It is estimated that there are at least 5000 or more languages and dialect spoken around the world today.  Language is continually evolving and the meaning of words has changed over the centuries from one civilization to another.  Etymology is the study of the roots of words and how the sounds and spellings, as well as the meanings, have evolved over time.

From the Greek word para, "beside," and pherne, meaning "dowry" the word paraphernalia has its roots in Ancient Rome.  A Roman law stated that when a woman married, her dowry became the legal property of her husband.  Everything else she had, called paraphernalia or "goods besides the dowry," remained her own personal property.

The term pedigree comes from the French words pied de grue, which means "foot of a crane."  Old world French families were adamant about tracing their family's history and one's pedigree traced their lineage back as far as possible.

from the way a genealogy chart looked on paper, small at the top and branching out at the bottom, it looked more like the webbed foot of a bird than the roots of a tree.  Hence, any Frenchman who came from a family prominent enough to have a family tree was said to have pied de grue.

There are some great sites listed below that will help you translate from English to various languages, including Eastern Europe's languages and also various languages to English.  These are great sites to find out what a word  or a line on an old paper or a photograph means.  You now have an arsenal of great web sites to work with - some offer to do a small translation for free - while other sites charge a nominal fee.  Good luck!

To view a map showing language spread around Europe/Russia at the end of the century
http://www.ethnologue.com/country_index.asp

http://belarus8.tripod.com/litvaki/mapy.htm

Google Translates
Translates between Hebrew, English and more than 25 other languages
http://translate.google.com/#

Accented letters and other characters
http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/international/accents/codealt.html

Alef-Bet
A helpful site for learning the Hebrew alphabet
http://www.jr.co.il/alef-bet.htm

For a wider variety of accented letters, try
http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/international/accents/codealt.html

Learning a Language via email sponsored by the BBC.  It's free, you can listen to the words pronounced, download or print, does over 30 languages, including French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and English!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/

For writing in HTML etc. try
http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/international/web/codehtml.html

Free Online Language Courses
Offered by Word2Word
http://www.word2word.com/course.html

The Online Dictionary
offered by Word Magic is the most complete English to Spanish / Spanish to English dictionary on the web.  It is free and will help you with its huge amount of translations: idioms, phrasal verbs, plus other parts of speech, both simple and compound.
http://www.wordmagicsoft.com/dictionary/tools/

Russian
was the language of the administration throughout the Empire at the late 19th century.

The Vital Records Translation project
has announced the formation of the LitvakSIG VR Translators - Cyrillic group on Google Groups!. This group has been formed to allow a discussion of translation issues regarding the Vilna VRT project, provide useful tools to Vilna Guberniya translators and keep the team updated on changes to the project. Contact is Joel Ratner Joelrat1@hotmail.com

Translating
There are many translating services, some for free, available to help with your translating needs in most languages including Spanish and Portuguese.  One of these sites is
http://www.dictionaries.travlang.com/

http://www.allwords.com

Just in case you didn't think of it, contact a nearby university or college's foreign language department.  They may offer to write letters and translate letters into English.  A nominal fee is usually charged.

  Books      
                   

Dictionaries

An index of on-line Dictionaries 
http://www.yourdictionary.com/ 

Dictionary. Com 
www.dictionary.com 

Ergane
A free multi-lingual dictionary program for Windows.  It can not only be used as a translation dictionary, but also as a tool for helping students to memorize the words of foreign languages.  Furthermore, it is possible with this program to generate wordlists. Ergane is a downloadable program and it's free
http://download.travlang.com/Ergane//erganeen.htm

The Library of Congress Thesaurus
www.loc.gov/pmei/lexico 

LOGOS
Multilingual E-Translation Portal  
http://www.logos.it/lang/transl_en.html 

"Merriam-Webster's Collegiate® Dictionary" 
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/mweb 

Merriam-Webster/Online 
www.m-w.com

Multi-Lingual Dictionaries
Along with Translations between European languages and much more
http://www.yourdictionary.com/

On-line Dictionaries/Thesaurus 
Over 208 Language Indices and Dictionaries 
http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/rbeard/diction.html 

OneLook dictionaries (several languages)
www.onelook.com 

Refdesk.com
www.refdesk.com 

Spell Web
www.spellweb.com 

Your Dictionary
This is an interesting web site that gives you a dictionary on your computer; translates foreign languages; offers the Word of the Day and "the Agora" where you can "speak" with other Web-footed verbivores and professional linguists, including Dr. Language, about any aspect of language, including current or past Words of the Day.
http://www.yourdictionary.com/

"Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All of Its Moods"
Authored by Michael Wex

"Handwriting"
A fascinating tutorial on Deciphering Old English Handwriting  http://www.amberskyline.com/treasuremaps/oldhand.html 

"In Their Words - A Genealogist's Translation Guide to Polish, German, Latin and Documents"  
Authored by William Hoffman and Jonathan Shea, is an excellent resource.  Ordering information - the most direct way to get info on the books - is to go straight to this Website
www.langline.com

or you can order from my link to amazon.com by clicking here > Jewish Genealogy

"Latin Words"
A Latin word dictionary and grammar aid that translates for a beginning Latin student at
http://lysy2.archives.nd.edu/cgi-bin/words.exe

"The Ethnologue"
A catalogue of more than 6,700 languages spoken in 228 countries.  The Ethnologue Name Index lists over 39,000 language names, dialect names, and alternate names.  The Ethnologue Language Family Index organizes languages according to language families
http://www.sil.org/ethnologue/

"The Story of Yiddish: How a Mish-Mosh of Languages Saved the Jews"
Authored by Neal Karlen and published by William Morrow.

"Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs"
Authored by Paul Wexler, the Israeli linguist.  The book, a 713 page hardcover is entitled

"Two-tiered Relexification in Yiddish: Jews, Sorbs, Khazars and the
Kiev-Polessian Dialect". 
Wexler claims that Yiddish was created when Judaized Sorbs first relexified their language to High German between the 9th and 12th centuries; by the 15th century, the descendants of the Judaized Khazars also allegedly relexified their Kiev-Polessian (northern Ukrainian and southern Belarusian) speed to Yiddish and German.

Ethnologue

A database about languages of the world
http://www.ethnologue.com/

Rules for Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex coding

http://www.jewishgen.org/gedcom/faq/sndcomp.html#q3.1 

Soundex

Check the following JewishGen site for doing your own calculation of D-M or Nara Soundex codes.
http://www.jewishgen.org/jos/jossound.htm

Town Name Translations

http://www.kartenmeister.com/

Translate  (various languages)

http://www.translate.ru/eng/

Free Translation sites
A very useful site to translate many languages
http://www.freetranslation.com/-/desktop-translator/
?6FFARYLE91X01HKT

Brent Website Translation
The site offers a great deal of information including a free translation service translating any page on the web site into 8 languages.  Just click on the "Translation" option and then select the required language below and your previous page (and all subsequent pages) will be translated into that language.
http://www.brent.gov.uk

http://www.allwords.com

http://translation2.paralink.com/

http://www.free-translator.com/

A very useful site to translate many languages
http://www.freetranslation.com/-/desktop-translator/
?6FFARYLE91X01HKT

http://www.allwords.com

http://translation2.paralink.com/

http://www.free-translator.com/

"Translation Guide to Nineteenth Century Polish  Language Civil Registration
  Documents"

Birth, Marriage & Death Records
Authored by Judith Franzin - a book by the Jewish Genealogical Society. Language Civil-Registration Documents.  It covers births, marriages and deaths with differences noted for pre-1826 and post 1826 documents.  She has published a 2nd. edition.  There is a Library of Congress Catalog Card (no.89-84516) and
ISBN 0-9613512-1-7.

