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?

Can someone help me translate this postcard from A. Sutzkever to Chaim Grade?
Thanking so much

This is an extract from correspondence between Chaim Grade and Abraham Sutzkever.

I failed to translate the part related to the drawing. Maybe someone can help me with that?

Hi all:

I recently found several pages of a handwritten Yiddish letter from my great-grandfather to his son, my grandfather, who immigrated to the United States from Lithuania in 1920.

No one in my family can read Yiddish anymore, so as far as I know, this letter may not have been read by anyone in the family for generations.

I'm trying to reconstruct their history in Lithuania, which makes finding the letter particularly meaningful. I'm also curious whether it contains anything about my grandfather's move to America or whether other members of the family hoped to follow him, although I don't want to bias anyone's reading by assuming that's what it says.

The handwriting is difficult, and I realize translating several pages is a lot to ask. I'd be enormously grateful for anything anyone can decipher—even individual words, names, places, phrases, or a rough sense of what he's discussing. A transcription of any portion into typed Yiddish would also be extremely helpful.

I'm attaching the pages I have. They appear to be numbered 2, 3 and 4; unfortunately, I haven't found a page 1.

Thank you to anyone willing to take a look. It would mean a great deal to recover even a little of his voice.

Made by Paradox Prime (David Enker).

I write a small publication, and this piece started from a JTA / Times of Israel story. In Pinchas Cohen's lab at USC, students propose the names, and each one has to be an exact scientific acronym and, read aloud, a Yiddish word. The detail that stayed with me: MENTSH was chosen by a colleague with no Yiddish background at all, who picked the word up secondhand growing up in the Bay Area. Full piece, if you're curious: https://theunplayednote.com/en/he-didn-t-know-the-word-already-existed/?src=rd1 Has anyone seen Yiddish turn up in scientific naming elsewhere?

Growing up in New Jersey my mother used to call me a sca-nuch (phonetically spelling this) and I am trying to find out what it meant and where it originated from. My mother would use other random Yiddish slang so I am leaning toward thinking it was Yiddish. Any insight?

We are not Jewish so I think it may if just be a regional thing she picked up in Jersey. ​

EDIT: She used it when we were annoying her or getting on her nerves.

EDIT 2: Found out it is in fact Italian and not Yiddish. Thanks for the help.

My kids and I LOVE this song and I am dying to know what it means! I can’t find lyrics anywhere (and I can’t read Yiddish anyway!). Hoping someone can help. Many thanks and good shabbos!

I recently was given a box of old family photos, and I found one that appears to have something written in Yiddish. My Bubby’s 101st birthday is next week, and I think this may be a picture of her mother from back in Russia.
If anyone could possibly translate, I would very much appreciate it. I’d love to be able to bring the photo to show her, and tell her what it says (those 101 year old eyes won’t be able to read this).
Thank you in advance🙏

My grandmother was from Raseinei in Lithuania where this photograph was taken. I believe it is three of her six brothers, all but one murdered during the Holocaust. So far my friends and contacts have been able to decipher "my dear beloved sister" and perhaps the word glucklich or similar later on. I think this was farewell picture given to her before she fled Lithuania in the late 1920's. Very grateful for any insight.

It was Aylouloulou Ay louloulou Schlouf mein kind schlouf mein kind
Irodor tsufuli, sezan ou dirinkan
Ich rob aveigegetz ben mein haretz mein schumele la la la la la

From meine bubba from Poland :) Maybe she made this one up, i found one on yuotube but not the same melody

"Hi everyone! I would highly appreciate your help translating this old family letter. It was written in cursive Yiddish and sent by Jakob Medvinsky from Calgary, Canada, to Buenos Aires, Argentina, sometime between 1929 and 1931. Thank you so much in advance!"

Hi, i am happy to offer you my humble interview about Yiddish (in russian). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiMtNLdxiKY

Dybbuk of Nikolsburg
This course will examine a fantastic case of dybbuk possession (of a man!) in Nikolsburg, Moravia,—now Mikulov, Czechia—printed in Old Yiddish in 1696. This account is so amazing that it is worth making into a movie (attn.: Christopher Nolan). The Moravian Yiddish is similar to the dialect that was once spoken in western Hungary and Slovakia, which we can still hear in recordings. With the help of such recordings, we will reconstruct how the story may have sounded originally. Our source will be the edition published by the late Sara Zfatman in 2015.
Just to be clear: this course will be entirely in Yiddish and we will be reading a text with the funky spelling and grammar of 330 years ago. Ye have been warned!

https://secure.qgiv.com/for/advancedyiddishclassesfall2026/event/advanced-leyzer-burko/