Testing new feature: Arrive at any headword (entry) without having to enter YCD first. Use: https://www.yiddishculturaldictionary.com/?entry= by adding an English word after the "=" sign. This should take you to the first entry title containing that word, with others accessible via the search box (or the down arrow on your keyboard). If you key in a Yiddish word after the "=" sign, it will take you to the first occurrence within the dictionary's text (with further occurrences likewise reachable via the down arrow). Please let us know about issues arising.

(1) Feel free to download YCD to your computer or to print out as hard copy for personal use. Author's rights are asserted "in the spirit of Israel Steinberg (Yisroel Shteynberg)".

(2) Students of modern Yiddish literature are directed to Yiddish-English dictionaries, in the first instance Beinfeld and Bochner's masterly Comprehensive Yiddish-English Dictionary (CYED).

(3) When searching YCD, and for that matter when keying in Yiddish anywhere, it is recommended that one gets used to using the universal Unicode "Hebrew alphabet" that (a) is free, (b) appears correctly through time and space, and (c) preserves the classic keyboard layout. You simply add Yiddish diacritics via right-alt + desired diacritic. On grounds of both universality of correct output and non-monetization, this is generally superior to the various "Yiddish keyboards" which are in any case often subtly (or not so subtly) designed to limit use to just one subsystem. It is useful to perceive Yiddish orthography as a truly international system with its more-diacriticized and less-diacriticized subsystems being equally correct (just like Hebrew). 

(4) The usage label לומדיש ('learned') denotes usage in more formal, educated, academic, intellectual, and analytic styles and voices. That these entries hail almost entirely from Hebrew and Aramaic sources does not by any means limit their use to religious contexts. This results from the historic origins of much of the educated speaker's vocabulary in the civilization concerned. It does mean that many of them sound out of place in an intimate cafe setting. NOTE: This usage of לומדיש in Yiddish language studies (going back to Uriel Weinreich's 1968 dictionary) differs somewhat from its sense in traditional Orthodox circles where it delineates a much narrower set restricted to the vocabulary of actual Talmudic scholars.

(5) The usage label חסידיש ('Hasidic') denotes occurrence in contemporary Hasidic Yiddish; it does not necessarily indicate anything about origin or exclusivity. The subcategory חסידיש, אויך (Hasidic, also...) generally attaches to items deriving from 19th and 20th century secular Yiddish, borrowed from modern German usage, which then, some decades later, came to be excluded by that sector's stylists, academics, educators, and many authors (while abundantly retained in the press and popular parlance), but continued to thrive unimpeded in Hasidic Yiddish, undergoing further modification and nuancing determined by extant sets of (near) synonyms. To translate an English text into Hasidic Yiddish, readers may try YiddishLabs.com. 

(6) Pronunciations are provided in YCD in square brackets [ ] when the Yiddish orthography does not make the pronunciation obvious. In the overwhelming majority of cases, these are historically spelled words of Semitic (Hebrew or Aramaic) origin.

STRESSED (ACCENTED) VOWELS AND DIPHTHONGS:

a = phonetic [a], sometimes called "continental a" that does not exist precisely in English, but can resemble o in much American got, hot, lot and some British u in but, cut, hut.

ay = phonetic [aj], close to the diphthong in bite, might, tight.

e = phonetic [ɛ], close to "e" as in pen, red, men.

ey = phonetic [ej], close to the diphthong in gate, late, they.

i = phonetic [i] of different lengths depending on native speaker dialect. For Southern dialect transcriptions (in YCD denoting Mideastern or "Polish-Hungarian"), long i is marked as [i:]. The standard language does not distinguish long and short vowels phonemically, but in many cases a longer version (or diphthong) has become the most common in the standard language. In such cases the notation is i(y).

o = phonetic [ɔ], sometimes called "continental o" that does not exist precisely in English, but is close to the u in American but, cut, hut, or the o in British got, hot, lot.

oy = phonetic [ɔj], the nucleus vowel being considerably shorter than in English choice, coin, point.

u = phonetic [u], that can resemble the shorter form of English oo as in crook, look, took (not the longer form as in boot, moon, too). For Southern dialect transcriptions (in YCD denoting Mideastern or "Polish-Hungarian" Yiddish), long u is marked as [u:].

REMARKS ON CONSONANTS:

kh = phonetic [x], the spirant popularly spelled "ch" or "h" ("kh" in foreign words) as in Hanukah (/Chanukkah), Loch Ness, Kharkiv.

tsh = "ch" as in catch, choose, ranch.

r has variant pronunciations, the major groups being front/tongue-tip and back/uvular. In a larger part of Northeastern ("Lithuanian-Belarusian") Yiddish, it is a voiced velar fricative ([ɣ]), the voiced counterpart to kh or [x]. Students coming to the language can adopt one of these types, but whatever you settle on, please try to avoid English r.

zh = phonetic [ž] (or [ʒ]) as in Asia, azure, rouge.