Your local library can probably get a copy on an inter-library loan so that you can decide for yourself whether you have enough need to purchase one for yourself or for your own JGS group.  From a posting by Stan Finkelstein

Travlang's Translating Dictionaries

www.dictionaries.travlang.com  

ViewMate

A service offered by JewishGen.  You scan an item to their web page and hopefully someone will view the item and be able to identify it or translate the text at no cost.
http://www.jewishgen.org/viewmate/

Your Dictionary. com

www.yourdictionary.com 

General Language
Information

Just for the fun of it! 

Here's a weird one, a site that analyzes prose and guesses at the gender of the author. Strangely enough, it really works. I tried it with a bunch of documents , and it guessed correctly in every instance. If you have a document (works only in English, I believe) you might want to determine if a male or a female wrote it. Try it yourself right here - it's very believable.
http://snipurl.com/gender_genie

Afgan Language

There is no specific language.  The country has two major languages -- Pashto and the local Persian dialect known as Dari.

Aramic

An old Semitic language that was spoken during the second temple era and afterwards, until around the 10th century.
http://cal1.cn.huc.edu/

http://www.kamalkapoor.com/name-meanings/Aramic-baby-names.asp

Baltic, Lithuanian, Latvian, Old Prussian* Languages

http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Slavophilia

    *  indicates extinct languages

Baltic & Slavic Languages
Translating assistance from/to English from: 
West Slavic; Czech; Slovak; Polish; Polabian; Kashubian; Upper/Lower Sorbian.  South Slavic including Bosnian; Serbian; Croatian; Bulgarian; Macedonian; Slovene. East Slavic including: Russian; Belorussian; Ukrainian.  Baltic including: Lithuanian; Latvian; Old Prussian
http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Slavophilia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/serbian_Cyrillic_alphabet

Dictionary of Many Languages (Aussie, Brazilian Portuguese, Danish,  Dutch, Finish and
                                                                 many more)

A Dictionary for Addict Spell Check made freely available to all users of Addictive Software's Addict Spell Check and Thesaurus - version 3 and higher
http://www.addictivesoftware.com

DOROT Genealogy Center

Located at Beth Ha'tefutsorth in Tel Aviv E-mail

bhgnlgy@post.tau.ac.il

http://www.bh.org.il

DOROT Software

http://www.dorotree.com

East Slavic, Russian, Belorussian, Ukrainian

http://www.slavophilia.net/language.htm

Free2Professional Translation

Great site and easy to use
http://www.freetranslation.com/-/desktop-translator/
?6FFARYLE91X01HKT

Fontboard

Multi-language support for Windows and includes Hebrew, Cyrillic and Yiddish
http://zsigri.tripod.com/fontboard/index.html

Fonts, software and keyboard labels

usps For multilingual computing including Cyrillic
www.fingertipsoft.com 

Handwriting - deciphering

http://www.firstct.com/fv/oldhand.html

Jewish Language Research Website

Wow, what a site! Here you will find:

• Bibliography of printed resources on Jewish Languages

• Jewish Language

• Heblanb (Hebrew Language)

• Ladino Komunita (Discussions in Ladino)

• Sephardi/Mizrachi Studies Caucus Mailing List
  Hebrew ComputingJewish Computing - and the list goes on and on

http://www.jewish-languages.org/

http://www.jewish-languages.org/resources.html

http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/

http://www.omniglot.com/links/hebrew.htm

Ladino Language

Also known as Judeo-Spanish, dates back to the
Spanish Expulsion of 1492, when it became a specifically Jewish language. 

Several dialects are still spoken in the Balkans.  Ladino is a mixture of many languages and is coined from the Spanish word ladinar, which means to translate the Torah from Hebrew into Spanish.
http://home.earthlink.net/~benven/ladino.html

Language

Dictionaries, Encyclopedias, Grammar/Style and quotations
http://www.refdesk.com

Language Guides

The Yamada WWW Language guides - a definitive guide to language resources on the World Wide Web.  In the Guides, you will find pointers to: The Yamada Font Archive; links to the annotated list of language-related news groups and links to language related mailing lists.  They contain information on 115 languages and there are 112 fonts for 40 languages - all offered by the University of Oregon at
http://babel.uoregon.edu/YLC/guides.html

Languages - Baltic and Slavic Languages

http://www.slavophilia.net/language.htm

Languages of the World

Links to language page sites -  the ultimate source of authentic and reliable information about the Languages of the world on the net. The links in this directory will guide you to the official sites of the languages that you are looking for.
http://www.123world.com/languages/index.html 

Languages for use while traveling.  
Some quick and necessary words.
http://www.bugeurope.com/

Multilingo
A commercial translation site that offers translations in many languages.
http://www.online-language-translations.co.uk/

Rashi

The greatest Jewish commentator, Rashi, Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki, was an outstanding community leader and decisor who schooled his two daughters because he had no sons.  A video, featuring Leonard Nimoy as the voice of Rashi and distributed by Destiny Films is available at
www.sisuent.com 

Spelling

"Each program (and website) has whatever conventions its authors gave it. In Windows there is a 'Character Map' which will allow you to enter unusual characters in a document-that usually will allow your home genealogy program to take things like a u mit umlaut.

But speaking as someone who has done that, I don't recommend it. I put the Bru(e)ckheimers who lived in Germany in my program with the umlauted u, and those in the US and elsewhere are entered as they spell their names-either with or without an e after the u. However, when I search for someone I have to search with and without the umlaut and with and without the e as the Find utility doesn't know about it. So, finally, I pulled out the umlauts and made notes in the appropriate people's files.

A hundred or more years ago, many names were spelled variously at various times and in various places, even without the 'unusual' foreign letters. If you enter the information as you find it, you will end up with many difficulties finding people (do I search for Smith, Smyth, Smythe...etc.?) So you need your own conventions!" From a posting by Sally Bruckheimer on 1/27/04

P.S. The character map is found in the program list under Accessories/System Tools. Of course, it may need to be installed from the Windows CD.

Translating  

AIM

A translating program can be downloaded from PC World's download site for free.  It requires Windows 9.x.  After choosing the languages that you wish to converse in, you click an arrow to determine what you're transferring from and to.  The program supports English, French, German, Italian, Russian and Spanish
http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,
16322,tk,hsx,00.asp 

Babelfish Translator

A resource where you can immediately translate (up to 150 words) from French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish to English and vice versus
http://babelfish.altavista.digital.com/cgi

http://babelfish.altavista.com/tr 

This site lets you translate up to 150 words from English (or translate from any of these languages to English) Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish. This tool is a handy resource for your research, enabling you to read text on foreign language sites, for example.  Try typing a sentence of your own and translating to another language.  Now copy and paste the translation into the main window and translate it back to English.  I personally translated my 'Welcome' page into Spanish ... and it worked it seconds!

