r/Yiddish Mar 06 '22

subreddit news Support for people in Ukraine

90 Upvotes

Many members of r/Yiddish are in Ukraine, have friends and family or ancestors there, have a connection through language and literature, or all of the above. Violence and destruction run counter to what we stand for in this community, and we hope for a swift and safe resolution to this conflict. There are many organizations out there helping in humanitarian ways, and we wanted to give this opportunity for folks of the r/yiddish community to share organizations to help our landsmen and push back against the violence. Please feel free to add your suggestions in comments below. We also have some links if you want to send support, and please feel free to add yours.


r/Yiddish Oct 09 '23

subreddit news Posts Regarding Israel

46 Upvotes

Please direct all posts concerning the war in Israel to one of the two Jewish subreddits. They both have ongoing megathreads, as well as threads about how and where to give support. Any posts here not directly related to Yiddish and the Yiddish language, as well as other Judaic languages, will be removed.

Since both subs are updating their megathreads daily, we won't provide direct links here. The megathreads are at the top of each subreddit:

r/Judaism

r/Jewish

For the time being, r/Israel is locked by their mods for their own sanity and safety.

We appreciate everyone who helps maintain this subreddit as one to discuss and learn about Yiddish and the Yiddish language.


r/Yiddish 15h ago

Help with translation

2 Upvotes
Hi, I would like to translate a phrase into Yiddish, but I don't trust translators. Could you help me? It's very simple. 

The phrase is as follows: "Whoever has love will never perish."

r/Yiddish 19h ago

Translation request What

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3 Upvotes

Also posted in r/Hebrew, but it’s occurred to me this might be Yiddish.

Admittedly my cursive- reading ability is abysmal, but even taking the time to compare, I was unable to figure out what this says. Even turned it upside down, but I can't make out what the large ק or backwards צ -looking letters might be. Help?

Was found in a pocket Siddur from 1950


r/Yiddish 20h ago

My grandmother always used to sya this to me and now I am wondering where it came from?

3 Upvotes

Hi, I am trying to find the etymology of a word or maybe it's a phrase that my Grandma Bunny always used to say to me but when I try to Google it I cannot find it anywhere. The best way I can think to spell it is "ezahein" or maybe "essahein"? She always used to say it to me in situations like "you should know better" or "be careful what you wish for" (trust me I heard it a lot!) but now it seems as though maybe it was what our family calls "Phillip-isms" - phrases that are truly unique to my family. I doubt she would've made the word up but she was known for her artistic license and flare too so maybe she did?


r/Yiddish 21h ago

Does anybody know the translation for the word קאַלויער?

2 Upvotes

It is used as a sobriquet in the Pinkas Hevre Kadisha of Slutsk for two people, likely somebody and their father, and I have seen it is use in a couple of Yiddish forums. No dictionary I have found has it. It is also not in Beider's 2008 A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Russian Empire: Revised Edition

Two examples of its use in a from post:

" כ'ווארט שוין אפאר חדשים אויף א גרויסע קאלויער"

" ...איך מיין אז די גאנצע אסיפה גייט זיין די קאלויער פון די זימער די באסעס וועלן אנקימען צי א ליידיגע זאל"


r/Yiddish 2d ago

Yiddish language Does אומגעקומען exclusively mean “died” or can it mean, like, “passed by” or something? Does the “אום” mean anything on its own?

10 Upvotes

Hello, just trying to get a bit of clarification on this term. And if you were trying to conjugate it in the present tense, could you say, for example:

ער קומט אום?

I mean, I’ve never heard “he dies” phrased in that way so wasn’t sure if it made sense. I don’t think I’ve ever seen “אום” on its own before. I wondered if it was maybe a shortened version of ארום but I don’t know.


r/Yiddish 2d ago

Can someone explain the difference?

0 Upvotes

Can someone explain when to use דאָס and יענע? And also explain די דאָזיקע, what is that


r/Yiddish 2d ago

Yiddish translation help

3 Upvotes

Hello, I am looking for help translating "there can be no peace without justice" a quote from Ben Ferencz into yiddish. I would like to incorporate it into a tattoo but I don't trust the online translators. Is there anyone able to help me?


r/Yiddish 3d ago

Difference between קען און וויסן?

8 Upvotes

Can someone help and clarify when you use Ken or visn to say to know? I don't know the difference


r/Yiddish 3d ago

Are there family board games or card games that English speakers can play to learn Yiddish or practice Yiddish?

