I want to know if I should be upset

Anyone ever heard a Yiddish word phonetic: "ibby cair nisht"? She says her mom used it to mean chaos under your nose or sometimes she said it when the house was in disarray. Anyone know this word? I've googled as many variations as I can imagine and can't find a word or phrase near it. (Many more where that came from!)

Hi all,

I really appreciate the help this community provides with linguistic questions. You guys rock.

Quick question- past tense negated. Where does the “nisht” go? Before the “hab” or the infinite, or after all of it?

Thanks

My mom passed away a bit over a year ago and she used to use a specific phrase when I would ask her for something and she couldn’t give it to me or didn’t have it.

I have no idea how to begin to type it out so forgive how off this is going to be- it sounded like “Bhal joyce mahchgn” (with a guttural sound on the last word).

Any ideas?

In the 90s my mom did an interview with my great grandma and she told and old Yiddish story in it. She would tell it all the time and my mom and grandma remember it but don’t really know what it means. I can’t find any real info about it on google.

I know it’s about a chicken and maybe something about golden eggs. There might be a whole other verse too that we don’t have in the interview.

Here’s the direct transcript from the interview with her (transcribed by grandma whose Yiddish was very imperfect). Any help finding or translating this would be so greatly appreciated.

“A mul is geven a tsicken araba. In Yiddish a chicken is a hun, h-u-n.

Wait let me do that again.

A mul is geven a jed un a baba. Haban zey gehat a hun araba. The hun gelayt a eyela, help omen a meisele und ufgegessen the eyela. The Jed gevaynt, boo hoo hoo The babe gevaynt boo hoo hoo Und the tsicken, that is the hun, gevaynt gadak gadak gadak”

Thanks!

This project is firmly in the pre-contemplation phase but I'm studying music composition and production and while I can understand Yiddish pretty well I can't really write it (I don't know when to put in Hebrew and when to use German, which I both speak).

Anyone who would write lyrics if I came up with a song, produced it and had it distributed?

(While this is unlikely to be an issue at all given how niche it is, all credit/rights would be split 50/50 of course. You'd just need to write a poem, basically, that rhymed. Ladino would be welcome too.)

Hey all, I'm reading some introductory lit from Sholem Aleichem and I'm coming across something I can't quite figure out.

The character is talking about the garden of eden and says:

"ס'איז אַ גן-עדן שבגן-עדן!"

I understand "It's a Garden of Eden," I'm just not figuring out שבגן-עדן.

I'm thinking it's a kind of emphasizer to say it's the real Garden of Eden by the context of the story, but I don't think I've encountered this yet and I can't find a decent link explaining it.

Thanks in advance, and chag pesach sameach.

https://preview.redd.it/wdychxe67xvc1.jpg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c7ac7e48fad002af5d474c7affc97ab2ef35e48a

Is there a consistently complimentary word that would be close to “macher” for a person who everyone looks up to (not for any specific reason, such as a scholar)? Like a synonym for “chief”’ or BMOC? Macher sometimes has sarcastic or slightly negative connotations so I am looking for something positive.

Thanks in advance.

Anyone familiar with (and know the origin of) the phrase ‘Don’t clippy’?

It’s a complaint made about someone when they are physically close and being annoying.

My maternal grandfather was from Alsace(my grandmother only spoke Provençal and English)and my family Yiddish sounds very different from more eastern Yiddish. Has anyone else ran into this?

My Bubby used to sing me a song that started with “a kleyn meydl klaft in tir” and in between choruses she would sing “took, took, took.” Which was the sound of knocking i think.

It was about a young girl knocking on the door, and asking her mother to be let in. Sounded more like a kids song or folk song.

If anyone can help me find the rest of the song, i would love to know it. I haven’t heard it in 30 years (she passed away when I was 10), and i think about it often, but can only sing the first part from memory.

Hey, is there any research or information available for the Udmurtian and Tatarstani dialects of Yiddish?

I found a few comments here and there about Colin Powell speaking Yiddish.

This largely seems to be a myth; he picked up 3 or 4 words in Yiddish and used them whenever he met Jewish people. At one point, he told former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir "Men ken redn yiddish."

Shamir was stunned, presumably because this isn't the correct grammar, but I was also curious as to whether Shamir spoke Yiddish at all. Despite being born in Poland and living in the Yiddish hub of Bialystok, I found that Shamir's parents were reportedly hardline Zionists, and that Shamir himself was consistently aligned with right-wing groups that primarily or exclusively conducted in Hebrew. So while I would imagine he had regular exposure to Yiddish, it's not clear how much he would have used it.

The only story I can find on Shamir speaking Yiddish is a glowing retelling from a former chief of staff of a time when Shamir was in Argentina and gave a speech in Yiddish to the crowd, with tears streaming down his face the whole time.

This is the only mention I could find of him speaking Yiddish, and also a deviation from his image as an uncharismatic, laconic, and blunt figure. When you search "Yitzhak Shamir Yiddish," the first results are the Colin Powell story.

Did Powel say "I can speak yiddish" incorrectly to a guy that spoke much more Hebrew than Yiddish? Did Shamir speak Yiddish at all?

Hi everyone!

What the most common way to say “bathroom” or “toilet” among native speakers in the U.S.?

For some reason, my gut instinct tells me that the answers provided by Google Translate might not be exact. Wanted to check here.

Thanks in advance!

I’m trying to write a Yiddish phrase that my mom has been saying all my life, but we’re both terrible spellers and I’ve spent over an hour online trying to find it and I can’t. Hopefully someone can help?

The best phonetic way to write it that I can come up with (American pronunciation) is “Da hair-it’s”. In my family it means “respect your elders” and is used as a warning/reminder/admonition.

This is honestly a long shot, I’m just throwing this out there.

Hi, I'm looking for the lyrics to this song: https://youtu.be/TtTvehagPPU?si=ZXd_2xPboBlvWphD

I can catch a couple words but I'm at a pretty low level in Yiddish right now so any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you!

edit: I realize I forgot to mention in my original post I am looking for it written in Yiddish

I'm currently making an animation with my characters using the song "Choice" by Jack Stauber. My characters are from different countries with different cultures (because I like geography, hehe) and I want the lyrics to be in the same language as their origins (example: Vietnamese character showed up when the lyrics said "love", the lyrics changed to "yêu"). One of them is an Ashkenazi Jew and the character showed up when the lyrics said "you get me going". Is there an equivalent of that?

Ps. I'm not well-educated in Jewish culture or anything related to it. I'm from Thailand and last time I checked, barely 1% of the population is Jewish (I've also never met any Jewish person either too). If I sound ignorant, I'm sorry and you can educate me because I would love to learn more about other people's cultures

I'm watching the documentary Shoah and one of the people interviewed is Michael Podchlebnik, a survivor of Chelmno. As a native German speaker, I can understand parts of what he or the interpreter is saying:

https://youtu.be/eNcvwHgyXcg?t=1376

Could someone please tell me if they speak Yiddish?

I'm very interested in the language and want to learn it one day.

Hello, good day to everyone. Does anyone know where I can purchase a copy of this Hobbit in Yiddish from 2012. Thank you so much!!