Babylon

Babylon-Pro is a dictionary tool that instantly delivers a world of information to users’ fingertips. Babylon provides translation, conversion and relevant information about any word or value that you click on. With a single click online or offline, this tool allows users to access information from thousands of glossaries and dictionaries, convert currencies, measurements, and time zones, and--through a text-to-speech system--hear the proper pronunciations of words (you must download and install the Babylon 'Say-it' plug-in from the Babylon Web site to enable the speech capabilities). Babylon also translates to English, Spanish, German, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese, Hebrew, and Swedish.  A free Demo web site is offered at
http://www.avanquest.com/

Click2Translate

A fee-based site that will translate an entire page for a reasonable fee.
http://www.click2translate.com/

 LingvoSoft Dictionary software English <->
Yiddish for Windows - 400,000 words
 

With this LingvoSoft smart dictionary software on your computer, you can easily switch between English and Yiddish, (an many other languages) for prompt translations of 400,000 words both ways! Download Free Trial now

Free Translation

An easy-to-use site for rapid translations where you can get the 'gist' of foreign language text and web pages
http://www.freetranslation.com/-/desktop-translator/
?6FFARYLE91X01HKT

From Language to Language

This site offers a lot and includes Turkish, German, Russian, Spanish, French and Italian translating to English
http://www.langtolang.com/ 

Genealogy.net Translation Service

At this site trans@genealogienetz.de you can request a translation be made in these supported languages at no charge: CZEch, ENGlish, DUTch, FREnch, GERman and POLish.  The site requests that you use the three-letter abbreviation as indicated in bold face and your request should have a maximum length of 40 lines.  The translations are done by a volunteer team, so before you use their services, I would suggest you read their instructions carefully which are spelled out in both German and English.  And as with any request to help you in your research, please make sure you send a 'Thank You' note.

A New Feature Site

Now search specific Languages  (you name it, Google offers it and believe me, you will be amazed) or Countries at this Google site 
http://www.google.com/language_tools?hi=en

Lavrentiy Krupnak (Laurence Krupnak)

Offers his services in translating Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, Slovak, Hungarian, Yiddish, German, etc.  Translating is done on a fee basis.  Information available at
http://www.apgen.org/localchapters/nationalcapital/index.html 

Lingo

Multilingual solutions
At this site you can upload your document and get an instant price quote on a professional human translation.   
http://worldlingo.com/ 

Memo Ware

Even if you don't have a PDA ( Personal Digital Assistant - a general term used to encompass electronic organizers and handheld computers) you can use Memo Ware's document files on my personal computer.  Once you have opened up this web site, you will have many choices - some of them can be also used with a PC or a MAC.  You will be required to download the program you are interested in and you will find many translation programs including translating from Dutch to English
http://www.memoware.com  

Mendez iTranslator™

A commercial translating service.  The site offers FREE on-line language translations and also offers a human translator service.  
http://itranslatoronline.com/

Multi-Lingual Dictionaries

Along with Translations between European languages and much more
http://www.yourdictionary.com/

Poltran

English to Polish and Polish to English free translation site
http://www.poltran.com

Prompt Online

Just click on image below
http://translation2.paralink.com

Russian Language

Learn Russian words and meanings, Russian Dictionary, Russian Translations
http://www.russianlessons.net/

Rustran.com

You can enter a word or a sentence in Russian or in English and receive a translation in either language
http://rustran.com/

Systran

A professional human translation service
http://systransoft.com/ 

You can download the current version or purchase a CD Rom at
http://www.systransoft.com/Personal.htm 

Translating Services  

Genealogy.net offers to do translations for free at http://www.genealogienetz.de/gene/misc/translation.html 

You need to send your requests, via email, to
trans@genealogienetz.de  The first line should read #SRC&gtDEST where SRC is the source language and DEST is the destination language (i.e. German to English).  Supported languages include CZEch, ENGlish, DUTch, FREnch, GERman, POLish  Read the instruction page thoroughly first.  Requests can take up to two or three weeks, depending on the language involved.

The United States Holocaust Museum
Translates hundreds of thousands of documents yearly with content translated into Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, French, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish and Urdu - with more languages to be added in the near future.
www.ushmm.org/translations 

Just in case you didn't think of it, contact a nearby university or college's foreign language department.  They may offer to write letters and translate letters into English.  A nominal fee is usually charged.

Schwabe
Oliver Weiss, offers his service to translate old German script via email
schwabe@aol.com

Translations/Translation Services
Russian Transliteration System 
http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~taies/lc.html 

Translator Web Guide 
http://www.translatorguide.com   

UKRAINIAN-ENGLISH TRANSLITERATION TABLE
http://www.rada.kiev.ua/translit.htm

http://infoshare1.princeton.edu/katmandu/sgman/sltrans.html

Slavic Cataloging Manual Transliteration Tables

Click on any link below

Web Translation Service for FREE. 
InterTran™ can translate single words, phrases, sentences and entire web pages between 767 language pairs - You must add the ? after the web address appears in the URL box.
http://www.tranexp.com.2000/InterTran?  

You don't need a site to get most foreign characters on your computer.  First, go to Add/Remove Programs,  Then Windows Setup.  Next Add Multilanguage support for Cyrillic or Central (Polish etc.) European Languages, or whatever language you want.  You may also need to Add the Character Map, if that is not in your program list under Applications/System Tools.  It is in Add/Remove Programs, Windows Setup, System Tools.

With both of these installed, open the character map and look at the different fonts available, for example, in Windows 98, there are several CE (Central European) fonts, like Ariel CE.  There is Cyrillic.  When you choose the font, you will see all the strange characters available.  Choose one, copy, go back to your document, and paste it in.  You can also set up hot keys if you use them repeatedly.  

You can also change your keyboard, but it is not recommended.  For Hebrew, you need Hebrew fonts and the capability from Microsoft. This information obtained from a JewishGen Digest submitted by Sally Bruckheimer.

You can also download the necessary Internet Hebrew fonts from
http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item
_id=SILHebrUnic2

World AltaVista
(same as Babelfish) can translate passages of text or entire web pages among nine languages, or they can translate your page into their language of choice.
http://world.altavista.com/

Languages
By Country

Belarus

Belarus Language Help
http://www.slavophilia.net/language.htm  

Meschane - means petty bourgeois

Bosnia & 
Herzegovina

Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Slovene, OCS*
Languages
http://www.slavophilia.net/language.htm

* indicates extinct languages

Bosnian and Herzegovina Language Help
http://www.slavophilia.net/language.htm 

Bulgaria

Bulgarian Language Help
http://www.slavophilia.net/language.htm 

Chinese

The Beijing Expert Translation Co., Ltd. is based in Beijing, China, providing high quality translation services in most of the world’s commercially significant languages. In addition to considerable expertise English translations, we offer translation services in the following languages-pairs:

French-Chinese, Chinese-French, German-Chinese, Chinese-German, Japanese-Chinese, Chinese-Japanese, Russian-Chinese, Chinese-Russian, Korean-Chinese, and Chinese-Korean.    Dr. Wei Zhen  General Manager Beijing Expert Translation Co., Ltd.  Tel: 0086-10-82115891 82115892  Fax: 0086-10-82115893 E-mail: bjctn@163.com 

English to Chinese
http://www.freetranslation.com/-/desktop-translator/
?6FFARYLE91X01HKT

Croatia

Croatian Language Help 
http://www.slavophilia.net/language.htm 

Czech Republic

Czech, Slovak, Polish, Polabian*, Kashubian, Upper/Lower Sorbian Languages
http://www.slavophilia.net/language.htm

* indicates extinct languages

Czechoslovakian Language Help 

http://www.slavophilia.net/language.htm 

Dutch

Regio = Region

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vZMMH1GEaU&feature=
player_embedded#at=115

English-Estonian Dictionary

http://dict.ibs.ee/

French to English and English to French

http://www.freetranslation.com/-/desktop-translator/
?6FFARYLE91X01HKT

German Language

Note: See also my Yiddish page

The German language is a very variable one.  In German-speaking areas of Switzerland, for example, the local dialect is different enough that high-school students study standard German as a foreign language.  Yiddish is also called "Judeo-German".  From a posting to soc.genealogy.jewish by Stan Goodman

Translating Services

Just in case you didn't think of it, contact a nearby university or college's foreign language department.  They may offer to write letters and translate letters into English.  A nominal fee is usually charged.

