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1 Greetings問候

There are two main ways of saying hello in Yiddish.

The first, ???? ?????, comes from Ioshn-koydesh (Hebrew-Aramaic) component, in which it literally means ‘peace upon you’. The response to this is ???? ?????, literally ‘upon you peace’.

You can also say ??? ??????, which literally means ‘good morning’ but can be used in the afternoon too. If someone greets you this way, you can respond either by repeating ??? ?????? or with ??? ????? gut yor (literally: good year). You can also say ??? ??????, ??? ????, a combination of the two.

These greetings are equally common and can be used relatively interchangeably.

‘Goodbye’ is ????? ??????? zay gezunt (literally: be healthy) when speaking to one person or? ?????? ?????? zayt gezunt when speaking to more than one person.

2 Asking and answering how someone is詢問和回答你好嗎

‘How are you’ in Yiddish is ????? ???????. This is composed of , literally ‘what’, and , which is a verb that literally means ‘a(chǎn)re you doing’, but the whole expression is idiomatic and means only ‘how are you’.

The following are possible answers to ?????? ???????

Some of these responses have precise equivalents in English, e.g.? ???(good) and? ??? ?????????(all right); however, many of them may sound a bit negative from an English-speaking perspective. In Yiddish-speaking culture, however, expressions like? ????? ???? and? ?? ?????? ??? are considered quite acceptable and are commonly heard in response to ????? ???????.

Language points語言點(diǎn)

3 Pronouns代詞

In this unit, we offer you all the forms of nominative personal pronouns.

There are two forms of singular you.

??? is the polite form used in first meet or showing respect. It resembles the plural you.

4 The present tense of the verb ?????? (to be) “是”的現(xiàn)在時態(tài)

The basic form of the verbs is called infinitive, all ending in ?-.

In Dialogue 2, several forms of ?????? are used. They differ in form in accordance to the subject. This is called ‘conjugation’ of a verb.

In this lesson, we offer you a list of all the forms ?????? of in present tense.

The plural have 2 alternative forms. They are equally acceptable. The only difference lies in the vowel should be ‘a(chǎn)i’ or ‘e’.

The 1st and 3rd person plural are identical. And this is true of all Yiddish verbs.

5 Indefinite articles: ?? ???

Differed from Roman languages, in which the indefinite articles are also declensional showing gender and number etc., Yiddish indefinite articles differ only because of the phonetic reason.

Similar to English, ?? is used a noun beginning with a consonant. And ??? is before a vowel.

Compare:

??? ??? ?? ?????????.

I am a student.

???? ??? ??? ????.

This is an apple.