Help save the Yiddish Translation Fellowship Program

I wanted to ask my followers and fellow language enthusiasts to donate to the Yiddish Book Center so that they can continue to train translators and make Yiddish literature accessible (or at least share this post if possible) 🐐

Holy grail for Yiddish learners- a massive collection of over 100 Yiddish audiobooks books recorded by native speakers! You can listen on the internet, download to listen as mp3, and read along from the free uploaded copies on the Yiddish book center website - and it’s all completely free and accessible, no password needed

Some actual Yiddish phrases for Speak Your Language Day, because the top post in the Yiddish tag is extremely inaccurate:

אַ תּירוץ פֿאַר די בענטשליכט - a teruts far di bentshlikht: lit. "an excuse for the shabbat candles", fig. "a terrible excuse"

אָט ליגט דער הונט באַגראָבן - ot ligt der hunt bagrobn: lit. "here the dog is buried", fig. "that's where the problem lies"

אמת װי גאָלד - emes vi gold: lit. "true as gold", fig. "indisputable truth"

קאַצן־יאָמער - katsn-yomer: lit. "caterwaul", fig. "hangover"

אַ גאַנץ יאָר שיכּור, פּורים ניכטער - a gants yor shiker, purim nikchter: lit. "drunk all year but sober on Purim", fig. "someone who does the opposite of what expected"

These are just a few, of course there are way more!

ייִדיש רעדערס, איך װאָלט געװען זײער צופֿרידן אױב איר װאָלט צוגעגעבן מער!

Something that has a mamoshes vi der goyisher got [the substance of the Christian god] can also be said to be nisht geshtoygn un nisht gefloygn, it didn't climb up and it didn't fly. Any Jew who grew up in a traditional Yiddish-speaking environment will interpret the phrase in pretty much the same way: what didn't climb or fly was Jesus, who didn't climb to heaven and who sure didn't fly there. There's a variant interpretation, according to which it's the cross that Jesus didn't climb, but this has no effect on the meaning—the climax of all four gospels, the point of the New Testament, has just been reduced to a joke, the Yiddish equivalent of “and pigs can fly.”

While the denial of Jesus's divinity would be offensive enough to Christians, its use as the gold standard of unbelievability makes it dangerous for a non-Christian minority. The very existence of such a phrase tells us most of what we need about how and why Yiddish came into being and why it was never really German. Each individual word of nisht geshtoygn un nisht gefloygn would be comprehensible to a German-speaker, but it's unlikely that the German would ever guess what it really refers to, even if he or she caught the meaning of “bullshit.” And that's the point: Yiddish started out as German for blasphemers, a German in which you could deny Christ without getting yourself killed any more than necessary. From day one, once they started to speak “German” to one another, the Jews were speaking German aftselakhis, a German to spite the Germans, a German that Germans wouldn't understand—the argot of the unredeemed. Don't think of Yiddish as a union or melding of German and Semitic elements; think of it as a horror movie. Think of Hebrew as an aristocrat with a funny accent, a mysterious old language no longer used in conversation, the linguistic equivalent of the Undead. It needs body and blood to return to spoken life, the body and blood of a living language, that can be taken over and put to use in service of the Jewish brain. It wants to take over German and then say, Hoc est mamesh corpus meum, in a parody of transubstantiation.

Born to Kvetch by Michael Wex

פרייַנד! דאָס הייבט אן!

The Yiddish Translation Fellowship is taking applications for 2024-2025. Anyone who is in high-intermediate levels of Yiddish and has a book length Yiddish text they're passionate about translating into English should definitely consider applying. Those accepted receive a $5,000 stipend for their work.

Look what a treasure I got!!

It's the biggest Yiddish-Polish dictionary ever published! Almost 2000 pages! 😁

קאַלט ווי דער קאָסמאָס טוליען זיך קעץ צו צו זיי פּלאַנעטן מיט שטערן

ס׳א׳ז שווער זיין אַ ייִד

I’m just curious what people think

Pixel Font: Feedback Appreciated!

So I'm making a pixel font, where I try to make letter bodies 7 tall or less. One of my goals is for it to support a wide variety of writing systems. But because this includes scripts I'm not familiar with, it's hard for me to get a feel for what looks right or wrong in the letters I've drawn. So if you see this and you speak a language that uses one of these writing systems, or consider yourself familiar with them for any reason, I would appreciate any feedback you could give. My main focus is in making it readable within the font's limitations; I would like to make it look natural and good-looking for the standards of that writing system, but if that's not possible with my limitations then that's alright.

Somewhat-complete scripts: Latin, Cyrillic, Arabic, Greek, Kana, Ge'ez/Amharic, Hangul, Hebrew, Tsalagi/Cherokee, Armenian.

WIP scripts: Devanagari

Sample Images:

Again, if you regularly use any of these writing systems and you want to give feedback, I would appreciate it very much!