English to German and German to English

Hoch Deutsche or High German
http://www.freetranslation.com/-/desktop-translator/
?6FFARYLE91X01HKT

"Hoch Deutsch"
is the opposite of Platt Deutsch, which is spoken in the northeast, around Hamburg, and also along the Dutch border.  It is supposed to represent "educated German", i.e. the language of Martin Luther and Wolfgang von Goethe.  That means it is supposed to sound somewhat like the German of Thuringia.  There are probably 12 major ones and perhaps 100 variants.  The people of Berlin speak a Berlin dialect, which has the odd word of Yiddish trown in from the language of Jewish gangsters.  Even Hermann Goering, when he was testifying at the Reichstag-fire trial of Georgi Dimitrov, used the word "gauner", which comes from the German-Jewish pronunciation of "ganav", Hebrew for thief.  Even in the SS, it was common to hear men speak of standing "schmire", guard duty, from the Hebrew word shmirah."

"The people of Bavaria speak a variant dialect of their own.  Switzerland's German is a separate language, not a dialect, called Schweitzerdeutsch.  The Germans who were absorbed into West Germany from the Soviet Union all spoke something called "Schwaebish".  But it does not sound like the Swabian spoken in Leipzig.  Educated people throughout the German-speaking area can speak and understand Hoch Deutsch.  Theoretically, it is also understood by all other Germans, but that's not altogether

"chen" and "lein" are definitely German, as is "li" as I found from tales of my (very small) mother's days at the German school in Rotterdam in the 1920's where she was known (and teased) as "Margotlichenlein". I believe "li" is closer to schwitzerdutsch than to orthodox German. According to
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=
20060814022008AAJVwa9

is definitely Swiss German."  From a posting by Nick Landau

"In the early 19th century in Germany (before there was much of an exodus to the USA from eastern Europe), groups of young Jews from one town would band together, exchange information, and eventually proceed as a group, on foot, for the ports, often settling down together in the same town when they arrived in the USA.  These were probably the original Fusegangers."

"By 1850 Western and Central Europe had an effective railroad network.  It had reached well into Russia by the end of the century.  There were up to four different 'classes' and prices; the 4th class with hard wooden benches and no frills was for the working poor.  I doubt very much that it would have been commonly cheaper to walk long distances than to ride by train, factoring in the cost of shoe leather and food.  Certainly it would have severely limited how much of one's possession one could take into the new world.  There was also a good chance that one might get robbed on the roads and lose the money for the trans-Atlantic ticket."

"I suspect the term Fussgaenger came into more general meaning among Jews to perhaps mean emigrants in general (possibly limited to those going as a group).  In the late 19th century there were passenger ships sailing out of the Baltic and Black Sea ports; it would have made little sense for a Jew to walk from the Pale to Bremen if he could take a train (or, if necessary walk) to Koenigsberg or Danzig and get on a ship there."

"We should always remember that both hardships and pleasures tend to grow in intensity as their history is remembered over the years and handed down through the generations." From a posting on JewishGen by Michael Bernet

Umlaut

"It's always acceptable in German to write the umlauted letters as plain letters followed by an e. Back in the hardware-only (typewriter) days, a good many documents were written like that in German, even in Germany.

And ignoring the umlaut is *not* a good idea. Can lead to some dreadful embarrassments, too. Finally, have you tried using alt-nnn typing to enter special characters? Try this when you're entering data:

--turn on the caps-lock key

--hold down the ALT key

--on the numeric keypad on the right-hand side of your keyboard, type 129.

If that gets you a u-umlaut, congratulations, and my apologies to the software manufacturer. 132 is a-umlaut, and 148 is o-umlaut. The sharp S (or ess-zett) is 225."  From a posting on JewishGen by Roger Lustig

Greek Language

Help to learn Greek at
http://www.ilearngreek.com/ 

Hebrew Language

See also my Israel page  Jewish Genealogy > Israel

The ability to read Hebrew - even just to decipher the letters - is a great asset to anyone engaged in Jewish Genealogy.  The National Jewish Outreach Program teaches Hebrew reading in four or five sessions... or call 1 800 44 HEBRE
www.njop.org   

Remember that written Hebrew is a vowel-less language and that because of that, vowels are sometimes put arbitrarily in the wrong places. In addition, some characters are interchangeable. 'B' is sometimes replaced by 'P'. 'Z' can be replaced by 'S' or by  'TZ'.

Typing Hebrew fonts is hard, but possible.  Download the free program Hefek
http://www.tcpage.force9.co.uk/hefek/

Shorashon© is a lexicon containing nearly 4000 Hebraic roots and has an innovating method of classification. The lexicon is accompanied by instructions, which also act as gloss of morphology of the Hebraic language according to a particularly original approach. Shorashon© can be freely downloaded (Acrobat®Reader or Palm OS format). Shorashon©'s instructions and translation of Hebraic roots are available in French only.
http://shorashon.free.fr/#

Babylon
Translates from English to Hebrew and from English to other languages
http://www.babylon.com/

Dealing with Hebrew Characters
Frequently Asked Questions
http://www.stevemorse.org/hebrew/faq.htm

Department of Hebrew and Semitic Languages

The Faculty of Jewish Studies
Bar Ilan University
52900 Ramat-Gan, Israel 
E-mail  Attn: Zvi Betzer  betzez@ashur.cc.biu.ac.il 
Phone +972.3.531.7334   Fax: +872.3.535.1233
http://www.pardes.org.il/

Foundation Stone
A free and easy way to learn Hebrew
http://foundationstone.com.au/

FSI Language Courses
Developed by the US Government Foreign Service Institute, these courses are free and available in the public domain.  Forty audio lessons, over 20 hours of mp3 recordings plus a 585 page pdf textbook
http://fsi-language-courses.org/Content.php

Hebrew Language site
http://hebrewpodcasts.com/

Morfix
A search engine offering a Hebrew to English dictionary
http://morfix.mako.co.il/default.aspx

Stanford University
Hebrew Department
http://www.stanford.edu/class/hebrew/mmedia/

