a travel dictionary, not a compendium of Yiddish humor, January 13, 2002

After reading the reviews, I wrongly assumed that this was a book that had a number of humorous phrases in Yiddish. If had known what it really was, I would not have ordered it. I might be the only person on earth that had this mis-conception, however.

Regardless, this is a handly little book. The book is tiny and designed to fit in a shirt pocket, hence the tiny price.

There is an index of words and there are major sections such as "parts of the body" and "business" and "restaurant" vocabulary.

The book is very business like and it is apparent that it is intended to be an easy-to-access phrase book for folks new to Israel or any area with a large Yiddish-speaking population.

Extremely Useful !!!!!, July 15, 1999
Reviewer: A reader
This book is extremely useful for anyone who wants to learn Yiddish. It is filled with just about every phrase you could possibly think of, and even has an index of every single word in the whole book, which comes in very useful. It has not only phrases, but also lots of popular single words (such as east, west, good, bad, etc.). One thing that I really liked about it is that it uses the Yiddish alphabet, instead of that stupid romanization that you see in every other modern Yiddish book. For people who can't read the Yiddish alphabet, it has a very nice guide to all of the sounds and names of the Yiddish letters. It unfortunately doesn't contain a thing about grammar or gender of nouns or using verbs, but just the same, this book is extremely useful for the Yiddish learner. I personally think that it is the best book that you will ever find for it's low cost. I would recommend it to anyone of any age that wants to learn Yiddish.

Fun!, January 14, 2005

There aren't many places left in the world where Yiddish is the primary language; exactly why there would be a travel-phrase book like this one is a little bit perplexing to me. Of course, it was published decades ago, and apparently hasn't been reprinted since, so used copies are the way to acquire this little gem. It is organised in the typical fashion on any travel phrase book - basic expressions; greetings and general social conversation; travel expressions concerning hotels, boats, airlines, etc.; useful words about the house; sports, school, professions; and, of course, caf?and restaurant information. There are also sections for numbers, dates, seasons, and the like.

As the introduction states, whenever Yiddish is spoken, it is usually through the lens of dialects - Yiddish not having a solid geographic home in terms of major national or primary language support, the language is (for all its 'traditional' aspects) a rather fluid thing. Yiddish is, unlike English and more like German, fairly consistent in spelling and pronunciation, so once the basic pattern of pronunciation of letters is mastered, the speech is relatively simple to engage. Yiddish has strong Germanic tones despite being written in the Hebrew (Aramaic) script - this phrase book incorporates the original script as well as transliterated pronunciation. Yiddish, like Hebrew, is written and read right to left, but the transliterations are put in left-to-right for ease of English speakers.

Yiddish has had a good deal of influence in English through popular use, entertainment and literature, as well as some business and marketplace uses. Yiddish is becoming more popular in recent years, including being used in schools in some parts of North America as an important secondary language.

This is a phrase book, not a grammar. It shows the rudiments of pronunciation and provides handy access to ready-made phrases, but does not develop ideas of grammar and syntax, nor does it have any background of history or sociology - like a travel phrase book, it consists of pages of phrases grouped topically, with an index in the back, and sized to fit easily into a pocket. For a more extensive introduction to the Yiddish language, one might combine this with the book Complete Idiot's Guide to Learning Yiddish by Rabbi Benjamin Blech.

For a travel phrase book, it is a real gem.

Hebrew alphabet, August 5, 2004

Most Yiddish books only use transliteration. This is difficult because everyone has a different way of doing that. I think it is always better to learn the alphabet. Unfortunately I do not live in the right part of the world to use most of the phrases in this book.

An inexpensive disappointment, December 22, 2003
Reviewer: A reader
This book is great if you want to say something in Yiddish. It has the English word or phrase, the Yiddish alphabet spelling, and then the phonetic pronunciation. BUT - you can't look up the Yiddish word and get a translation back to English. I have friends who are always throwing some Yiddish phrase at me, I want to know what they are saying! This book doesn't help me with that.

i almost plotzed!, November 29, 2001

Reviewer:

A. Silverman "BooksDealer eselling stuff since 1998" (Fresno, CA United States)

when i got this buch, i kvelled all the way home from shul...Shalom all!