in university Yiddish programs, a renewed interest in Yiddish theater and even the advent of Yiddish heavy metal bands, these schools have held steadfast to their Yiddishist roots and missions.

YOU may not realise, as you schmooze someone at a party or kvetch to them about a glitch, that you're speaking Yiddish. The language of the Jewish street has been around for at least a thousand years, and was the mother tongue - mameloshn - of millions of Jews across western and eastern Europe until World War II...

In the decades when Yiddish still flourished, the indigenous languages of Victoria were also dying. Australia is the Armageddon of languages: the devastation of mother tongues has been on a scale that may have no equivalent anywhere in the world.

MONTREAL - Yiddish has been called a dying language. But mention that to Lorna Smith and she starts talking about renewed interest in what was once the lingua franca of an estimated 11 million Jews just before the Second World War.

...But let’s get back to Mr. Fidell’s intuition. The far- in a word like farklemt and the “for-“ in a word like “forget” are indeed connected, although less obviously than might appear at first glance.

In a small classroom hidden at the end of the hall on the first floor of UC Santa Cruz’s social sciences building, six students and their instructor struggle to say,“I like the weather today”in Yiddish. It sounds simple, but several students have already stumbled over the treacherous, paradoxical grammar.

Many Crown Heights parents and institutions remain steadfast in their assertion to teach only in Yiddish. Sometimes, even at the expense of education. The Rebbe's opinion seems to be misunderstood by even some veteran educators, certainly by many of the parents advocating the only-Yiddish policy.