Is Yiddish a creole language? And if not, what is it?

A "creole" language is formed by the merging of two parent languages, usually through an earlier rudimentary mixture of the two. Does this make Yiddish a creole language? Was English itself a creole language in the century or so after the Norman Conquest?

My question is really about what constitutes a creole language: what are its hallmarks and most distinguishing features, and do creole languages ever evolve to become "proper" languages (whatever that may mean) in their own right?

Solution 1:

A creole language is not necessarily a combination of two languages. It's just a pidgin language that has native speakers.

A pidgin language is usually a limited, easy-to-learn language used for communications between two different language groups. Normally it has much simpler vocabulary and grammar. The hallmark of a pidgin language is that nobody speaks it as their primary language... it serves as a lingua franca (shared language) between two linguistic communities.

Pidgins are not necessarily anyone's primary language. These days people often use basic English as a pidgin even when neither of them is really an English speaker (for example, a Tagalog-speaking sailor might use basic/pidgin English to communicate with an Arabic-speaking merchant when in port, or a Russian tourist in Japan might use basic English to communicate with her hosts).

Sometimes pidgins are used so much that they become primary languages, and kids grow up speaking only the pidgin language. At that point the language is considered a creole language. The classic example of this is Haitian Creole, which started out as a simplified version of French used by African language speakers in Haiti, and soon became the primary language kids learned. Another major example is Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea.

Yiddish is none of the above, really. It is mostly an in-group dialect that became a full fledged language when it got its first army (Joke!) It was not intended to be used as a lingua franca, although sometimes it served this purpose when Jews from different linguistic communities (e.g. Germany and Poland) used it as a common language.

Solution 2:

Grammatically, Yiddish is almost entirely Germanic - very close to an older form of High German. In vocabulary, it is mostly Germanic, but with a large admixture of Hebrew words and (depending on the dialect) also significant borrowings from other languages, such as Polish and Russian.

As such, it is not what most scholars describe as a creole: that is a language whose grammar has arisen spontaneously, generally when a cohort of children grow up among people who communicate in a pidgin (a contact language with little or no consistent grammar). It appears that given such an environment, small children will mould it into a language with its own grammar, generally bearing little resemblance to that of the language(s) from which the words come. (This is somewhat controversial, as is the claim that creoles round the world tend to have rather similar grammars).

So with that definition, Yiddish is not a creole: it is a distinct Germanic language, quite close to German, but which has a large admixture of Hebrew and other words.

Solution 3:

Yiddish is typically referred to as a Creoloid, much like Afrikaans, Michif, and even African American Vernacular English. That is, they share a lot of common traits with Creoles and Creole Genesis. Labeling something a Creole or not is debatable even amongst scholars as many have conflicting views on what makes something a creole.

Try reading either of these for some info on it and judge for yourself.

Jacobs, Neil G. (2005). Yiddish: A Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge University Press. (Scott: PJ 5116.J33 2004);

Prince, Ellen (2001). Yiddish as a contact language. In Norval Smith and Tonjes Veenstra (eds.), Creolization and contact