Reasons to learn - Yiddish.

Yiddish is the historical language of the Ashkenazi Jewish people (whose population once numbered 16.7 million). It was used throughout central and eastern Europe from the 12th Century, is now spoken by a large number of Orthodox Jewish communities, and is even the first language of many Hasidic Jews. Yiddish is also a recognized minority language in 6 European countries.



I'm not sure if this matters, but I'm not Jewish.

History.

If you're a history buff then Yiddish should be up there with Latin and Greek. In the 1900s Yiddish exploded in popularity due to the wide circulation of Yiddish literature, and brief status as an official language of Ukraine, Belarus, Galician SSR, and Jewish Autonomous Oblast. There was even a Yiddish renaissance in the late 1800s, which declared Yiddish as the official language of high culture in Eastern Europe, and was a catalyst for the surge of Yiddish literature.



This momentum was crushed by the Holocaust. Around 85% of the victims of the Holocaust were Yiddish speakers. After the second world war the Jewish communities focused on Hebrew as the official language of Israel, and Yiddish was somewhat forgotten.

People still speak it today. 



Well, not many people really. Yiddish speakers are hard to find, and mainly confined to small, spread out communities. About 170,000+ people report to speak it in the US, and there are around 30,000 speakers in the UK. Total figures are hard to find because it is a cultural language and the communities are so spread out.

I don't learn languages based on their popularity, but I know that it matters to some people.

It's a language hybrid.

About 75% of Yiddish vocabulary comes from German, and the rest comes from Hebrew and some other languages from wherever the Jewish people set up camp. Yiddish has its own grammatical structures, but it written in Hebrew script (although the letters are a little different). Despite this, Yiddish is classified as a Germanic language.

The literature.



I touched on this earlier, but it's worth repeating that Yiddish had a rich and historical literature. Whether it's 19th century Yiddish newspapers like the Der Hoyzfraynd (The Home Companion), the 17th Century piece of Biblical commentary - Tsena uRena (Come out and see), the writings of Sholem Aleichem - who was nicknamed the Yiddish Mark Twain, or the writings of Isaac Bashevis Singer - who won a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978 for his books in Yiddish.

Yiddish has enough to keep you busy for the rest of your life, should you wish to go down that road.