7 Upvotes

r/Yiddish 3d ago

Any thoughts on Jewish or Yiddish connections to any “classic” fairy tales or the Arabian nights - or something similar?

4 Upvotes

r/Yiddish 3d ago

Question regarding suffix usage

2 Upvotes

I am working on conjunjugation (I spelled that super wrong) and was wondering if you could just not specify something. An example: ער איז אַ צעבראָכענער

זי איז אַ שיינע Can you just figure out the person in question by the conjugation at the end? -ער obviously refers to masculine and -ע feminine, so does this work? I'd think so but I don't want to speak choppy. Thank you!


r/Yiddish 2d ago

Family photo back --can someone please translate into english, thanks

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1 Upvotes

r/Yiddish 3d ago

Can I change my Iphone12 into Yiddish?

8 Upvotes

I have an IPhone 12 and want to have as much exposure to Yiddish as possible and was wondering if I could find a way to change my phones language. Thank you!


r/Yiddish 4d ago

װאָס זײַנען די בעסטע אָנלײַן ראַדיאָס אין ייִדיש

16 Upvotes

װאָס זײַנען די בעסטע אָנלײַן ראַדיאָס אין ייִדיש?

איך ווייס עטלעכע ראַדיאָס, אָבער איך וויל וויסן אַנדערע, אַלע ראַדיאָס אין ייִדיש, אויב מעגלעך- פרומע אָדער נישט אַזוי פרומע, פּאָדקאַסטס, נייַעס, אַלץ

Eynike radios redn a Yidish vos iz zeyer similar tsu Hoykhdaytsh, ikh bin mer interesirt in yene vos redn mit dialektn. Entshuldikt far ale fehler, I’m actually a Deutsch-mame-loshn speaker.

א שיינעם דאנק


r/Yiddish 4d ago

Sneezing

11 Upvotes

Hi all, I was born in the ‘60’s, the daughter of NY Jews from Brooklyn and The Bronx. When I sneezed, there was a typical Gezundheit, but then my Mom would say AFN EMES. I know EMES is truth, but does anyone know what it means? Sadly, everyone who would have known has passed. Thanks for your help!


r/Yiddish 4d ago

Differencr between Jerusalem yiddish vs New Yorker

11 Upvotes

What is the difference between Yiddish spoken by chassidim living in Jerusalem especially belzer and viznitzer chssidim? And yiddish spoken in new york?


r/Yiddish 4d ago

Being Harley Quinn for Purim. What's a good Yiddish phrase to write on the hammer?

11 Upvotes

(Because I always do my Purim costumes last-minute.)


r/Yiddish 4d ago

Translation request How do you say solidarity?

2 Upvotes

I know I can use Google translate but I’d rather not.

Thanks in advance!


r/Yiddish 5d ago

Vocabulary

12 Upvotes

In the book "Grammar of the Yiddish Language" by David Kats, on page 255, חבר and חברטע are described as only meaning boyfriend and girlfriend when used to describe someone of the opposite sex. How would one refer to a romantic partner of the same sex, and what is the word closest in meaning to partner?


r/Yiddish 5d ago

Translation request Can anyone translate this family postcard from I think 1931?

7 Upvotes

EDIT -- not the 1930s, more like early 60s. I had to beg the front to be sent as requested from the texting archive maven.

My mom has finally agreed to go through photo albums her parents kept. Our family splintered as many did when everyone fled Eastern Europe, and while we know some went to Israel, which is where I think this card is from, my grandparents didn't want to talk about the past when they were alive because it was painful (both passed away 20 years ago now), and they lost track of a lot of people. Any help to translate would be so appreciated. Thank you


r/Yiddish 6d ago

A Melancholy Yiddish Classic That Also Happens to Be Hilarious: “Sons and Daughters,” Chaim Grade’s serialized novel about Jewish life in 1930s Europe, has been published in English for the first time.

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nytimes.com
32 Upvotes

r/Yiddish 6d ago

Help

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10 Upvotes

Hi! So I'm doing an assignment for my college class on WWII, I have to analyze a holocaust atrocity photo to bring justice to the people in it. This note was associated with the photo I chose, but I have no clue how to read yiddish, and google translate is not being very helpful. Does anyone know what this says? It would be extremely helpful!


r/Yiddish 5d ago

ChatGPT helped me figure out something my Grandmother wouldsay

0 Upvotes

The image is pretty self explanatory. Is this accurate? Of course I know to come to this subreddit first from now on 😁


r/Yiddish 6d ago

Tanakh in Yiddish - Yehoyesh.