YCD does not consider the distinction between palatalized (soft) and non-palatalized (hard) consonants to have survived into the second quarter of the twenty-first century, with nothing but admiration for educators who disagree and seek to maintain that distinction systematically. See notes at "palatalized (‘soft’) consonants in Yiddish" and at "moth". Palatalization is not marked in YCD, and interested users can pursue the topic in other dictionaries that mark the feature. Note however that consonants in general are "softer" than in some English dialects, and American "heavy l" is best avoided.

YCD considers regressive assimilation of voice (very rarely also progressive) as vital to correct pronunciation. Note than in the (rare) cases of [kh] before a voiced consonant, the pronunciation is phonetic ([ɣ]) which is transcribed [gh].

PROSODIC TIMING:

- (hyphen) marks a minor prosodic break, typically between primary and secondary stress units (in whichever order).

| (vertical bar) marks a discernibly longer prosodic break, typically between two primary stress units.

(7) The unstressed, reduced vowel marked [ə] (shewa) in YCD has variant realizations. Please note that in most positions it approximates unstressed IPA [ɪ] ("i as in: install"). Before [r] it is closer to reduced [ɛ]. It can approach [a] in the ending עך, particularly diminutive plurals (e.g. tíshləkh/tíshlakh 'little tables') and via Yiddish vowel harmony in the preceding syllable of 2nd diminutive plurals (e.g. tíshələkh/tíshalakh 'tiny tables', 'coffee tables' etc.); also before final [kh] more generally (e.g. péysəkh/péysakh 'Passover').

(8) In the author's view, spoken Yiddish has long been shifting from a three-gender to a two-gender to a (largely) one-gender (/ungendered) system. Moreover, classic Yiddish literature itself exhibits much variation. In YCD, variation is embraced. Note that wherever the neutral gender article דאָס is given first, it is the standard classic form, with further variants reflecting (a) the Northern two-gender system and/or (b) the current further shifting underway toward two and one.

(9) For the author's recommendations on Standard Yiddish usage, please note the first (or first few) cited variants in a string of variants.

(10) Squiggly (curly) brackets { } enclose all notes. They are also used as usage markers (e.g. dialect, colloquial, slang, learned, vulgar; such markers can in themselves represent the author's opinions).

(11) YCD's spelling generally follows the 1992 Oxford Code of Yiddish Spelling (digital here), developed during the launch of a 1990s publishing project and based on the norms of most great Yiddish writers. That norm itself represents a midpoint between the more radical systems (Soviet and Yivo) and the more conservative Hasidic publications. As noted in point 3, remaining differences are often systematic, reflecting the old Hebraic dualism of full spelling with minimum diacritics vs. deleting letters in favor of more diacritical marks. These and other variations (and the impassioned devotees of each) are part and parcel of the vibrant dynamic of twenty-first century Yiddish, and do not cause the modern (tolerant) reader any difficulty. YCD mostly uses the academics' insisted-upon hyphen in nominal compounds, which serves diverse purposes in a dictionary. But there is nothing "incorrect" about the Hasidic world's return to the centuries-old pre-maskilic tradition of writing the components of these compounds as separate words (unhyphenated). May there be no greater strife on our planet. The author's own views are put forward in writings over the years on Yiddish stylistics.

(12) To search YCD's comments, key in הערה for notes and אזהרה for cautions. While the former are intended to be historical commentary with arguments and opinions on questions of history and fact, the latter mostly represent the approach of the descriptivist variationist school of thought in Yiddish stylistics, and can be construed in many cases as responses to the normativist purist school. While the former argue over facts, the latter are inherently subjective views on preferred usages. Like any language, Yiddish deserves multiple schools of thought.

Please send corrections and missing words you would like to see included in YCD (via: info@yiddishculturaldictionary.org). A range of inconsistencies and duplications will be addressed at a later stage, taking into account colleagues' and users' recommendations for final choices. But errors are addressed as soon as possible upon notification.

NOTE: In YCD, דרומדיק is shorthand for Mideastern Yiddish (“Polish-Hungarian”), which is in some systems called “Central Yiddish” and is by and large the dialect of the overwhelming majority of Hasidic Yiddish speakers globally. In most cases, the Southeastern Yiddish (“Ukrainian-Bessarabian-Romanian”) variants are closer to the other southern dialects than to the north, but there are major exceptions, most famously the Polish-Hungarian [ay] which appears in the southeast as [ey], just as in Northern (Northeastern, and Standard) Yiddish. In some cases, forms specific to Southeastern Yiddish are offered, using the notation ד″מ.