Targumatik English to Hebrew
http://targumatik.tripod.com/

Dictionary - Review of the Oxford English Hebrew Dictionary

http://www.cus.cam.ac.uk/~gz208/oehd.html

Guide to 19th Century Russian and Yiddish/Hebrew Cursive Records

Some pages may take a long time to load but very interesting
http://members.tripod.com/~allbell/cursive/frame.html  

Books 
          

"Hebrew and Aramaic Words in the Yiddish Language - their
Phonetic Spelling and Translation into English and Russian"
Authored by Dr. Moisey Wolf.  The dictionary is available for $12 from the Jewish Federation of Portland, Oregon  (503) 245 6219 
http://www.jewishportland.org/index2.html 

"Hebrew Inscriptions and their Translations"
Published by The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Index of Jewish Art.  It contains a list of frequently used inscriptions with their English translation as well as help in deciphering abbreviations and initials and the listing of literary sources.. Their address is
P O B 4262, Jerusalem

Hebrew Translator

Translator and interpreter. Mrs. Circolone provides fast and accurate bilateral translations (English-Hebrew), for the private and public sectors. Michal has a working knowledge of French and a university degree (BA) in Psychology and Communications. She is an Israeli citizen based in the United States (Phoenix, AZ). Hebrew is her native language.  There is also a wonderful commercial site that offers  CDs and a learning Hebrew information at
http://www.jewishsoftware.com     

http://www.hebrewresources.com/discus/messages/10/200.html

Books 
          
          

"Learn Hebrew Today"
Authored by Paul Michael Yedwab with Howard I. Bogot and published in New York by UAHC Press in 1992 - 61 pages
ISBN 0-8074-0483-7

Hebrew Language Learning Resource

This web site has both written and audio pronunciation guides, alphabet charts including cursive, boldface and Rashi script, as well as links to other topics relating to the Hebrew language
http://hebrew.about.com/education/hebrew/msubalphabet.htm 

Additional information concerning Rashi
http://pages.cthome.net/hirsch/heb-alph.htm 
 
http://www.amerisoftinc.com/images/heblet1.gif 
See also Rashi below

Hebrew Language Training System for Adults (PC)

A commercial site
http://www.jewishsoftware.com/

My Hebrew Picture Dictionary

An on-line resource to learn Hebrew words.  Each word in the dictionary has a photograph of the item along with English/Hebrew translation and transliteration.
http://www.milon.co.il

SIL Hebrew Font System

A free (with some restrictions) Hebrew font package for Windows and Macintosh that displays and prints Biblical Hebrew text. 
E-mail sil_fonts@sil.org
http://softwaretopic.informer.com/search-sil-hebrew-font-
system-type/

Sahbak.com

If you want to write Hebrew E-mail even from computers that do not support Hebrew, the solution may be Sahbak. Sahbak means (in Hebrew slang) a good friend. Sahbak will do most of the work for you.  Sahbak will install Hebrew fonts and add a right to left direction.  It will also supply a virtual Hebrew keyboard if you need one and its all free to download. It won't work on MAC computers, however
http://www.sahbak.com 

Hungarian

Hungarian Dictionary On-line
http://www.ectaco-store.com/com/?refid=1848

http://dict.sztaki.hu/english-hungarian

A Useful English-Hungarian Dictionary
http://www.budapesthotels.com/touristguide/Englishd.asp

The 1768 Hungarian Jewish census used Church Latin for occupations

Magyar

Prior to 1910, when the Hungarian language orthography was modernized, the cs consonant combination was eliminated.  It was replaced with ch and ts.  'ch' is pronounced like ch in CHeap and 'ts' is pronounced like 'ts' in iTS.  Ts is pronounced like the 27th letter of the Ukrainian alphabet.  The Ukrainian word 'tsehla' means brick or tile.  A tsehl'nik is a brick-maker.

Janos

Is John in Hungarian

Italian

Italian to English and English to Italian
http://www.freetranslation.com/-/desktop-translator/
?6FFARYLE91X01HKT

Nonna means grandmother

Nonno means grandfather

Sfratto means eviction

Languages - General Information

> The diminutive suffix -ka for feminine gender nouns is indigenous in all Slavic languages. I don't know Germanic philology that well, but the German suffix may be cognate (sharing a common descent with Slavic) or even borrowed from Slavic.

It must be "cognate" as it too old to be influenced by Slavic languages. It seems common Indo?-Germanic.

> Did Anglo-Saxon have a suffix related to German?

Anglo Saxon has:
-kin, -kind, -ling, -let, -et, -ot, -cic, -cock.

http://www.searchforancestors.com/surnames/origin/essay.html  

Scottish Gaelic has:
–ie, -ock, –ag, -ockie.

http://sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scots_leid#Diminutives

From a posting by Evertjan Hannivoort.

Latin

Find out what many of the Latin words on Birth and Death Certificates mean by using this site 
http://www.bmi.net/jjaso/Latin_Terms_and_Phrases.html 

Lithuanian Language

The Lithuanian language is the state language of the Republic of Lithuania.  It is the oldest of the living Baltic tongues and belongs to the family of Indo-European languages.  The language was formed in the 5th century A.D.

Spoken living languages in Lithuania - Karaim, Lithuanian, Romani Baltic
http://www.ethnologue.com/

http://www.tourslithuania.com/pages/tours_lang.shtml
Ingber - Yiddish for ginger
Krechma - roadside tavern/inn
Prekrechma - (sub-krechma)
Zonka -  used as a translation for 'wife'.

Macedonia

Macedonia Language Help
http://www.slavophilia.net/language.htm 

Polish Language

Note that to write to the Archives, you can write in English.  To a registry office, local official, etc., write in Polish.  Writing in the language of the person that you are writing to is always best ... it exhibits respect and courtesy.  Make it as easy as possible if you want the quickest response.  Six to eight months for a reply, is not uncommon.

English to Polish Dictionary

http://akson.sgh.waw.pl/~anthon/slownik.html

Books 
          
            
"Hebrew and Aramaic Words in the Yiddish Language - Their
Phonetic Spelling and Translation into English and Russian"
Authored by Dr. Moisey Wolf.  The dictionary is available for $12 from the Jewish Federation of Portland, Oregon (503) 245 6219
http://www.jewishportland.org/index2.html

The Polish language
Does have a "Y" in its alphabet.  It is in the Russian language that a "I" or "J" becomes a "Y".  Example: the Polish Marja or Maria becomes Marya in Russian

The Polish letter "C" is pronounced "ts" like the Hebrew tzadi.  In the Polish language records, it often replaces the German "Z" or "tz". 

The problem of the Polish "C" is an important piece of general knowledge for those researching ancestors with Polish names.  It seems to have been "lost" even by gentile Polish-Americans, who routinely pronounce names ending in "icki" as though they rhymed with "sticky" - when in fact they should be pronounced "Itsky".

'rz' combination in Polish is identical to 'zh'

"W" in Polish is pronounced as the sound "V" (the Polish alphabet has no letter "V").

"Polish, as the other Slavic and Baltic languages, use declensions.  Seven forms of Polish declensions are responsible for the changes that occur at the word ends.  For example, in translation from English "Town Bobrka" to Polish "Miasto Bobrka", the Nominative declension is used and no change in word "Bobrka" occurs.  But when translating from English "Born in Bobrka" to Polish: "Urodzony w Bobrce", the Genitive declension changes "Bobrka" to "Bobrce".

