Learn Yiddish Through Topics You Actually Care About

LingoBear creates short Yiddish passages on topics you choose. Tap any word for an instant English translation and build your vocabulary as you read. High German-derived Jewish language, written right-to-left in the Hebrew alphabet with extra vowel letters and dagesh diacritics, ~600,000 speakers across diaspora communities.

Tap any word for instant translation

Every word in your Yiddish reading passage is clickable. Get English translations and grammar help as you read right-to-left Hebrew letters used for a Germanic language.

Read about topics you choose

Type any topic and LingoBear generates a fresh Yiddish reading passage — from Isaac Bashevis Singer-style fiction to Williamsburg street life.

What is Yiddish and how is it related to German?

Yiddish (ייִדיש) is a High German language that developed among Ashkenazi Jews in the Rhineland and Bohemia around the 9th century. It carries a German grammatical and lexical core, layered with Hebrew/Aramaic religious vocabulary, Slavic borrowings from Eastern European contact, and Romance survivals. Today around 600,000 people speak it, mostly in ultra-Orthodox communities in New York, Israel, London and Antwerp.

How is Yiddish written?

Yiddish is written right-to-left in a version of the Hebrew alphabet adapted to represent Germanic phonology. Unlike Hebrew (an abjad), Yiddish uses dedicated vowel letters: א (komets-alef = 'a' or 'o' depending on a diacritical dot), ע (ayin = 'e'), and י (yud = 'i'). The standardised YIVO orthography developed in the 1930s is widely used in academic publishing; Hasidic communities often use traditional spellings closer to those of the 19th-century press.