How many hours of Yiddish?

Learners who kept count have reported what they could follow at each stage. For an English speaker learning Yiddish, roughly:

1. 75 hoursSlow, simple speech made for learners
2. 200 hoursLearner videos at normal speed
3. 400 hoursEasy native videos on familiar topics
4. 750 hoursMost everyday native speech, with effort
5. 1,250 hoursNative content feels comfortable
6. 1,900 hoursNearly everything, even fast speech

Based on the Dreaming Spanish roadmap. Yiddish is not in the US Foreign Service Institute's ranking of how long languages take an English speaker to learn; going by its closest relatives, we put it in group 2 of 4, a little further from English than French or Spanish. So the landmarks are raised by a quarter. If you already speak a language close to Yiddish, expect to need fewer. How many hours you really need.

How Serval recognises Yiddish

Serval listens to short windows of each video's sound, up to thirty seconds at a time, and a small model on your own computer names the language. No audio is kept or sent anywhere. Yiddish is not among the 28 languages we measured against our own recordings, so its labels rest on the model's published results. A label is only shown once two independent checks agree; when the audio is not clear enough, the video's time is not counted rather than guessed.

You never have to tell Serval you are learning Yiddish. You only mark the languages you already speak, and everything else counts, so you can learn Yiddish alongside another language and see each one's hours separately.

Finding Yiddish to listen to

Search YouTube for ייִדיש, Yiddish's name for itself, together with a topic you already enjoy: cooking, games, news, travel. Native speakers searching in their own language find content that searches in English miss. Early on, look for videos made for learners, with slow speech and lots of pictures, and move to native videos as they get easier; the hour landmarks above tell you roughly when.

Yiddish is written in Hebrew script, which you do not need to read to start listening. Serval goes by sound, not subtitles, so it counts the same whether you turn captions on or not.

Close relatives

Yiddish belongs to the West Germanic group. Serval also identifies Afrikaans, Dutch, English, German, Luxembourgish and Scots.

Questions

Does Serval work for Yiddish?

Yes. Serval identifies Yiddish from a video's audio, on your own computer, and counts the time you spend listening to it on YouTube, Twitch, Netflix and six more sites. Yiddish has not been measured against our own recordings; the identification rests on the model's published results, and a label is only shown once two independent checks agree. You do not have to tell it you are learning Yiddish; it works that out by listening.

How many hours does it take to understand Yiddish?

As a rough guide for an English speaker, about 400 hours of listening for easy native videos on familiar topics, and about 1,250 for native content to feel comfortable. It varies from person to person, and a language close to one you already speak goes faster.

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