Yenish language

Not to be confused with the Yeniseian languages.

Yenish
Native to	Germany, Switzerland, Austria, France, Netherlands, and elsewhere
Ethnicity	Yenish
Native speakers	16,000 (2006)
Language family	Indo-European Germanic West Germanic High German Yenish
Writing system	Latin (German alphabet)
Official status
Recognised minority language in	Switzerland
Language codes
ISO 639-3	yec
Glottolog	yeni1236

Yenish (French: Yeniche, German: Jenisch), is a variety of German spoken by the Yenish people, former nomads living mostly in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Alsace and other parts of France.

Components

Yenish has been documented since the 18th century. Yenish speakers generally speak their local German dialect, enriched by the Yenish vocabulary, which is derived in part from Rotwelsch, with influences from Yiddish, Romani, and other minority languages of the region.

The Yenish vocabulary contains many words of Romani and Yiddish (and through the latter route, Hebrew) origin; it also has many unusual metaphors and metonyms that replace the standard German words. Some original Yeniche words have become parts of standard German.

The Yenish were originally travelers, i.e. people with professions outside of mainstream society that required them to move from town to town, such as showpeople, tinkers, and door-to-door salesmen. Today, the Yenish jargon is only used in certain isolated locations, such as certain poor districts of Berlin, Münster, some Eifel villages, and Luxembourg.

Individual variants of the Yenish language can be quite distinct, and have names of their own, such as Masematte, Lepper Talp, Heenese Vlek, and others.

See also

• Lotegorisch

External links

• Wittich, Engelbert, and Günther, L., Die jenische Sprache, 1914