Reply To: Do They Know Too Much?

There were many Gentiles would learned some Yiddish from working for, or around, Jews. a famous one is Colin Powell who, in his youth, was a Shabbos Goy in Washington Hights. Back in Der Heim (well the part for Der Heim my family comes from) there were many majority Jewish towns and even major cities. Both Minsk and Pinsk were majority Jewish (Pinsk was 70% Jewish). In such a milieu, Yiddish was the lingua franca and most of the non-Jews spoke it as well.