Similar changes occur in other town names declensions forms such as shown in the examples below.  Note the differences in the words ends:

Lwów - Lwowie
Boryslaw - Boryslawin,
Lomza - Lomzy
Suwalki - Suwalkach
Kolo - Kole
Poznan - Poznaniu
Gdansk - Gdansku
Sopot - Sopotach
Rawa Ruska - Rawie Ruskiej
Gora Kalwarii - Gorze Kalwarii

Since ShtetlSeeker database, or any other geographical references are using Nominative declension form, the changes in the towns names suffices will not occur.  Those changes, on the other hand, will be noticeable in Polish or Russian documents that describing places where birth or marriage events took place.  From a posting by Alexander Sharon
a.sharon@shaw.ca , on the Gesher Galicia SIG Forum.

-ka Slavic ending in the diminutive form:  In Russian it is very common.  In Polish, however, only in case of some masculine Jewish names - ka might be a diminutive affix while generally -ek is a masculine form and -ka is a female form.  In  documents however, a possessive form is frequently found.  For example: a rabbi so and so has presented himself "in the presence (or company) of Moszek (Icek, Herszek)" = Polish: w obechnosci Moszka (Icka, Herszka)  from a posting by Peter Jassem

Polish Language Translator

http://www.slavophilia.net/language.htm 

Polish to Ukrainian; English; Swedish; Norwegian; Italian;

http://www.personal.ceu.hu/students/97/Roman_Zakharii/
polski.htm

Russian Polish English Alphabet

http://www3.vistatech.net/~jack/poltrans.htm 

Letter (s)  English Sound

Polish Names for Each Month

Polish Words

* w. obecnos'cis'wiadko'w starozakon nego Israela Segal, handlarza zboz (symbol over the z]a,  = ... in the presence of the witnesses, Jew Israel Segal, the grain merchant..."

** "publican" is also a tax collector.  Because they were literate (including mathematically literate), Jews were often engaged by the Polish nobility to collect taxes and rents from the peasantry on the nobility's behalf.  It was, unfortunately, a function that often made Jews a target of resentment by the local population.

Russian  Language
Ukrainian Language

Kyiv Telephone Directory
To use the on-line version, you need a Ukrainian alphabet keyboard driver and Ukrainian fonts, KOI standard.
http://lemko.org

Learning the Russian alphabet and how to read Russian for content http://it.stlawu.edu/~rkreuzer/russ101.htm 

CYRILLIC
The Rusyn language is classified as an Indo-European, East Slavic Language.  More information can be found at
http://www.sil.org/ethnologue/families/Indo-European.html   

Cyrillic handwriting

http://www.colby.edu/library/collections/technical_services/
wp/Cyrillic.html  

-ko
suffix indicates a connection with a person or object: often a small or little version; -ko is masculine and -ka is feminine.

In Ukrainian
The enko ending on a surname indicates (young) son of.  Ivanenko (son of Ivan), Kushnirenko (son of Kushnir, i.e. furrier)

To translate vital records written in Cyrillic script:
http://www.ia.net/~jcarroll/privet/script.html

Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute

 http://www.huri.harvard.edu/ 

Dictionary of Russian
Russian Dictionary for Addict Spell Check made freely available to all users of Addictive Software's Addict Spell Check and Thesaurus - version 3 and higher
http://www.addictivesoftware.com

Elementary Russian
Russify your computer, put sound on your computer and find more Russian links
http://it.stlawu.edu/~rkreuzer/russ101.htm

Roman Tunkel at tunkelr@juno.com  offers his own inventive system using an English keyboard and some imagination.  He suggests using the Arial font. 

Russian Language Translation Help

http://www.slavophilia.net/language.htm 

Teach your computer to read Russian
It would be of great help if you are able to read and write a bit of the Russian/Cyrillic words, but how do you find an easy way to learn the language? 
http://www.aha.ru/~russarch/

which links to
http://www.glasnet.ru/glasweb/readrus.html

Note that the Russian language has no "H" in their alphabet.  They normally replace an "H" with a "G".  Example:  The name Hirsch in Russian is spelled Girsch.

Sometimes 'H' is replaced with the letter and sound 'X' which in Russian is an equivalent to the sound 'Kh', like in Khrushchev.  And in the case of Haim, is known as Xaim (Chaim, Khaim) and Hanna as Xana (Chana or Khana), and Helsinki is known as Khelsinki.

Sometimes Russians drop letter 'H' altogether (as in Hebrew 'hey'), and in Hindustan it is known as 'Industan', and Spain (Hispania) is known as 'Ispania'. 

In the Cyrillic (Russian) alphabet, 'N' looks like the English 'H' i.e. 'Huchim' could be 'Nuchim' which is a variant of the biblical male name 'Nachum'.  

"I" or "Y" was spelled in Latin letters - "IJ".  The Cyrillic reminds of "Y" but of course it isn't, and the pronunciation is slightly different.  Based on the system of the American Congress Library, the vowel "I" (they spell "I/l") which usually sounds like in English 'six' for the consonant "J" the same letter is used, but with the diacritical mark above it, like small "v".  It sounds like the Hebrew "yod", like the first sound in "yes".

The Russian vowel, which cannot be explained because it is not used in the English language, looks like "bl".  Transliterating this letter, use "y".  Further information on the Russian language may be obtained from Dr. Josef Ash j_ash@netvision.net.il 

Letters in the Cyrillic alphabet used for Russian look very much like the letters in the Greek alphabet, but do not have the same pronunciations.  For example, what looks like an English "B" in Cyrillic is a "V".  What looks to us like a "P" is an "R".   "S" in Russian looks like a "C".  Like Yiddish and Hebrew, Russian Cyrillic also has single letters for "sh", "ch" (one each for sibilant (i.e. cherry) and guttural (i.e. chutzpa).  Also letters for "tz", "shch", "zh", etc.  Many words in Russian, Polish, German and Yiddish are similar yet written in 3 different alphabets.

Books 
                       

"Following the Paper Trail: A Multilingual Translation Guide"
Authored by Jonathan Shea and William Hoffman.  Published in New Milford, CT: Language and Lineage Press in 1991. 256 pages.  This is a guide to documents in 13 languages including Polish, Russian, Czech, Romania, Hungarian and Lithuanian.  Available from Avotaynu

Guide to 19th Century Russian and Yiddish/Hebrew Cursive Records
Some pages may take a long time to load but very interesting
http://members.tripod.com/~allbell/cursive/frame.html

"Russian-Language Documents from Russian Poland: A Translation Manual for Genealogists"
Authored by Jonathan Shea.  Published in Orem, Utah by Genealogy Unlimited in 1989 ISBN 0-921811-05-6.  It is out-of-print

Library of Congress' Slavic Languages Transliteration Table

The United States Library of Congress developed a standard set of rules to transliterate Cyrillic letters used by various languages that use Cyrillic letters such as Russian, Ukrainian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Macedonia, etc.  A basic resource where you will a nicely laid out 'Table of Slavic Cyrillic Transliterations'
http://www.loc.gov/rr/european/lccyr.html 

Russian adjectives

Have a variety of suffixes that change with the linguistic gender of the noun.  Masculine adjectives usually end in a "ee" sound.  The Cyrillic letter looks like an English "U".  Feminine adjectives end in "aya".  Example: In Russian black as an adjective is (transliterated) chornee in the masculine and chornaya in the feminine.

