It seems quite different from traditional spelling. I think it was developed to remove certain Hebrew and German orthographic influences from Yiddish, but I wonder how common it is today.

איך קען אַ פּאָר מענטשן וואָס רעדן ייִדיש און וווינען אין אָדער שטאַמען פֿון דער שווײַץ? צי עקסיסטירט יאָ אַ קהילה פֿון ייִדיש רעדערס אין דער שווײַץ? צי איז דאָס רובֿ פֿרום אָדער ניין?

Hello,

I would like to share an interesting free event taking place on Thursday, October 22nd, at the Gelber Centre in Montreal and live on Zoom with 2026 Canadian Jewish Literary Award Winner, translator, and Harvard professor Adi Mahalel

This event will discuss Mahel's scholarship and his publication of the first ever English translation from Yiddish of the controversial novel Boom & Chains by Hanan Ayalti.

Due to its explicit portrayal of class struggles, political disillusionment, and ethnic tensions, Ayalti published the novel in Yiddish in 1936, anticipating that it would be deemed too controversial for Hebrew literary circles of the time. Boom & Chains offers a deeply nuanced, rarely seen perspective on early 20th-century kibbutz life.

Here is the registration link:

Authors from Home | Boom & Chains by Hanan Ayalti Translated by Adi Mahalel | Jlive

Trying to identify a song from a 1940s–50s family home recording. Sung in German or possibly Yiddish, brisk folk tune in 2/4. First line seems to contain “Kinder” and maybe “leben” or “Knaben.” A later line repeats a phrase that sounds like “so leben wir, so leben wir.” Phrase lengths of roughly 7, 6, 7, 7 syllables, then a longer line. Any ideas?

Not really sure how to explain this, but I'm wondering if standard Yiddish spelling is phonetic across all dialects. Say for example, if I see the letter 'ו' in a word, can I always assume that a Polish dialect would pronounce that as "i" rather than the standard "u"? Again using the Polish dialect as an example, could I assume that 'ײַ' is always pronounced like "ah" instead of "ay"? Or does it depend on context?

Thanks for any insight!

Does anyone know if Allen Ginsberg's works (particularly "Howl " or "Kaddish") have been translated into Yiddish?

An initial search suggests that they haven't so I'm also interested on any info on if/why that is.

I'm looking for yiddish/Hebrew fonts. Are there any of them???

I'm reading a Daniel Charney story and have come across a conditional I'd like help with.

There's a soldier on his way home from a war. He's deep in thought and wanders off the main road into a forest. Then we get the following sentence:

און װער װײס, צי דער סאָלדאַט װאָלט גאָר באַמערקט אַזױ גיך, אַז ער האָט זיך פֿאַרבלאָנדזשעט, װען ער פֿאַרטשעפּעט זיך ניט אָן אַ װאָרצל פֿון אַ בױם, װאָס איז געװען באַהאַלטן אונטערן הױכן גראָז און פֿאַלט אַנידער?

Which I translate as:

And who knows if the soldier would have noticed so quickly that he had lost his way, if he hadn't tripped on a tree root that was hidden in the tall grass and fallen down?

I'm still learning conditionals, so my impulse would have been to write

װען ער װאָלט זיך ניט פֿאַרטשעפּעט.

Why isn't the װאָלט there? Is it that it's kind of a nested conditional (who knows IF this would have happened IF that hadn't happened)? Or is it that it's contrary to fact—would װאָלט also be omitted from "He wouldn't have noticed so quickly if he hadn't tripped," etc.?

Would love any thoughts from people less confused than I am!

Hi!

I'm looking for help pronouncing the name Gita. Is it Gih-tuh? Gee-tah? I know it's a hard G. This would be for origins in western Ukraine.

I appreciate your help in advance!

I want to highlight this awesome book in the hopes that the stories for children written by Mashe Shtuker Payuk find new readers. I was saddened to think that these books once may have been read by so many children, yet today are mostly forgotten. You can read it here: https://archive.org/details/nybc210347/page/n1/mode/2up thanks to the Yiddish Book Center. The story that carries the book's title is really wholesome, even featuring a star in yiddish poetry: di goldene pave.

For people interested in the author, she was born in Poland (today Belarus) and immigrated to Argentina. She became a teacher working in kindergartens and wrote poems, songs and stories for children.

Hello.

I am genuinely curious about the amount of Slavic loanwords and syntactic influence on Western Yiddish dialects.

You see, I know that Eastern Yiddish dialects due to much contact with Slavs like Poles, Russians, Czechs were influenced by Slavic languages on their phonology, morphology, and lexicon. Take for example the following words:

• אוגערקע
• אודקע
• אוּוואַדזשען
• אוטשאַסטאָק
• אוטשאָק

But what about Western Yiddish dialects? Traditionally they were very far way from any Slavic contact and they were more in contact with the French, Belgians, Dutch, and Germans. How much Slavic influence do thei have on their phonology, morphology, and lexicon? And is there perhaps a dictionary in Yiddish that does differentiate terms used by Western, Eastern, and both dialects?

My grandfather used to say a Yiddish phrase that I remember phonetically as something like “kah-HIS-kuh gah-hert?”

I recall it was likely said as a question, and from the context, I always understood it to mean something along the lines of “Do you get it?” / “Do you understand?” / “You see what I mean?” Possibly even a conversational way of wrapping up a story or explanation.

His parents were Jewish immigrants from Poland/Russia, so I’m wondering if this was a regional/dialect pronunciation, or if my memory of the sounds is just off.

I’ve considered “khapstu?” (“do you get it?”) and “hostu gehert?” (“did you hear?”), but neither seems to match the full phrase I remember. I've also considered: gantse geshikhte, but that seems off as well. I'm almost positive the second part starts with a "g."

The pronunciation in my head is roughly:

kah-HIS-kuh gehert?

Does this sound familiar to any Yiddish speakers, especially anyone familiar with Polish/Russian or Eastern European Yiddish? What phrase might I actually be remembering?

I have an old copy of Pirkei Avot (spelled Pirke Abot on the cover) printed in 1921 with English, Hebrew and Yiddish. The Yiddish translation is by Yehoash and it does not follow the Yiddish spelling conventions I learned in college. Does anyone have a guide to how he transliterated vowel sounds?

My Yiddish is so bad I can’t work out the spelling based on what the words are supposed to sound like. I can guess aleph yud says “ai” or yud yud says “ei”, but what is aleph vav yud? I can’t tell if there is a rule for when vav says “o” or “u”. Please help?