Grammar

Obviously, I cannot go into a detailed description of every point of Yiddish Granmmar here on this page. As a brief overview, though, Yiddish generally keeps the same Subject and Verb order that English does. Word order, though, can b e shifted around to emphasize certain points. For example, By mir beast du shein means "To me you are pretty," but you could also write it By mir, du beast shein, which means "To me, YOU are pretty."

Yiddish, like most languages except English, uses double negatives. Ich hob nit kein feder means "I don't have no pens."

Nouns in Yiddish can be masculine, feminine, or neuter, and thus three articles are needed - "der," "di," and "das" respectively. All plural nouns in Yiddish are feminine. Adjectives change depending on the gender of the noun they mo dify. Thus, we have a Yiddishe Heym-Zeitl, but a Yiddisher Tater. We have a sheyna meidel, but a sheynum danke. Unfortunately, there is seldom any real rhyme or reason to gender assignment of nouns - you just have to learn them.

Proper nouns are declined after conjunctions, often by putting an Nun or Ayen-Nun at the end. For example, if I sing with Rachel, ich zing mit Rachelen, or if I dance with Matt, ich tanz mit Maten.

Most Yiddish nouns have both diminutives and iminutives. For example, a dorf is a village, a dorfel is a small village, and a dorfela is an even tinier village. The word bubela, which has found its way into common usage in English, is actually the iminutive form of bube (grandmother), and the diminutive, halfway in between, would be bubel (although I've never heard this word used). Diminutives and iminutives are always neuter, and take das for an article.

Yiddish verbs have many irregulars, just like any other language, but I'll give an example of "regular" conjugation.

The persons in Yiddish for I, You, He, She, It, We, They, and You All, are, respectively, Ich, Du, Er, Zi, Es, Mir, Zey, and Ir.

Using the verb zogen, "to talk," I will conjugate:

Present Tense: Ich zog, Du zogst, Er zogt, Zi zogt, Es zogt, Mir zogen, Zey zogen, Ir zogt.

Past Tense: Ich hob gezogt, Du host gezogt, Er hot gezogt, Zi hot gezogt, Es hot gezogt, Mir hoben gezogt, Zey hoben gezogt, Ir hot gezogt.

Future Tense: Ich vel zogen, Du vilst zogen, Er vel zogen, Zi vel zogen, Es vil zogen , Mir velen zogen, Zey velen zogen, Ir vel zogen.

Imperitive: Zog! (singular), Zogt! (plural)