Le origini dello yiddish. Ipotesi a confronto

A language spoken in the past by millions of people in the heart of Europe, and which arrived through various migratory waves to the United States, Argentina, South Africa, Israel and elsewhere, Yiddish has been the instrument of daily expression and the heart of the cultural, or even national, identity of a lively and multifaceted Jewish society. But where was this language born? And when? And why has the investigation of its origins so far offered anything but definitive results? Illustrating the main hypotheses formulated over the past century, the current state of knowledge on the origins of Yiddish is presented here, without neglecting the implications and possible motivations for each theory.