Yiddish Speakers: Canada

Yiddish Speakers Dept: The students smile as they return to the lesson in their textbook the iconic College Yiddish , published in 1949 now the principal point of contact with a language that was once among the five most common in Canada. According to the 2011 census, the number of Yiddish speakers has declined to the point of near invisibility. Although it s still a primary language for ultra-Orthodox communities in Canada, elsewhere Yiddish has become a language spoken mainly in classrooms or dropped piecemeal into conversation for its salty and often humorous effect, according to Globe and Mail. In the 1930s, roughly 1.4 per cent of Canadians spoke Yiddish, a proportion equal to the largest non-official language today, Punjabi. Yet Yiddish is now the 51st most common mother tongue in Canada, just behind such little-known dialects as Malayalam and Bisayan. From nearly 150,000 first-language Yiddish speakers in 1931, the number has slipped to just 15,205 and video: Yiddish makes a comeback on campus For the thousands now in their 70s and 80s who grew up around Yiddish, it remains a language of nostalgia, of a secular Jewish identity, an echo of an immigrant past. Its decline, revival and future is a complex story defined by the Holocaust, the founding of Israel and the integration of Jews in Canada. A language once integral to the preservation of a culture is itself now finding a way to survive. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.