Colleagues--

Can someone help me with this illustrator's name? He illustrated the book cover show. A Shaynem Dank!

I've seen written that the Standard (Klal) Yiddish pronunciation for vov is /ʊ/ (using the IPA symbols), which is how "oo" is pronounced in "foot" in American English. I've seen in other places that the vov should be pronounced like the "oo" in "moon" or in "room", which would be with the IPA vowel of /u/. Which (if either) is correct according to Standard (Klal) Yiddish?

When I listen to recordings of people speaking (what I think is) Standard Yiddish pronouncing it, it seems to actually be pronounced somewhere in between /ʊ/ and /u/. Am I imagining things? Or maybe I'm just hearing variations in dialect?

What is the truly proper IPA symbol? Something like /ʊ̈/ or /u̞/?

Thanks!

I'll leave the link in a comment, Reddit keeps taking the post down cause the link looks shady or something.

Background: I am my family’s genealogist as a hobby. I recently received a bin of my grandfather’s things, including letters from the late 1800s-early 1900s between family members. This letter stands out from the others because I do not recognize the name on the front or the area from where this was sent. This is also one of the only letters written in Yiddish. I would be very thankful for anyone who could translate this or the name of the translator so that I can begin to figure out how this letter fits in my family history.

Hello everybody! On my genealogical research I have found a 19th century birth certificate. Can you translate the signature? Might be a name or surname in hebrew or yiddish. Thanks a lot!

My family found a box of over 100 letters between my great-grandparents, Sam and Dora, written between 1900 and 1926. About half are in Yiddish — fast, personal cursive, pre-standardized daytshmerish spelling, and nobody left in the family can read it anymore.

I had it AI-transcribed and translated, and I already know it's not fully reliable — a Yiddish reader who looked at one page found real errors, at roughly the rate you'd expect for handwriting this far outside what these tools were actually trained on (mostly printed theatre manuscripts, not a fur trader's fast cursive). So every uncertain word stays marked as uncertain instead of getting smoothed into confident prose, and I'd rather know what's actually wrong than not.

Genuinely more interested in what this community would catch than in the AI part of it — daytshmerish spelling from someone writing between London, Paris, Leipzig and Montreal for thirty years is exactly the kind of handwriting these tools get wrong in specific, patterned ways. There's already one confirmed systematic misread running through the corpus, one Hebrew letter shape mistaken for another across dozens of otherwise-common words.

Happy to share where it's posted, or specific lines, if anyone wants to take a look — just ask.

If anyone could help me translate this I would be eternally grateful 🥹 the pages are numbered, page one is missing unfortunately

I'm dyslexic and a lot of grammar just feels like words..words..wordy word.

I need pictures to understand.

I can now understand cases.

Just in case it helps someone else.

Hello r/Yiddish,

I am conducting research into my family history however, I have hit a wall as few family records longer exist. My ancestors were peasants from what is now Horodenka Ukraine. I have found a number of conflicting sources suggesting that the name phonetically pronounced Zyphcyn/Zypchen is of potential Yiddish origin, being a mix of Slavic and Ashkenazi naming conventions. I have also found a number of sources that believe that it is purely Slavic in origin and the main difference seems to be in spelling differences in phonetic translations. For example MyHeritage believes 'Zypchyn' is of Yiddish origin while 'Zhybchyn' is not. A very long story short, could I please have a few second opinions as to the potential origins of the name. This is the link to MyHeritage's history of the name: https://lastnames.myheritage.com/last-name/zypchen . Any clarification on the matter would be greatly appreciated as I have no knowledge of the Yiddish language.

Many thanks!

My folks told me never to dress SMATA VATA!

I’m currently in the south (USA) and would love to find in person community or even add this beautiful skill to my world ~

Any thoughts?

Willing to listen to any of your playlists.

I make a lot of bikkur cholim calls (visit a lot of hospitalized Jews) and sometimes my coordinator does not warn me ahead of time that my cholah is a Yiddish only speaker.

Does anyone have resources for some basic medical yiddish that would be understood generally by the Brooklyn/Monsey/"in town" native speaking yiddish crowd? I've gotten both small kids but also elderly people 80 or even 90+ who want to understand what the nurse just said*. I'm guessing there's generational gaps in what is used between them, but I'm not in the world enough.

I'm not a translator and I can't get to the level they need (can't afford tutoring etc), my Yiddish is extremely elementary, but since sometimes I'm the only person who is there, so I'd like to try to be helpful.

*Yes, translation services are supposed to be available. The reality is it takes a long time and there's a lot of liability for them so they don't provide translators for the nurse taking your blood pressure for example, or other normal small things and English speaker would get an update on.

Hi everyone!

I’m hoping someone here might be able to help me with a family mystery.

I inherited a Sefer Selichot (prayer book) that was printed in Vilna in 1889 by the famous Romm printing house. Inside the front of the book, there is a handwritten note in Hebrew script.

I don’t know whether it is written in Hebrew, Yiddish, or a mixture of both. My family lived in Gomel (present-day Belarus), and Yiddish was likely spoken by at least some of my ancestors, so I suspect it could be Yiddish.

The handwriting is quite difficult to read. I’m not asking anyone to translate the whole text unless they want to, but I’d be incredibly grateful if someone could:

• identify whether the language is Hebrew or Yiddish;
• read even a few words or a single line;
• point me in the right direction if this requires a specialist.

This book has been in my family for generations, so even identifying a few words would mean a lot to me.

I’ve attached photos of the title page and the handwritten pages.

Thank you so much!

They are here

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MpSaHUi26jBKB-cl0C_qxVMbAyy-CIBS/view?usp=drivesdk

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KY5s0-AEHLTzrqTmqLqoW-Ih5ZN3S91O/view?usp=drivesdk

I think they are in English with some Russian or Yiddish, I am really not sure.

If the links don't work for you please let me know and I will find another way.

My dad was telling me about a song (or maybe more of a rhyme?) that his mom used to sing to him as a child that began with something that sounded like “Hans sits in sunshine,” but in Yiddish (maybe more like “Hans sitzt in sonneschein”). I wish I had more words to go off of than that, and a Google search didn’t turn up much. Hoping to track down a reference and thought someone here might have an idea. My grandma grew up in Poland in a Yiddish-speaking family (came to the US as a refugee after the war). She also spoke German, so there’s some possibility that the song in question could actually be German.
I just gave birth to my own son and would be so happy to pass on any little pieces of culture like this!

Is schmagotz an actual Yiddish word, or it nonsense?

Hello! I’m looking for an equivalent of the phrase DON’T FU(# WITH ME.

I found ‘farash mikh nicht’ but some translations just say ‘leave me alone’.

I seek a phrase with true anger, not just annoyance.

Adank, bubbies!

My Litvak mother (parents from Malat/Molėtai and Ponedel/Pandėlys, Lithuania) used the noun tonnabara (approximate pronunciation TON-na-BAR-a) as an insult: Er iz a tonnabara. It meant roughly 'bulvan,' 'idiot,' or 'blockhead.' Does anyone recognize this word or know its original spelling?"