Unfortunately, many Lubavitchers are unaware of the basic rules of Yiddish grammar. ‘Der’ and ‘Di’ are NOT interchangeable. ‘der’ describes a masculine noun (der rebbe), while ‘di’ describes a feminine noun (di rebbetzin). ‘Shprach’ is a feminine noun; however when prefaced with a preposition (e.g. in, from, to, at, between etc.), like in this case where the preposition ‘fun’ (from) modifies the sentence, the usual feminine form is reversed into the masculine form. (Example: one would would say ‘DI rebbetzin zogt‘ – the Rebbetzin says. However, the proper way of saying ‘I heard from the Rebbetzin’ in Yiddish is: ich hub gehert fun DER rebbetzin. I know this can be very confusing to the uninitiated!).

Hence, ‘di shprach’ changes to ‘preposition-fun (from) der shprach.’ The entire clause following the proposition including the adjectives now need to follow the masculine form. Hence, it is correct to write “fun der Yidisher shprach.” (Yidisher in this sentence functions as an adjective to describe the noun ‘shprach’ I.e. which language? the Yiddish language).

According to proper Yiddish grammar writing “fun di Yidisher shprach,’ is a contradiction in terms. The sentence must be constructed either using a masculine, feminine, or neutral form, not a jumbled sentence containing both.

I hate to be pedantic about this, but I have seen cases of edited hanochos of the Rebbe, where the Rebbe had to correct basic Yiddish grammar mistakes, because apparently there were manichim who were unaware of basic rules of Yiddish grammar. In general, while the older generation of Yiddish speakers from Eastern-Europe properly internalized the basic rules of Yiddish grammar automatically, after the Holocaust, and especially among American born Lubavitchers whose primary language is English, many of these rules (especially relating to the different gendered forms) have fallen by the wayside, to the extent that many people (even those with a good Yiddish vocabulary) are totally unaware that ‘der’ and ‘di’ are not interchangeable synonyms, but rather different gender form.

I hope Lubavitchers will start paying more attention to the proper grammatical rules that apply when using the Rebbe’s language.