Russian Language Information

SKY - a Russian Toponymic Possessive Suffix = as in TurovSKY i.e. of Turov.  In non-Slavic languages Swedish also has one akin to it: SvenSKA - i.e. Swedish.  In both cases, it is an Indo-European element common in many Euro languages.  Also German - ISCH, Italian - ESCO, etc.

Russian Polish English Alphabet

http://www3.vistatech.net/~jack/poltrans.htm 

Translation Sites 

http://www.vmhenterprises.com/englishpage.html  
http://www.russian-translationonline.com/
http://az.hypermart.net/ 
http://www.aport-ru.com/en/defengtrn.asp                                      
http://aport-ru.com/en/defeng_txt.asp  
http://russian-english-translations.com/
http://www.slavophilia.net/ 

Russian Translating

Russian/English Transliteration Table  http://www.history.uiuc.edu/steinb/translit/translit.htm  

Russian Transliteration System 
http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~taies/lc.htmld 

Rusyn

Rusyn language is an eastern Slavic language consisting of many dialects (Lemko, Bojko, etc.)

Translations into Russian or Ukrainian and vice versa

Available by contacting Serhiy & Yaroslav in Kiev at sp@alfacom.net  Both of these Ukrainians are fluent in Ukrainian and Russian and appear to be quite good in English.  They will quote you a price before initiating any translation job.  Payment can be made by check through their US or Canadian contact.

http://webtranslation.paralink.com/English-Ukrainian-Translation/

http://lingresua.tripod.com/online/

http://www.ukraine.com/translation/

Ukrainian - English Dictionary On-Line

Ukrainian is an Eastern European language belonging to the Slavic group of Indo European language family and is closely related to Polish, Russian, Belorussian, Czech and Slovak.  Ukrainian is spoken in Western Ukraine and in rural areas of Eastern Ukraine. 
http://www.personal.ceu.hu/students/97/Roman_Zakharii/
english.htm 

Ukrainian Language Translator 
http://www.translate-pragma.com/translation_online/

http://lingresua.tripod.com/online/

http://imtranslator.net/translation/Online-Ukrainian-translations/

Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada Table 
Transliterates from Ukrainian to English 
http://rada.kiev.ua/translit.htm

Verkhovna Rada Translations 
http://portal.rada.gov.ua/rada/control/en/publish/article/info_
left?art_id=138995&cat_id=105995 

Tutor of Russian & Ukrainian

Mrs. P Oksana offers his service as a tutor of Russian language for foreigners at $5.00 an hour; can also arrange to send an invitation necessary to obtain a visa to visit Russia; and offers to rent a comfortable room in his flat plus 3 meals for only $15 US per day.  oksana@trav.kiev.ua  or mail address:
Mrs. P Oksana,
Box 215, Kiev 25, Ukraine 
http://www.sittercity.com/tutor/pa/philadelphia/1737846.html

http://www.translate-pragma.com/translation_online/

Serbian

Serbian, "os" would mean "osobe", (number of) persons. Assume that in Polish language it is the same.

Slovak Republic 

Slovak Language Help
http://www.slavophilia.net/language.htm 

Slovenia

Slovenia Language Help
http://www.slavophilia.net/language.htm 

Solitreo 

A form of Hebrew used in Istanbul, Turkey and possibly elsewhere.

Spanish

Busqueda de pasajeros
Means "Passenger Search"

Tombstone Translation

See also my Israel Hebrew page

Sh'mariya (shin mem resh yud hay)

Sh'mariya were the names of two distinct people at the time of Ezra the scribe.  The iya suffix, is used to incorporate the name of G-d into a persons name, and was used by many Biblical characters.  Sometimes a quote mark ' is put between the yud and hey so as not to spell out the holy name. The three letter verb root Shin Mem Resh means guard, and so the name means "G-d will guard".

There is also the noun Shamir, which is either:  a) a thorny plant or b" a hard stone, similar to a diamond or c) a name of a city in the Judean mountains.

Ayzik
Usually written Isaac in English and is an equivalent to the Hebrew name Yitzchak.  Yitzchak Avinu (our forefather) was the son of Avraham Avinu (Abraham our forefather) and the second of the forefathers of the Jewish people. (Submitted to JewishGen Digest by David Ziants)

Turkish

The letter "C" in Turkish sounds like "J" in English

The Istanbul Jewish Genealogy Project Istanbul marriage and
Death records.
This link leads to Dan's available web site.  Perhaps he will share
this information at a later date.
http://www.kazez.com/~dan/ist-marr/surnames.html

Turkish word meanings

Books 
          
          

"Ladino-English / English-Ladino Concise Encyclopedic Dictionary (Judeo-Spanish)" Authored by Dr. Elli Kohen and Dahlia Kohen-Gordon and published in 2000 by Hippocrene Books in New York

Turkish - Ukrainian - English

http://www.personal.ceu.hu/students/97/Roman_Zakharii/turkce.htm

Ukrainian

Ukrainian Language Help
http://www.slavophilia.net/language.htm 

Titles

Ukrainian Language Resources

Including Ukrainian - English online wordlist basic Ukrainian grammar and other Ukrainian online dictionaries
http://www.personal.ceu.hu/students/97/Roman_Zakharii/
ukrainian.htm

Ukrainian Translations

Available by contacting Serhiy & Yaroslav in Kiev at sp@alfacom.net  Both of these Ukrainians are fluent in Ukrainian and Russian and appear to be quite good in English.  They will quote you a price before initiating any translation job.  Payment can be made by check through their US or Canadian contact.

http://webtranslation.paralink.com/English-Ukrainian-Translation/

http://lingresua.tripod.com/online/

http://www.ukraine.com/translation/

http://www.infoukes.com/lists/

Yiddish Language 

Please see Yiddish  for my English - Yiddish Dictionary

Yiddish
Is thriving at the Yiddish Institute at Vilnius University.   The Institute offers a month long course in the Yiddish language, literature and culture Phone: (268 7187) E-mail institute@yiddishvilnius.com 

Although Yiddish is a German based language, written in Hebrew characters, many Hebrew phrases are used as part of the language.  Much depended on the region or community on how much Hebrew was part of Yiddish.  By the late 19th century, the spoken Yiddish had adopted differences in pronunciation as well as local expressions.  The language was basically the same.  You can compare it to the difference between the British English and the Texan English.  The written language was the same - German and Polish printers sold their Yiddish books all over Europe.

"Yiddish is also called "Judeo-German" -- which puts it in a class with Judeo-Spanish, Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-Parsi, and many other Jewish variants on local languages.  The Spanish Language Academy, for example, regards Judeo-Spanish (Ladino) as Spanish, even though it has an admixture of Hebrew,; a similar judgment is justified also with respect to Judeo-German.  There isn't any real reason, other than a nostalgic devotion to "juicy Yiddish", to the contrary."

Yiddish was the language - the mameloshin, the mother tongue -- the language of the Diaspora, birthed from the ground of the European killing fields, beginning with the pogroms of the First Crusades that began in 1069 C. E.  By 1939, it was made up of pieces of over 25 languages and by 1939, it was the first or only language of 75% of the world's 13 million Jews.

