I omly now was able to read the whole post on this matter. Whatever I think has been said by others but there are two items that have not been elucidated and I want to clarify this( I think gavra at work has been trying to show the way on this)
The story of “shiboleth’ or “ssiboleth’ is in Shoftim and is mentioned during the parshe of “pilegesh begivoh”,a woman who was abducted, raped and murdered by shevet binyomin. When the other shevotim waged war against the shevet and almost destroyed it, they barred the crossing of the jarden (mentioned earlier) and only allowed people to cross who could say “SH”, Apparently, shevet binyomim had a different pronunciation and could not say “sh” (just like litvaks) All those who could not say “sh” were killed. (this terrible story has a somewhat happy ending) This is the story of “shibboleth” and “ssiboleth”.
I am writing this down becaase a lot of silly comments have been written about “ivrit” and its sefardi pronunciation. You have to totally deaf, evil or stupid to pretend that “ivrit” is not descended from Loshon hakodesh. Clearly it is. Additionally, for over a thousand years, Hebrew – not aramaic- was the language of our ancestors. Do you think that the Nevi’im would have spoken and written in hebrew if no one spoke it? preposterous.
Only at the end of Bays rishon do we see aramaic seeping into our discourse (doniel, of course and some other parts),
From that time on- after the first churban- aramaic became the main spoken language of the jews for another thousand years. I say spoken because the mishnah was written in hebrew, our ancestral language, but the gemoro, reflecting a looser, less edited version of learning, was writen in aramaic dialects. Remember also that there was a “meturgamen’ (translator), present at both the “krias hatorah’ and also at various amoraic discourses.
After that, arabic actually became the main spoken language. Rav saadyah Gaon and the rambam and many others (Chovas halevoves)wrote in arabic.
Only when the jews started migrating to germany-well into the Middle Ages,around 1200 c.e.- did yiddish appear.
SO- yiddish is a spoken dialect that- in reality – has no more intrinsic kedusha than arabic or french (rashi’s language). It is indeed a wonderful language but certainly has no kedusah per se.
Ivrit is certainly the present manifestation of old hebrew and has the same kedushah- if you maintain that Hebrew has kedusha. How to pronounce it differs from place to place and country to country, as you saw from “shibboleth’ and also the aleph-ayin controversy. The yemenites probably are closest to the original (only they have a differcne between a gimmel and a gimmel degusho, for example)
It is also totally irrelevant that Ben jehuda brought it back in its modern form. So what?
Aramaic seems to be a little bit different because it is a cousin of old Hebrew and our alphabet is of aramaic origin too. It also is the most ancient one- note “jagar sahadosseh, at the end of Vayetzeh-
So, yiddish is wonderful but is surely a german dialect,with no intrinsic kedusha. And I know plenty of so-called “inappropriate’ words in yiddish.