Hello, I'm hoping someone can help me locate a recording or transcript of I believe Michael Katz' Little Red Hooding Ride for my grandmother. Any assistance you could provide to help her share this oral tradition would be greatly appreciated.

Some graffiti from the office.

Like "I'm a bad guy" in Billie Eilish's song. Is there a word that works for both guys and gals?

Thanks very much for any hints!

I was super excited to find the Yiddish Winnie the Pooh at my local library, and then immediately disappointed that it’s entirely in transliteration…….. 🤦

Does anyone know of the existence of an edition typed in Yiddish?

TIA

Anyone able to help I. Translating this letter to my Great grandfather’s sister in 1927. Sent from Łódź to Toronto.

I’m trying to find a word or phrase my grandmother used for someone with unoriginal, bland tastes, what we today would call “basic”. Help?

Thanks in advance!

More specially the אָ sound. For example, “ja” sounds like “yaw” which isn’t really the case in German, and “das” sounds more like “dos” or “daws”. Was this just an archaic pronunciation of German that Yiddish kept and modern German did not? Was it influenced by a Slavic language? Was it simply the New York accent (which I assume Jewish Americans had a large influence in forming so not so sure about this one) rubbing off on the descendants of the majority of today’s Yiddish speakers?

I had thought Yiddish is a verb-second language, so you always put the verb in the second position in a sentence, eg, “I go,” is איך גיי״”, but “on Monday, i go” becomes “מאָנטיק, גיי איך” - is this right?

I’m going through my textbook (Sheva Zucker’s) and one sentence I’m trying to translate in one exercise says- וועל זיי עסן ניט - they don’t want to eat. Obviously, here the verbs are “want” and “eat” and it’s the pronoun that comes in second.

I think I’m not understanding fully what “verb in the second position” actually means. Why is זיי in second here? Or does וועל זיי count as the first part together and then עסן is the second part? I’m just hoping someone can explain this a bit more clearly for me.

Sorry this post is making me sound stupid or if I’m missing something very obvious here.

Thanks. :)

When to use שכן and שכנטנע? Is שכנטע a plural form?

If you might know what dialect was spoken there, and how the 'reish' was pronounced, it'll help me a lot. I want to learn the dialect that my great grandfather spoke as his first language.

Hey everyone, so my 3rd Great-Grandfather was born in Russia and immigrated to the U.S. I have records of his name being Velvel Folghe, with his English name being William Fox, for reference my last name is Fox, and he’s was born around 1850. I’m having trouble determining the origin of his name and also the meaning of it, any help would be greatly appreciated.

I’ve been wondering this for a while and thought I’d finally ask. How would one say “Bohemian” in Yiddish, as in “from Bohemia” rather than “living an unconventional lifestyle”?

Please point mistakes out.

שולם־עליכם, קענט איר אָנלײַן געשעפן פאר ייִדישען באַניצן ביכער. בפרט איך זוך הערי פּאָטער.

Hi, do you know online places where one can buy used yiddish books. In particular I am looking for a used version of Harry Potter.

Prologue, prelude, etc... does it have a literary connotation? Context dependent?

So I know you generally pluralize nouns, and some notable exceptions are when saying "I am thirty years old" (דרײַסיק יאָר אַלט) or when saying "I have thirty dollars" (דרײַסיק דאָלאַר) but you DO pluralize the noun when saying what seems like fairly similar situations, like "three weeks ago" or "in three weeks" (דרײַ װאָכן צוריק/אַרום).

Is there a very specific don't-pluralize rule for all these cases that folks can kindly word? A dank!

What's the Yiddish word for "love"? Is it the same as Hebrew's "ahava" or is there a difference? And what would it look like in Yiddish characters? I read somewhere that it's "lyb" (though some sources say lyb means heart), is that accurate?

If I make mistakes please tell me

װי אזױ שרײַבט איר נאָמען? מיט דעם פּאסן לאַטײַן אות אָדער מיט אַרױסרעד טראַנסקריפּציע. װען איר רעדט אויף יידיש רעדט איר נאָמען מיט ײדישן אקצענט?

Hi I was wondering if anyone can help me find the lyrics (in yiddish and english) to “A Kholem” by the Barry Sisters. I can’t find the lyrics to their version for some reason. Help is very appreciated.

i passed by a newsstand in williamsburg, brooklyn today and thought i would share an excerpt from בליץ magazine just for fun. some exciting stuff here!

שולם־עליכם, could someone please explain the usage of פֿאַראַן

I like to send people Yiddish postcards and letters in the mail! However, I never really know how to sign off and end them the same way I might write "Sincerely" or "Yours truly" in english. Does anyone know any good phrases for this, or somewhere I might find some?

I did try googling first to see if I could find out any ideas about this, but נבך, google's magnificently advanced AI doesn't know the difference between writing a letter of correspondence and letters of the alphabet any better than it knows the difference between the word Yiddish and the word Jewish.

I do own a very old daytshmerish briefnshteler, but the sign offs found in that are cartoonishly formal and not what I'm going for, lol.

Think it was used as “ don’t mess around” or “ that’s enough “ Not sure if I’m close. As I recall it was dont fine shanoong or shaming. Assuming the dont was an English add on?

This post is inspired by a recent post asking if anyone had used GPT4 for yiddish to english translation.

Generally, the commentators expressed that GPT fell below their expectations, and it was of no use for accurate translations. This is not a good introduction to the viablity of AI and language learning.

Probably most of the LLMs out there have no yiddish capacity, ie. Chat GPT and claude. Web scraping doesn't catch much yiddish, so there's little model training going on in yiddish.

The one LLM that is yiddish friendly is Google Gemini, available free throughout the globe. I have been using Gemini since its original version called Bard a year ago. I am impressed with Gemini's yiddish teaching skills and its flexibility in considering all sorts of queries from users.

I use Gemini for mostly grammar-related questions. Often it is to learn verb conjugations and lessons on words like 'zikh' and 'nokh'. The output is often a deep dive into the meaning and use of Yiddish words and phrases. I want to say that the information provided by Gemini can't be found in the usual language books and dictionaries.

I am much more educated in Yiddish by using Gemini, when used as a supplement to learning books and videos. Just the simple convienence of accessing gemini for a grammar lesson or conjugation makes learning yiddish that much easier and informative.

There is a new (dec,2023) Google free project called NotebookLLM that is designed to use your own material for AI generated research. I created a database of PDFs dealing with Parkinson's disease and now I can query all aspects of parkinson's from an amalgamation of the 45 PDFs. Imagine having to manually access each of these PDFs to gain information on a specific topic. NotbookLLM will synthesize the information and present it as a full report on the user's query, with sources displayed in line. It's surprisingly easy to use, and if you use it, you will most likely be amazed at its abilities. Many NotebookLM users have posted thier reactions as 'jaw dropping'

AI for language learning is still in infancy, the years ahead will improve learning methods and results. I urge yiddish reddtors to try out for themselves AI for yiddish learning. You can be as expressive as you want with Gemini, and you'll get results to match.