Trying to identify a song from a 1940s–50s family home recording. Sung in German or possibly Yiddish, brisk folk tune in 2/4. First line seems to contain “Kinder” and maybe “leben” or “Knaben.” A later line repeats a phrase that sounds like “so leben wir, so leben wir.” Phrase lengths of roughly 7, 6, 7, 7 syllables, then a longer line. Any ideas?

Not really sure how to explain this, but I'm wondering if standard Yiddish spelling is phonetic across all dialects. Say for example, if I see the letter 'ו' in a word, can I always assume that a Polish dialect would pronounce that as "i" rather than the standard "u"? Again using the Polish dialect as an example, could I assume that 'ײַ' is always pronounced like "ah" instead of "ay"? Or does it depend on context?

Thanks for any insight!

Does anyone know if Allen Ginsberg's works (particularly "Howl " or "Kaddish") have been translated into Yiddish?

An initial search suggests that they haven't so I'm also interested on any info on if/why that is.

I'm looking for yiddish/Hebrew fonts. Are there any of them???

I'm reading a Daniel Charney story and have come across a conditional I'd like help with.

There's a soldier on his way home from a war. He's deep in thought and wanders off the main road into a forest. Then we get the following sentence:

און װער װײס, צי דער סאָלדאַט װאָלט גאָר באַמערקט אַזױ גיך, אַז ער האָט זיך פֿאַרבלאָנדזשעט, װען ער פֿאַרטשעפּעט זיך ניט אָן אַ װאָרצל פֿון אַ בױם, װאָס איז געװען באַהאַלטן אונטערן הױכן גראָז און פֿאַלט אַנידער?

Which I translate as:

And who knows if the soldier would have noticed so quickly that he had lost his way, if he hadn't tripped on a tree root that was hidden in the tall grass and fallen down?

I'm still learning conditionals, so my impulse would have been to write

װען ער װאָלט זיך ניט פֿאַרטשעפּעט.

Why isn't the װאָלט there? Is it that it's kind of a nested conditional (who knows IF this would have happened IF that hadn't happened)? Or is it that it's contrary to fact—would װאָלט also be omitted from "He wouldn't have noticed so quickly if he hadn't tripped," etc.?

Would love any thoughts from people less confused than I am!

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).