The Yenish (German: Jenische; French: Yéniche, Taïtch) are an itinerant group in Western Europe who live mostly in Germany, Austria, Switzerland,[3] Luxembourg, Belgium, and parts of France, roughly centered on the Rhineland.

[7] This hypothesis is shared by Rémy Welschinger, who specifies that, due to the various wars and numerous food shortages, Jews and Yenishes were forced to live marginally by exercising professions which required great mobility and that the two peoples were able to settle and their languages to mix.

Klaus Vater answers the question “Who are they?” in the article “Das vergessene Volk”: “I am writing about a group of people that has existed for centuries and, as mentioned, has its own language and music.

It is very likely that they arose when, at the end of the Middle Ages, the dispossessed, people without knowledge useful for the cities, the impoverished and the persecuted came together with Jewish groups, with former mercenaries and strangers.

The Yenish people as a distinct group, as opposed to the generic class of vagrants of the early modern period, emerged towards the end of the 18th century.

[25] The Yenish people are mentioned as a persecuted group in the text of the 2012 Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims of National Socialism in Berlin.

[30] An organisation for the political representation of travellers (Yenish as well as Sinti and Roma) was founded in 1975, named Radgenossenschaft der Landstrasse ("Wheel Cooperative of the Road").

[32] In November 2021, on the initiative of linguist Heidi Schleich and now chairman Marco Buckovez, the association Jenische in Österreich (Yenish in Austria)[33] was founded with headquarters in Innsbruck.

[35] Alain Reyniers [fr] wrote in a 1991 article in the journal Etudes Tsiganes that the Yenish "probably form the largest group of travellers in France today".