Contents

The following Help Topics are available:

Overview of Yiddish

Alphabet and Pronunciation

Nouns

Gender and Agreement

Number and Agreement

Declensions

Pronouns

Articles

Adjectives

Adverbs

Verbs

Prepositions

Conjunctions

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Overview of
Overview of Yiddish

Yiddish is spoken by about four million people, mostly Jews, all over the world, particularly in Argentina, Canada, France, Israel, Mexico, Romania and the United States. Prior to World War II, about 11 million people spoke it. Recently, many organizations devoted to preserving Yiddish have become active.

Yiddish developed about 1,000 years ago from a blend of German dialects. Its grammar is largely based on Medieval German, while its vocabulary comes from German, Hebrew, various Slavic languages and, recently, English.

The main dialects of Yiddish are Mideastern (also called Polish), Southeastern (Ukrainian) and Northeastern (Lithuanian). Attempts have been made to standardize Yiddish, and the standardized language blends aspects of the dialects.

Yiddish is generally written in Hebrew characters.


Alphabet

Yiddish uses the consonants of the Hebrew alphabet. However, the Yiddish alphabet adapts alphabet letters to serve as vowels while Hebrew vowels are represented by diacritical marks. In this program, the Yiddish is transliterated, that is, written using the Roman alphabet. The following chart gives the name of each character, the symbol used here for transliteration and an example of its pronunciation. The transliteration follows the standard established by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.

Letter	Transliteration	Pronunciation
alef	none	silent, acts as a marker
pasekh alef	a	as in father
komets alef	o u	as in law as in put
beys	b	as in boy
veys	v	as in very
giml	g	as in good
daled	d	as in dog
hey	h	as in house
vov	u	as in boot
tsvey vovn	v	as in very
zayen	z	as in zoo
khes	kh	as in the German ich (k with friction at the back of the throat.
tes	t	as in top
yud	i	between the sounds of fit and feet as in feet
tsvey yudn	ey	as in they
pasekh tsvey yudn	ay	as in hi
vov yud	oy	as in boy
kof	k	as in kite
lamed	l	as in like
mem	m	as in move
nun	n	as in no
samekh	s	as in see
ayen	e	as in bed
pey	p	as in pay
fey	f	as in fine
tsadik	ts	as in its
kuf	k	as in kite
reysh	r	as in French (gargling sound at the back of the throat)
shin	sh	as in show
sin	s	as in see
zayen shin	zh	as in measure
daled zayen shin	dzh	as in jump
tes shin	tsh	as in chair
tof	t	as in top
sof	s	as in see

Vowel sounds, particularly ay, ey and oy, may be pronounced differently by speakers of the different Yiddish dialects.


Nouns

A noun is a word that names a person, place, thing or idea.

mentsh (person)

Estr (Esther)

beygl (bagel)

See Also:

Gender and Agreement

Number and Agreement

Declensions

Pronouns


Gender and Agreement

Nouns in Yiddish are either masculine (m.), feminine (f) or neuter (n.). Nouns ending in -izm, -l, -n, -em and -er are generally masculine. Nouns ending in -ut, -ay and -kit are generally feminine. Nouns ending in -g and -tum are generally neuter.

tish m. (table)

tokhter f. (daughter)

hoyz n. (house)

See also:

Adjectives

Articles

Pronouns


Number
Number and Agreement

Yiddish generally has both singular and plural forms.  While there are patterns for different noun endings, it is best to learn the plural form of a noun when you learn it.

Common plural endings include -n, -en, -es and -im.

gas	street	gasn	streets
kave	coffee	kaves	coffees
ey	egg	eyer	eggs

Sometimes the last syllable of the noun changes in the plural.

dokter	doctor	doktoyrim	doctors

Certain words do not change in the plural.

ferd	horse	ferd	horses
vegetarier	vegetarian	vegetarier	vegetarians

See also:

Nouns

Pronouns

Adjectives

Articles


Declensions

Yiddish noun phrases have declensions, which means they vary according to the role of the noun phrase in the sentence. Yiddish has three cases: nominative (subject), accusative (object of an action), dative (object of a preposition). Unlike in some other languages, Yiddish nouns do not generally change with the different cases; however, pronouns, definite articles and adjectives do.

See Also

Pronouns

Adjectives

Articles


Pronouns

A pronoun is a word that stands for a previously mentioned (or understood) noun. Yiddish pronouns, like adjectives and definite articles, change according to their case.

