Yiddish is certainly not a dialect of German. If a dialect is defined (among others) by mutual intelligibility the it's certainly not a dialect. Most Yiddish speakers don't understand German. I, as a speaker of Yiddish can say that I don't understand German and I know that Germans don't understand Yiddish. Maybe in the past when there was a Western Yiddish it was more mutual intelligible and even then Germans did not understand all the Hebrew words which are common in Yiddish. A few yeas ago I read a text in Western Yiddish to a German. She understood most of it but not the many Hebrew words. Today when people speak or write Eastern Yiddish it is certainly not mutual intelligible. In the 19th century there was a debate whether Yiddish is a language or zhargon (dialect) and it was decided on a language. Mendelssohn wrote his Beur in German not Yiddish. He used Hebrew letters only to facilitate the reading to the Jews of his time who did not know how to read Latin letters.
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