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Yiddish (ייִדיש, also אידיש, yidish, "Jewish") is a nonterritorial Germanic language, spoken throughout the world and written with the Hebrew alphabet. It originated in the Ashkenazi culture that developed from about the 10th century in central and eastern Europe, and spread via emigration to other continents. In the earliest surviving references to it, the language is called לשון־אַשכּנז (loshn-ashkenaz = "Ashkenaz language") and טײַטש (taytsh, a variant of tiutsch, the contemporary name for the language otherwise spoken in the region, now called Middle High German; compare the modern Deutsch). In common usage, the language is called מאַמע־לשון (mame-loshn = "mother tongue"), distinguishing it from biblical Hebrew and Aramaic which are collectively termed לשון־קודש (loshn-koydesh = "holy tongue"). The term Yiddish did not become the most frequently used designation in the literature of the language until the 18th century, but for a significant portion of its history it was the primary spoken language of the Ashkenazi Jews. It once spanned a broad dialect continuum from "Western Yiddish" to "Eastern Yiddish", but only the Eastern dialects remain in use, and have absorbed significant Slavic components into their vocabularies.

The general history and status of the Yiddish language are discussed below, with further detail provided in a series of separate articles on:

• Yiddish dialects � as spoken in different regions of Europe
• Yiddish morphology � the structural detail of the language
• Yiddish orthography � the written representation of the language
• Yiddish phonology � the elements of the spoken language

Yiddish is also used in the adjectival sense to designate attributes of Ashkenazi culture (for example, Yiddish cooking and Yiddish music).