The Dutch language has inherited several words and expressions from the Yiddish language spoken by Ashkenazic Jews who settled in the Low Countries in the early seventeenth century. Amsterdam especially had a major Ashkenazic community, which in the nineteenth century encompassed up to thirteen percent of the city’s population. At that time, however, segments of the Ashkenazic population ceased using Yiddish as their dominant vernacular, giving rise to a Jewish ethnolect of Dutch. Yiddish and Jewish Dutch have left an important legacy to the Dutch language, especially in its informal registers. The question addressed by the present study is: did the Yiddish language leave any traces in Italy as well? After sketching the rise and development of Yiddish, the author describes the historical context of the Jewish presence in Italy. Yiddophone Ashkenazic populations settled only in Northern Italy, particularly in the North-East. In the rest of Italy, Yiddish was a completely unknown language. The northern Jewish-Italian dialects, which died out at the end of the nineteenth century, have retained some sporadic traces of their former Yiddish-speaking communities. More importantly, the Jewish dialects in Northern Italy included aspects of language use which are clear reminders of the attitude of Yiddish speakers worldwide towards their language.