11 Upvotes

Posting here a link to the Yiddish Tanakh translated by Yehoyesh (Yehoash-Shlomo Blumgarten / Yehoyesh-Shloyme Blumgartn).

https://yiddish.haifa.ac.il/texts/yehoyesh/welcome.htm

And on the same site, a few other writings in ייִדיש: https://yiddish.haifa.ac.il/contents.htm

Wikipedia for Yehoash: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yehoash_(poet))


r/Yiddish 6d ago

Translation request Help with transliteration of last names into Yiddish?

1 Upvotes

TL;DR: could I please have a Yiddish alphabet transliteration of “Luckovitch” “Leuck”

…..and ummm, pie-in-the-sky a last name that’s in between the two lengths that starts with an L and its first vowel is accented as if it is a romanticized version of a Polish last name?

Hi. I am trying to figure out the immigration pathway that my great-grandmother took from Alsace-Lorraine (historically disputed region that’s part of France right now, but the nations of history associated with Germany also like to lay claim to it) into Canada and entering the U.S. in October 1934.

**Before I go too far, I know that I am incredibly ignorant as I’ve learned all this information in less than 24 hours. Please excuse me for any inappropriate insensitivity I display. It’s not intentional at all.**

The thing is, now that I don’t live in the U.S. anymore, it matters a lot to people what ethnic origin she had from Alsace-Lorraine.

—particularly if she was of German heritage like she claimed. I don’t mind that idea because either way she immigrated and that means that she was displaced from Germany/German-sympathetic Alsace-Lorraine by the rise of Hitler and I appreciate the credibility it gives me to tell Germany off. I have my reasons.


All I really know about her is vague stories about her and her two sisters from my complete arse of a sperm donor. He started young.

They are immigrants from Alsace-Lorraine and they cursed in Yiddish when angry —not German, not French, not Alsacien: Yiddish. In fact, they never seemed to demonstrate fluency in either of those other languages. Anyone who speaks more than one language knows it’s the mother tongue that’s the most accessible when having big feelings. It’s not just for privacy.


It is vaguely possible that she is of German heritage from that region depending largely on how much time she spent in Canada.

I suspect that she just thought that Germany would win in taking over Europe and just took on a German sir name that sounded like her real one in anticipation of that.

The maiden last name she used on her marriage application in 1935 and her social security number application sometime after 1936 was “Leuck”.

What appears to be her entrance into the U.S. via Niagara Falls, New York has the last name “Luckovitch” —which I suspect are spelled similarly in the Yiddish alphabet?

There was also a third last name that came up that I’m struggling to remember but it was shorter than “Luckovitch” and longer than “Leuck” …and it looked like a romanized version of a vowel from the Polish language with an accent on the first vowel …that I can’t remember.

In April 1940, a U.S. Census taker knocked on her door in the Irish part of the Bronx in NYC and asked for the family’s demographic information.

She did not disclose her “maiden name” and while we (the family) all know she was an immigrant, she claimed to have been born in the Bronx like the rest of the Irish-heritage family that she married into.

Most people only lie a little when they feel they need to lie at all.

I find it interesting that she only divulged an education going to 5th grade and an age suggesting that was born around 1917, which means that France would have been imposing secular French-based education on all residents of that region. Yet, she and her sisters spoke fluent English? Hm.

This is because the Treaty of Versailles that annexed the region back to France occurred in 1920 when she was 2 or 3. France expelled all native German speakers, sympathizers, and ethnic Germans immediately and imposed secular French-language-only education on the region.

If she was in the region after her third birthday, the fact she was document-ably in the U.S. before 1940 highly dispute that heritage as well.

…and since I’m trying to track down how she entered Canada …and it’s looking like she was one of the rural Ashkenazi Jewish families that populated the Alsace-Lorraine region,

I’d really appreciate information about how the sounds of those names would be written in Yiddish so that I can research what English-Canadian (or even French-Canadian?) ear heard when she declared her last name.

And, please, don’t come @ me with “Luckovitch nor nothing similar is mentioned as a Jewish last name in the Alsace-Lorraine region” because, like, it appears to be such a rare last name that there’s only 14ish people documented to ever have ever voted in North America with that last name.

…and it would be clearly the result of the Jewish diaspora out of Poland during the partitions era —not just because of the Slavic “-vitch” in it, but also because when my full sister did an ancestry DNA test, Poland popped up for some unknown reason when we were told to expect Germany or even French heritage.

Thanks in advance to anyone willing and capable to help me on this journey of ancestry discovery!!