List of edits since the original post was made:

-Adjusted some glyphs to improve legibility for Armenian & Hebrew

-Fixed ligature encoding in Arabic

(also standalone ه is narrower now)

The Yiddish word for Massachusetts being מאַסאַטשוסעטס is so interesting to me. Like this is an indigenous word that wasn't meant to be spelled with the Latin alphabet and according to Wikipedia should actually be Massachuseuck. It got adopted by English settlers and questionably transcribed and people still struggle with the pronunciation today. And then Yiddish, having to work with its own orthographic rules, turns it into Masatshusets.

nothing like introducing a friend to the sheer joys of

a) https://www.nli.org.il/en/newspapers/?startyear=1783&endyear=1981

the national library of Israel historic newspaper archive!!!! - this is one of the widest ranging collections of Jewish language documents I’ve ever found and includes quite literally millions of pages of Jewish papers and magazines not only in Yiddish and hebrew but also ladino, Spanish, French, judeo-Arabic, polish, Lithuanian, Hungarian, the list goes ever on…. If you’ve seen the very very pretty covers to the milgroyim and rimonim art journals then you should know they are available online for free:

https://www.nli.org.il/en/newspapers/rmn? https://www.nli.org.il/en/newspapers/rmn? Learning ladino? Here’s a ten years of a monthly paper for ladino speaking immigrants to the early twentieth century U.S.:

https://www.nli.org.il/en/newspapers/laa? Here’s a Yiddish paper from 1920’s Havana!:

There’s so so much here! b) Yiddish book center! And their ELEVEN THOUSAND YIDDISH BOOKS which are free to read anywhere without an account! https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/search?f%5B0%5D=collection%3AYiddish%20Book%20Center%27s%20Spielberg%20Digital%20Yiddish%20Library

Overwhelmed? Here’s the top 1000:

still overwhelmed? Here’s a more manageable list of audiobooks read off by native speakers:

Learning Yiddish? Here are some readers and children’s books:

Enjoy!

what if my immortal was in yiddish wouldn't that be craz-

הײַ מײַן נאָמען איז עבאָני טונקל׳קײַט דעמענציִע רײװען װײ און איך האָב לאַנגע עבאָני־שװאַטרצע האָר (ס׳איז װי איך האָב באַקומען מײַן נאָמען) מיט פּורפּורינע פּאַסן און רױטע עקן װאָס דערלאַנגן דעם מיטן פֿון מײַן רוקן און איזיקע בױע אױגן װי דורכזײעװדיקע טרערן און אַ סך מענטשן זאָגן מיר אַז איך זע אױס װי אײמי לי (מ/נ אױב דו װײסט נישט װער זי איז דר׳ערד מיט דיר!). דזשעראַרד װײ איז נישט מײַן קרובֿ אָבער איך װאָלט געװאָלט אַס ער זאָל זײַן װײַל ער איז אַזױ מסוכּן הײס. איך בין אַ װאַמפּיר אָבער מײַנע צײן זײַנענע גלײַך און װײַס. איך האָב בלײכע װײַסע הױט. איך בין אױך אַ מאַכשײפֿע, און איך גײ אין אַ כּישוף שולע װאָס הײסט האָגװאַרטס אין ענגלאַנד װוּ איך בין אין דער זיביטע יאָר (איך בין זיביצן). איך בין אַ גאָף (טאָמער אפֿשר האָט איר נישט געטראָפֿן) און איך טראָג מעסטנס שװאַץ. איך האָב שטאַרק ליב האָט טאָפּיק און איך קױף אַלע מײַנע קלײדער דאָרט. למשל הײַנט האָב איך געטראָגן אַ שװאַצע קאָרסעט מיט פּאַסענדיקע שפּיצן אַרום עס און אַ שװאַרצע לעדערנע מיני־קלײד, ראָזעװע פֿישנעצן און שװאַרצע שטיװל. איך האָב געטראָגן שװאַצע ליפּן פּאָמאַדע, װײַסע פֿאָנדאַציִע, שװאַרצע אױג־בלײַער און רױטע אױגפֿאַרב איך בין געגאַנגן אין דרױסן פֿון האָגװאַרטס. עס האָט געשנײט און גערעגענט איז ס׳איז נישט געװען קײן זון, בין איך געװען זײער צופֿרידן. אַ סך פּרעפּס האָבן געקוקט אױף מיר. כ׳האָב אַרופֿגעלײגט מײַן מיטעלע פֿינגער.

translating for my yiddish class is so fun like yes this is exactly how jews talk

אַ ליד אַ שיינס פֿון גלאַטשטיינענס שפּעטערדיקער תּקופֿה; בפֿירוש, פֿון בוך „די פֿרייד פֿון ייִדישן וואָרט.”

Pro tip for learning Yiddish (applies to Hebrew as well) via Duolingo.

Don't use the app alone.

Take your notebook and write down any letters and words that come up. Repeat it multiple times.

You can't really learn a whole new alphabet by just looking at letters. Write. Them. Down.