General Requests

[Zanz]

I would like to propose an addition of Yiddish to the RLE list, under the IG name "Redn" (רעדן) which is the infinitive of "To Speak" in Yiddish.

Right now, there is Yeudi, for the RLE of Hebrew, and as a Semitic language that has been largely revived in the late 19th century, but Yiddish is a Germanic language dating from the 10th Century and served Jewish populations for centuries while Hebrew had largely disappeared from daily conversation.  Yiddish is a complete language of its own with Germanic grammar that incorporated Germanic, Hebrew, Romance and Slavic vocabulary and cultural references.  Israel has like 200,000 Yiddish speakers, and the US has perhaps as many as 350,000 Yiddish speakers (all the Jews I grew up around, including my step father's family spoke some Yiddish along with their English, for example, and a lot of Jewish humor is based in Yiddish, so much so that I have to translate a lot of Blazing Saddles for my son, for example), and it was more widely spoken before the War in Europe.  I think there is a case for its inclusion.

I have been RPing Kalistani Yeudis as speaking Yiddish for a while now, and I think this would be a good addition for those who wish to play it.  I hope you will consider this request.

Is there any decision on this by moderation?

Thanks for bumping this. We've been discussing it and I have a couple of clarifying questions. Yiddish IRL was heavily influenced by German with influences from Hebrew and Jewish culture in the Pale and the surrounding Polish/Ukrainian/Lithuanian/Russian milieu. None of those cultures are particularly close to one another in game now or in history as far as we know, and no player has really played Yiddish previously (it's not in any CPs or on the original wiki except a couple of very sporadic references) - where was Redn meant to have emerged, and why does it make sense to exist at all in PT? We recognize that we don't have a perfect track record as a community on this sort of thing, and it doesn't always have to make perfect sense, but wouldn't it make more sense for Yeudis in Kalistan to speak a creole of Vrassan and Yeudish, that way we don't have to make up a post-hoc history for how a very niche Germanic Jewish language ended up spoken nowhere near either Terra's German or Jewish states?

We're open to the idea of letting Redn = Yiddish, I just hope you can help us square the circle on why Yiddish would exist at all here.