Wikibooks

Yiddish for Yeshivah Bachurim/About contributing

< Yiddish for Yeshivah Bachurim

Please feel free to edit, add to, and improve this book. The person who started this Wikibook does not speak Yiddish fluently at all, and it is very likely that there are many mistakes and lots of room for improvement.

Please try to conform to the following points if you contribute. If you disagree with any of these rules, discuss it on the discussion page and change the rule if a consensus is reached.

  1. No lashon hara, leitzanus, bizayon talmidei chachamim, nivul peh or any inappropriate content that a typical Yeshivah Bachur would not want to read.
  2. Try to keep the book as short as possible, but still containing all the useful information needed to understand a basic Shiur in Yiddish. For example, a lengthy list of all the appropriate way of adding adjectives to nouns would be considered unimportant. Keep in mind that the reader is already expected to know at least a basic level of Yeshivish, so it is unnecessary to teach words that exist in English (such as פּראָבּלעם), Hebrew/Aramaic (like חבֿר), or even basic Yeshivish (like טאַקע).
  3. Examples are very useful, since most of the readers probably already know the basic idea behind Yiddish, and just need some concrete usage to put it all together.
  4. To prevent confusion, both dageshes and rafes have been added to letters that can receive them (בּ, בֿ, כּ, כֿ, פּ, פֿ, תּ, תֿ). Please keep to this standard. If you would like to change this, you can discuss it on the discussion page, but keep in mind that it will take a long time to change the entire book to different standard.
  5. Don’t add unnecessary Nekudos. Only אָ, אַ, and ײַ get vowels (unless there is ambiguity).
  6. Don’t spell Yiddish words in English letters. See below to learn how to type Yiddish.
  7. Don’t use fancy English words. Though many Yeshivah Bochrim, and in particular those that don’t yet know Yiddish, do speak a high level of English, many don’t. On the other hand, don’t go out of your way to follow this rule. For example, there is simply no simple English word for conjugate.
  8. This book is only for Yiddish words and grammar that would be useful when trying to understand a Yiddish Shiur. If you would like to teach conversational Yiddish, then feel free to develop the other Yiddish Wikibook, but this is not the place for it. Speaking of the other Wikibook, it is really a pity that no-one is working on it. Feel free to steal information from this book, though you'll probably have to significantly change the style due to the different audience. No forking is allowed in Wikibooks, but the content and style would have to be changed so significantly for the other book that it is very unlikely this would pose a problem.
  9. Include the code 
    {{{{BOOKTEMPLATE}}/Bottombar}}
     at the bottom of every page.
  10. Feel free to add yourself to the Authors page if you have contributed significantly.

Using the templates

edit

To produce one of the new word boxes, use the following code: 

{{{{BOOKTEMPLATE}}/nword|The new word goes here.|The translation goes here.}}
|}

This produces the following box:

אַ נײַ װאָרט - A new word
The word   The new word goes here The translation goes here

Make sure that the two lines are kept on two separate lines. Don't worry if you see the punctuation in the Yiddish part going to the wrong side when editing; it will go to the right side when you save it (preview to test).

You may optionally add examples to the new word box by adding one or more example lines in between the two lines of the nword command, with the following exact format: 

{{{{BOOKTEMPLATE}}/nword|The new word goes here|The translation goes here}}
{{{{BOOKTEMPLATE}}/example|An example sentence goes here|Its translation goes here}}
{{{{BOOKTEMPLATE}}/example|Another example sentence goes here|Its translation goes here}}
|}

which looks like this:

אַ נײַ װאָרט - A new word
The word   The new word goes here The translation goes here
Example An example sentence goes here Its translation goes here
Example Another example sentence goes here Its translation goes here

Again, remember to close it with the |} at the end.

Speaking of the new word template, I would highly appreciate it if someone made it look nicer. I'm not insulting anyone, because I made the template myself. I don't like it. I especially don't like the look when there are a few of them on the same page. I tried centering it, and that made it even worse. Please remove this notice if you change it and you like the changes.

Typing Yiddish

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It took me a while to figure out how to type certain Yiddish symbols, so I'll save you some time (if you’re using a relatively recent version of Windows). It is assumed that you know how to type Hebrew, and if you don't, there are lots of instructions around the Internet. If you don’t want to learn how to type Yiddish, and you just want to make a "quick-fix", you can copy-and-paste from other parts of this book (such as Lesson 1).

Following is a list of Yiddish symbols that don't exist in Hebrew and how to type them in Windows. All of them assume that your keyboard layout is set to Hebrew. Right alt means the Alt key to the right of the space bar. It is unclear why there are separate symbols for ײ, ױ, and װ, but since they do exist the starter of this Wikibook does use them. You are welcome to use them or not as you wish. You can take a look at the keyboard layout from Start->Programs->Accessories->Accessibility->On-Screen Keyboard.

  • ײ – Right alt-H
  • ױ – Right alt-J
  • װ – Right alt-U
  • ײַ – Right alt-H, Caps Lock, Shift-7, Caps Lock
  • אַ – א, Caps Lock, Shift-7, Caps Lock
  • אָ – א, Caps Lock, Shift-8, Caps Lock
  • בּ – ב, Caps Lock, Shift-=, Caps Lock
  • בֿ – ב, Right alt-- (that means Right alt pressed together with the minus symbol, i.e. underscore)
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