How much can a Yiddish speaker understand Swiss German (and vice-versa)?

They are quite similar due to the old German roots.

http://www.yiddishlibrary.com/
http://www.bubbygram.com/yiddishglossary.htm
http://www.villagedwellers.com/yiddish.htm

A fascinating topic for linguistics.

No personal experience, but a Jewish family in my workplace were teaching me some things about pronounciation - so there is obviously some similarity...

I don't know...

...but your question reminded me of a wonderful short film, 'Pastry, Pain and Politics'. There is a scene where an elderly Jewish-American tourist is in a hospital room in with a elderly Swiss gentleman - one speaking Yiddish, the other Swiss-German. They say they do not understand one another, but they obviously do...

Well worth watching.

http://www.swissfilms.ch/detail_f.asp?PNr=22279981

I lived in the NYC area for 12 years, and had a lot of exposure to yiddish from various people I knew and worked with. Once moving here, I recognized a lot of words and pronunciations from yiddish, but not enough to really be useful of course

I find many similarities between the two, although I am not a native speaker of either language.
I do enjoy however, the links that (all/various) languages, lead me to a better understanding of my own and their roots, in that, they give me a sense of connection in this big wide world, no matter how distant.

My grandfather was a Swiss born Australian and he taught me Swiss German and German when I was a child. Once a week we went to a Jewish shop in Brisbane and we both had no problems understanding Yiddish although we couldn't speak it. I always enjoyed to figure out what the owners and their customers were talking about.

Both languages have a alemannic subset. But the Swiss dialects have a French influence. And Yiddish obviously would have Hebrew in it.

Either that or some Jews speak Swiss German?

Some Swiss speak Yiddish. Certain parts of Zurich, e.g. near SihlCity, have a high concentration of orthodox Jews.

a bisel aidel
a bisel dreck
a bisel gelt
a dank
Alter Kucker
schlep
schmootz

Sounds Swiss to me!

Sounds austrian to me

Proverbs in Yiddish that could be understood by a Swiss German speaker.

A nar git, a kluger nemt.
==A fool gives, a wise man takes

A goldener shlisl efent ale tirn.
A golden key will open every lock (door).

Nit dos iz sheyn, vos iz sheyn, nor dos, vos es gefelt.
==Beautiful is not what is beautiful, but what one likes

Vos lenger ein blinder leybt, dos mehr seht er.
==The longer a blind man lives, the more he sees.

Ainer iz a ligen, tsvai iz ligens, drei iz politik.
==One lie is a lie, two lies are lies, but three is politics!

Yes, it is closer to Austrian than Swiss German in some ways.

olygirl belive me it`s austrian

Some more Yiddish proverbs a Swiss German speaker could understand:

Di grub iz shoin ofen un der mentsh tut noch hofen.

The grave is already dug and man still continues to hope.

Der vos shveigt maint oich epes.
He who is silent means something just the same.

Varf di kats vi du vilst, blaypt zi alts shteyn af di fis.
You can throw a cat however you want, it always stays on its feet.

Kluge kinder hobn kurtse jorn.
Wise children have short years.

Swiss G

En narr git,en gschide git
En goldige schluesseloefnet alli tuere
Nid das is schoen ????????????????
ye laenger das en blinde maa laebt ,desto meh gseht er
Ei lueg isch e lueg,awei luege sind luege ,drue isch politik

Indeed, the exact translation into Swiss German is a bit different, but you have just been able to read and understand Yiddish without much effort. Congratulations!

To you it is bit to me big

interesting! I think German itself goes as far back as Sanskrit, but would need to double check. There were also Germanic tribes ( The Goths ( East Germanic) who died out- only leaving their architecture, right?)
West Germanic ( Eventually High German as we know it today)
North Germanic ( Swedish/Danish)

Martin Luther- fascinating guy, did a great job of translating bibles from Low German ( basically Dutch) to High German, and it's because of him we have High German today.

Have recently observed, how like Dutch Swiss German sounds,
1. Words like Hoi
2.dropping of the end of verbs and words
3. Guttural G,


perhaps then it is a mixture of Yiddish and Dutch sounding idiosyncrasies, or simply- it is influenced by many influences over time.