Yiddish grammar is the system of principles which govern the structure of the Yiddish language. This article describes the standard form laid out by YIVO while noting differences in significant dialects such as that of many contemporary Hasidim. As a Germanic language descended from Middle High German, Yiddish grammar is very similar to that of German, though it also has numerous linguistic innovations as well as grammatical features influenced by or borrowed from Hebrew, Aramaic, and various Slavic languages.
Nouns
Gender
Yiddish nouns are classified into one of three grammatical genders: masculine (זכר ), feminine (נקבֿה ) and neuter (נײטראַל ). To a large extent, the gender of a noun is unpredictable, though there are some regular patterns: nouns denoting specifically male humans and animals are usually masculine, and nouns denoting specifically female humans and animals are usually feminine nouns ending in an unstressed schwa are usually feminine nouns built on most of the common abstract noun suffixes, such as ונג- -ung and הײט- -hayt, are feminine diminutive nouns with the suffix -l are neuter in the standard language loanwords are generally assigned masculine gender by default unless they end in a schwa, in which case they are usually feminine. Gender assignment for new words and sporadic realignments of older ones are examples of the dynamic tendency observable for nouns that do not reflect an inherent sex. It designates nouns with vowel endings as feminine and those with consonant endings as masculine.
Case
There are three grammatical cases in Yiddish: nominative, accusative and dative. The nominative case generally is used for the subject, the accusative for the direct object and the dative for an indirect object or object of a preposition. Nouns are normally not inflected for case, and case is indicated by the inflection of a related definite article or adjective. However, a handful of nouns do have inflectional endings to indicate the accusative and/or dative cases, which may be optional or obligatory, depending on the specific lexical item and dialect; examples of nouns that take obligatory case endings include certain kinship terms (טאַטע tate 'father', מאַמע mame 'mother') and the words ייִד yid 'Jew' and האַרץ harts 'heart'. In those cases, masculine nouns take the ending ן- -n in the accusative and dative singular, i.e. טאַטן tatn 'father', רבין rebn 'rabbi' or 'teacher'; feminine and neuter nouns take ן- -n only in the dative singular, where, for example, מאַמע mame becomes מאַמען mamen.
Yiddish does not have a genitive case. However, when the possessor is a human or occasionally other living beings, possession may be indicated with a suffixed ס- -s (like English possessive -'s). Otherwise, possession is normally indicated by the preposition פֿון fun 'of'.
Another genitive-like construction, the quantitative, is used to describe quantities of objects: (a full cup of hot tea); (a group of young people). The noun phrase representing the quantity is simply followed by noun representing the object described. This construction may not be used if the object has a definite article: (a full cup of the hot tea).
Plural
There are two regular plural suffixes. For nouns ending in an unstressed vowel, the plural is regularly formed with the suffix -s; e.g., the plural of גרופּע grupe 'group' is גרופּעס grupes. For nouns ending in a consonant, the plural is regularly formed with -n; the plural of טיש tish 'table' is טישן tishn.
A very large number of nouns use irregular plural forms, including -es (these are usually nouns of Slavic origin), and -er with umlaut (e.g., מאַן man 'man' → מענער mener 'men'; קינד kind 'child' → קינדער kinder 'children'), or umlaut alone (e.g., האַנט hant 'hand' → הענט hent 'hands'). Some words do not change in the plural (e.g., פֿיש fish 'fish'). Nouns built on the diminutive suffixes -l and -ele form the plural in -ekh (e.g., מײדל meydl 'girl' → מײדלעך meydlekh 'girls').