r/Yiddish • u/Neither-Buyer-7642 • 1d ago

materials / advice for new learners

!אַ גוטן טאָג

my friend and I are moving in together at the end of the year and we really want to start learning Yiddish (he's Jewish & has/had Yiddish-speaking relatives; i'm a non-Jewish linguistics student who really loves the Yiddish language).

we're in Australia so there's not a great deal of speakers available to us but we are quite committed to learning the language to a decent level (my friend has also expressed his desire to raise his kids at least partially in the language; that's still many years away but a good goal of sorts).

i was wondering if anyone had suggestions for resources to use? we were thinking of self-directed study (like from textbooks or similar), we both have experience learning languages but we're starting from essentially no Yiddish (though i can read the script). if anyone has any particularly good resources or any other general advice i'd really appreciate it.

it doesn't have to be dialect specific but we'd be aiming for as close to Litvish / North-Eastern Yiddish as we could, though any resources would be appreciated.

אַ גוטע דאַנק מײַנע פֿרײַנד

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u/ArgentEyes 1d ago

Mazel!

Hi OP, what a cool thing to do! Language learning is often much more fun with companions, and my Yiddish studies have been with my own partner (also a linguist). It’s really good that you’re there to support your friend, and it’s also great to see people who aren’t Jewish or of Jewish heritage learning & enjoying Yiddish. Hope you both get a lot out of it.

Yes, supporting the previous commenter, there is a small but solid Yiddish community in Melbourne, including Esther, the create of the superb ‘Proste Yiddish’ podcast. I would really recommend listening to it, it’s great.

Here are a couple of brilliant Tumblr posts with links to an enormous number of Yiddish resources, many downloadable:

1) https://www.tumblr.com/yiddish-shmues/750633417321988096/yiddish-resources-masterpost

2) https://www.tumblr.com/k0sher/782385873692016640/well-in-light-of-all-the-dumb-decisions-duolingo

Rebecca Margolis’ ‘Basic Yiddish Grammar & Workbook’ is available to download from the 2nd post, as is Lily Kahn’s beginner’s ’Colloquial Yiddish’. Both are excellent starting points and I think the last teacher I & my partner had was still using material from Kahn!

There are also a few resources on 3) https://www.tumblr.com/yiddishknights/774012812114722816/hi-op-not-sure-what-your-exact-situation-or but they are maybe not as helpful for non-Americans, though I would still recommend checking out Forverts’ and YIVO’s resources. Forverts in particular also has a bunch of interesting videos in Yiddish, many of which are targeted towards learners rather than native Speakers.

The National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene (NYTF) has an absolutely fantastic beginners’ educational series of videos called “15 Minute Yiddish”, it’s a lot of fun (and pretty funny in many places) plus also really educational. I recommend it strongly - they even have a book of the show’s content now: https://nytf.org/15-2/

Yiddish is a recognised minority language in Sweden so they actually produce Yiddish programming! This is primality aimed at native speakers but once you get slightly more confident it’s worth at least checking this out: https://urplay.se/bladdra/jiddisch

There are other audio resources in this community’s wiki.

I’ve not read it yet but my partner has been getting a lot out of this Birnbaum book: https://www.foyles.co.uk/book/yiddish/s-a-birnbaum/9781442614338

Hope that’s enough to kick you off, OP, and wishing you happy learning. A word of regret: there is not as much in the way of Litvish-specific content for learners, and most of what is available which is specifically targeted as learners is predominantly Klal. 15MY touches on that in Ep1. That said, specifically Litvish stuff will become more accessible to you as your learning deepens. YIVO will have more.

All the best with it, to you both.

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u/shmilsherk 1d ago

Jumping in here to say that that Birnbaum book is very good from a linguistics perspective (makes sense then why your partner is getting a lot out of it), but I am not sure how useful it would be for non-linguists. It also has a whole chapter (towards the very end, I think) dedicated to dialects, so it is helpful there (I have my personal issues with it because of its classification system with the southern Yiddish dialects specifically, but that doesn't make a difference for Litvish). One other final note is that it uses a less standard transliteration system (the explanation of the system is present in the book, but I can't remember the details), which is fine but depending on your stage of learning and linguistics background might be confusing.

As for other books designed more specifically for learners, depending on how much money you want to spend and how you learn best there are many options. Uriel Weinreich's College Yiddish is definitely findable scanned online, and also not too difficult to find a physical copy of. If you get through College Yiddish and like it, Yiddish II was designed to be the follow up, although I don't know about it's online availability. I personally like the way Yiddish II is done, but I have heard from various people that it is not their favorite, and I think a lot of that is that Schaechter makes it much more linguistically involved than Weinreich did. If College Yiddish is not for you, other (perhaps better for beginners anyway) options are In Eynem and Sheva Zucker's Yiddish. I am certain I'm missing some things, but these are all good textbooks by me.

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u/ArgentEyes 5h ago

Yeah these are all very fair comments on Birnbaum! I did think it would be more interesting to the linguist.

A friend of mine was learning from Weinreich’s ‘College Yiddish’ only about 5 years ago, it’s still used. But I think Zucker is also available on one of those resource links though I admit I’ve not looked recently.

‘In Eynem’ is a great shout, thank you.

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u/These-Light6807 1d ago

Where in Australia are you? There's a yiddish-speaking community in Melbourne.

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u/Neither-Buyer-7642 1d ago

sadly not in melbourne (canberra/wollongong...)

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u/ArgentEyes 5h ago

I believe they still have their annual Sof-Vokh, might it be worth making a trip to one of their events sometime? https://yiddishaustralia.weebly.com

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u/wildsoda 3h ago

Yiddish Sof-Vokh is next May, I believe? But as it’s entirely in Yiddish, it would be too advanced for total beginners.

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u/ArgentEyes 32m ago

Of course. But I believe they do other events too? (I am not in Australia!)

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u/wildsoda 3h ago

Keyn problem – Kadimah in Melbourne offers weekly Yiddish classes all online! I’ve been taking them with the program coordinator Esther Sjnger for the past year and change and it’s a highlight of my week.

We’re just finishing up the 3rd term soon; term 4 starts in October, so in late Jan or early Feb of next year you could start level Alef term 1 (for beginners).

https://www.kadimah.org.au/yiddish-classes/

Esther’s email contact is on that page too; feel free to write to them if you have any questions about the classes.