Nominative

ikh	I
du	you (familiar)
ir	you (formal)
er	he
zi	she
me, men	we, one, people
es, se	it
mir	we
ir	you
zey	they

Accusative

mikh	me
dikh	you (familiar)
aykh	you (formal)
em	him
zi	her
es	it
undz	us
aykh	you
zey	they

Dative

mir	me
dir	you (familiar)
aykh	you (formal)
em	him
ir	her
undz	us
aykh	you
zey	they

Es (it) does not occur in the dative case.

See Also:

Declensions


Articles

Definite Articles

Singular definite articles change according to their declension

	Nominative	Accusative	Dative
Masculine	der	dem	dem
Feminine	di	di	der
Neuter	dos	dos	dem

There is only one plural definite article: di.

Indefinite Articles

To express the indefinite article (a or an), Yiddish uses a for words starting with consonants and an for words starting with a vowel.

See Also:

Nouns

Gender and Agreement

Number and Agreement

Declensions


Adjectives

Singular adjectives take different endings according to the case and gender of the noun they modify.

gut (good)

	Nominative	Accusative	Dative
Masculine	gutr	gutn	gutn
Feminine	gute	gute	gutr
Neuter	gute	gute	gutn

Plural adjectives have only one form:

Singular	Plural
gut	gute

Adjectives generally precede the noun.

See Also:

Gender and Agreement

Number and Agreement

Articles


Adverbs

Adverbs are words that modify verbs, adjectives and other adverbs.

Many Yiddish adverbs are formed by adding a special ending, erheyt, to an adjective.

shtil	quiet	shtilerheyt	quietly

Other adverbs have the same form as the adjective.

pamelekh	slow	pamelekh	slowly

Here are some common adverbs that do not come from adjectives.

efsher	maybe
Er komt efsher.	He may come.
take	really
Zey veysn take.	They really know.

Other frequently used adverbs include fri (early), shoyn (already) and shpet (late).

See Also:

Adjectives


Verbs

Verbs in Yiddish conjugate, which means they change according to the number and person of the noun that is acting. Almost all Yiddish verbs take the same endings; however, there are some exceptions.

Present tense

zogn (to say)

Ikh zog	I say
Du zogst	You [fam.] say
Ir zogt	You [for.] say
Er/zi zogt	He/she says
Me zogt	One says/It is said
Mir zogn	We say
Ir zogt	You [plural] say
Zey zogn	They say

Past tense

To form the past tense, most verbs combine the present tense of the verb hobn (to have) with the past participle of the main verb.

zogn (to say)

Ikh hob gezogt	I said
Du host gezogt	You [fam.] said
Ir hot gezogt	You [for.] said
Er/zi hot gezogt	He/she said
Me hot gezogt	One said/It was said
Mir hobn gezogt	We said
Ir hot gezogt	You said
Zey hobn gezogt	They said

A small number of verbs use the present tense of  zayn (to be) instead of hobn (to have).

Future tense

The future tense is formed by combining the conjugated verb veln (will, shall) with the infinitive).

Ikh vel	I will
Du vest	You (fam.) will
Ir vet	You (for.) will
Er vet	He will
Zi vet	She will
Mvet	We will/People will/One will
Mir veln	We will
Ir vet	You will
Zey veln	They will

Mir veln zagn. (We will say.)


Prepositions

Prepositions are the connecting words that show the relationships between words in the sentence. Nouns, pronouns, noun phrases, gerunds or noun clauses can be the complement of prepositions.

Simple prepositions in Yiddish include:

tsu	to
fun	from
mit	with
on	without
in	in
oyf	on

Often, the preposition combines with the article that follows it, forming a contraction.

Ikh vil tsukumen tsum fliplats. (I want to go to the airport.)

Tsu gey ikh in der rikhtiker rikhtung? (Am I going in the right direction?)

Er is oyf vakatsie. (He is on vacation.)

Noun phrases that are the object of a preposition will take the dative case.

See Also:

Declensions


Conjunctions

Conjunctions join words, phrases and clauses together.

un (and)

Mayn kostum un mayn vaybs kleyd darfnem presn.

(My suit and my wife's dress need ironing.)

Other common conjunctions in Yiddish include:

aver	but
oder	or
oyv, az, ven	if
vayl	because
vi	as, like