Professor G. L. Esterson commented on the differences between the various Yiddish dialects used in nineteenth-century Europe.  "The problems include pronunciation variations of a single name due to dialect variations within defined governmental jurisdictions in nineteenth-century Europe, as well as varying preferences between different given names from country to country regardless of the Yiddish dialects that  may have varied within one country."

"The four main Yiddish dialects (Western, Litvish, Polish/Galician and Ukrainian) cut across several of the European countries -- that is, culturally, the two split-regions were different.  For such countries, one part might speak one dialect, while the other spoke another dialect.  For example, for the western Ukraine of today, persons who lived west of a  certain line might speak Galician Yiddish, while the others who lived east of that line might speak Ukrainian Yiddish.  This resulted in different pronunciations of Yiddish words in general and of Yiddish given names in particular, as well as the choice of different patterns of name-making.  This led to different preferential sets of given names of a certain name family.  This means that some of the given names "commonly" attributed to one of these countries might be correct only in part of that country, or only partially in the other part (due to migration, marriages, etc.)"

"The implication of Jewish researchers in Europe is that if his search is in a special part of his country of research where the Yiddish dialect was different from the country's main dialect, he must be prepared to use also the Given Names Data Base of the appropriate adjacent country having the same Yiddish dialect as his special region within his country.  Otherwise he will miss alternative names which might be of interest to him."

"A somewhat different problem existed in western Europe.  There, the so-called Western Yiddish dialect was really not uniform in Western and Central Europe where it existed, but rather varied from country to country and sometimes within large countries as well.  This led of course, to the same types of problems as in Eastern Europe, but with different results."

"Another related problem existed at the boundaries of countries where a Yiddish dialect boundary also existed - there was a narrow boundary strip where both dialects were used in various proportions."

The approximate boundaries between these dialect regions in Europe have been ascertained.  While it is true that on either side of these lines, there was a mixture of the two dialects, this boundary region was relatively narrow, being of the order of 50 km thick, so a researcher would be able to compensate for this if he wished."

"This subject is discussed in more detail, country by country, on
Given Names Data Bases
http://www.jewishgen.org/databases/GivenNames/

and the appropriate boundaries are defined."  Yiddish given names, Yiddish dialects and IVO Standard Yiddish are also discussed on this site."

"Martin Miller wrote:
" Reading this post caused me to recall my grandfather (original name DUBETSKY) telling me that the townspeople in their shtetl referred to his mother as Dubechekhe! I don't know if whether the -ch- in Dubechekhe is the result of a linguistic alteration of the root or part of a compound suffix."

=====Yes, this is a good example of the explanation I gave to Felicia about her Yiddish text on Viewmate. As for the "ts" sound in Dubets, it was probably altered to the "tsh" sound. In this specific case the added suffix is "ekhe", which is also familiar to me, as is the "ikhe" suffix, all these having the same function:

to create the feminine version of a surname that doesn't exist in normative naming. In Yiddish the nuance conveyed by "di Fridmankhe" is less respectful than the formal Mrs. Fridman.

Evertjan Hannivoort wrote:
"I think it either means or started out as a diminutive like the '-ke' the Flemish form of the Dutch "-[t]je" or the German "-chen"

=====There is a very big difference in Yiddish between the abovementioned "khe" and the "ke" suffixes mentioned in this and other postings. "Ke" is an endearing diminutive added in Yiddish to the given name only. (If added to the surname it usually wasn't 'endearing' anymore...) About the "ka" suffix mentioned (Elenka, Adelka, Brigitka) all I can say is that it does not belong to Yiddish, and are probably Slavic. The "chen", "lein", and other suffixes also mentioned here are not Yiddish either, they probably belong to German. Although Yiddish has German roots, it evolved along different paths. Yiddish has its own very rich list of diminutives of which "ke" is only a small example. In some cases "ke", as opposed to "khe", did indeed become part of a person's formal surname. For example: Sore would become Sorke which would later turn into the surname Sorkin." From a posting by Aida Rauch 

<< The "chen", "lein", and other suffixes also mentioned here are not Yiddish either, they probably belong to German. Although Yiddish has German roots, it evolved along different paths. >>

==Menachem became Mann, Menn, Mennel [note the -el diminutive] and ultimately Mandel or Mendel in Germany as early as the 12th or 13th century, on the assumption that the "-chem" syllable was really a diminutive suffix, which had to be changed to -el to conform with Franconian linguistics. [the d was entered to make the name slide more readily over the tongue].

==The "che[n]" suffix (pronounced "she[n]") is typical of the Frankfurt region but not entirely uncommon as the diminutive suffix elsewhere. "le" "lein" and "el" diminutives are common to specific regions of Germany.

==Yiddish has more than just "German roots"--it developed among Jews as they moved into Slavic lands from the original patois of German Jews in the 12th century and later--in essence the German dialect of Franconia enriched in situ with Hebrew (and a number of Aramaic) terms, and enriched and slightly modified by the languages among whom Jews came to dwell as they migrated.

==The major change in Yiddish in the East, apart from the deletion of many Hebrew words relating to trade and family (which German Jews had incorporated, apparently in the interest of preserving secrecy among their neighbors) was that of pronunciation, which affected the sound of vowels in Hebrew and Yiddish alike, according to regional influences (e.g. the Germanic "ow" sound became "oy" in Poland, "ey" in Lita, "uy" in Hungary).

==Yiddish is not far removed from today's rural German. A Yiddish speaker would have little difficulty today communicating with villagers in Upper Franconia or Switzerland, as long as he explained the Hebrew and Slavic terms. Even the grammatical rules are similar.  From a posting by Michael Bernet

Books  
                  
"Meshuggenary: Celebrating the World of Yiddish"  
Authored by Payson R. Stevens, Charles M. Levine, Sol Steinmentz

YIVO has a page "About Yiddish" which gives lots of links:
http://www.yivoinstitute.org/about/index.php?tid=57&aid=146

In particular, it links to the Jewish Language Research Website
http://www.jewish-languages.org/yiddish.html

The references in this on the origins and grammar of Yiddish as well as Yiddish dictionaries seem very useful. It is no doubt easier to record the current usage of Yiddish than to be definite about the origins of particular "obscure" words. From a posting by Nick Landau

World of Yiddish
http://yiddish.haifa.ac.il/contents.htm

Yiddish Dialects
http://encyclopedia.farlex.com/Yiddish+dialects+and+phonology

http://www.the-yiddish-world-of-michael-wex.com/born-to-
kvetch-ch-3.html

Books 
          
          

"College Yiddish & Modern English-Yiddish Yiddish-English Dictionary"
Both published by YIVO and Schocken Books and the YIVO website at:
http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/yivo/

Guide to 19th Century Russian and Yiddish/Hebrew Cursive Records
Some pages may take a long time to load but very interesting
http://members.tripod.com/~allbell/cursive/frame.html  

On-line Yiddish-English Dictionary
http://www.ectaco-store.com/com/?refid+1848

Translation from Yiddish to English
Dr. Sheldon Clare clare15905@aol.com offers to translate from Yiddish to English for anyone as stated in a posting to JewishGen on 11-03-2002

Yiddish to English
Mindle Crystel Gross offers her translation services
www.yiddishtoenglish.com

Yugoslavian Language

Yugoslavian Language Help
http://www.slavophilia.net/language.htm 

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