Yiddish ( yidish or idish, literally: "Jewish") is a non-territorial
Germanic language, spoken throughout the world and written with the
Hebrew alphabet. It originated in the
Ashkenazi culture that developed from about the
10th century in the
Rhineland, and then spread to
central and
eastern Europe, and eventually to other continents. In the earliest surviving references to it, the language is called לשון־אַשכּנז (loshn-ashkenaz = "language of Ashkenaz") and טײַטש (taytsh, a variant of tiutsch, the contemporary name for the language otherwise spoken in the region of origin, now called
Middle High German; compare the modern
New High German or Deutsch). In common usage, the language is called מאַמע־לשון (mame-loshn = "
mother tongue"), distinguishing it from biblical
Hebrew and
Aramaic which are collectively termed לשון־קודש (loshn-koydesh = "holy tongue"). The term Yiddish did not become the most frequently used designation in the literature of the language until the
18th century. For a significant portion of its history it was the primary spoken language of the Ashkenazi Jews and once spanned a broad range of dialects from "Western Yiddish" to three major groups within "Eastern Yiddish". Eastern and Western Yiddish are most markedly distinguished by the extensive inclusion of words of
Slavic origin in the Eastern dialects. While Western Yiddish has few remaining speakers, Eastern dialects remain in wide use,
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