הילף

Help

The search function might not work as expected, if you're used to more modern/complex online dictionaries (for now). In general, only exact matches (whether partial or whole) are returned. The following hints should help you find what you need.

Searchable Strings

Currently, the search function searches for matches in all text belonging to an entry (i.e. term, definition, grammar notes, etc.) The Yiddish-first UI is intended to encourage input in straight Yiddish, but internally all entries are encoded in their YIVO-standard transcription. Entries for לשינ־קודש words should be searchable with their hebrew spelling. See notes on transcription below.

Yiddish words in Yiddish letters

You may use ligatures or not, and if you leave out nekudes, the program will try to fill them in.

Try searching for the stem of a word (not the plural, case-marked, or conjugated form) of nouns, adjectives, and verbs. Unless disabled from the advanced search options, the app will try identifying this for you, but it's not perfect.

Examples
  • Type פּלימעניק, not פּלימעניקעס
  • Type שײן, not שײנע, and העלף, not העלפֿן or אונטערגעהאָלפֿן

Yiddish words in YIVO transcription

You may write Yiddish words using their YIVO transcription.

Try searching for the stem of a word (not the plural, case-marked, or conjugated form) of nouns, adjectives, and verbs. Unless disabled from the advanced search options, the app will try identifying this for you, but it's not perfect.

Examples
  • Type plimenik, not plimenikes
  • Type sheyn, not sheyne
  • Type helf, not helfn or geholfn
YIVO Alphabet

YIVO uses the following consonants for its transcriptions:

ב:b ג:g ד:d ה:h װ:v ז:z כ:kh ט:t י:y ל:l מ:m נ:n ס:s פֿ:f פּ:p צ:ts ק:k ר:r ש:sh טש:tsh זש:zh דזש:dj

YIVO uses the following vowels for its transcriptions:

אַ:a ע:e י:i אָ:o ו:u ױ:oy ײַ:ay ײ:ey

Example

The following sentence is correctly transliterated:

איך בינ געקומנ אַזױ װײַט צו שרײַבן אַ ביסל מאַמע־לשון!

ikh bin gekumen azoy vayt tsu shraybn a bisl mame-loshn!

Do not use German phonetic spelling. For instance, don't write schpiel to mean shpil.

Words derived from לשינ־קודש

Use capital letters for the first letters of Hebrew proper names (like Refoyl and Binyomen). Don't use capital letters for any other Yiddish words.

If you need a לשינ־קודש derived word, first spell it phonetically. Unaccented vowels often should be spelled with an e, as in borekh, bimkem, and maskem.

ASCII encoding for לשינ־קודש

If you don't know or can't guess the pronunciation (or rather, the YIVO transcription), the app provides the following custom ASCII-based encoding to help input לשינ־קודש if required:

#:א B:בֿ w:ו H:ח K:כּ x:כ e:ע c:צ S:ש Q:שׂ T:ת W:תּ

Don't distinguish final khof, mem, nun, fe, tsadi.

Examples
  • Type msKym for מסכּים
  • Type Slwm for שלום

Internally, all לשינ־קודש words are encoded with enclosing braces (e.g. {ym}), so a partial search for ym} should find all לשינ־קודש words ending in ים.

Other Information

The search function looks through all text in an entry for matches. This means that supplementary data, such as that recorded by Raphael Finkel in some of his entries may be returned by searching for categories like clothing or sound.

Grammar details such as indeclinable are also searchable.

Usage notes are often also available, e.g. inadmissible or German.

Occasionally, sources for a word will be listed if not generally found in standard dictionaries.

Examples
  • Forwards
  • Hoffman
  • Bergelson
  • note: V

Non-standard Spellings

If you are trying to find a word that uses other transliteration schemes than YIVO's (see the Wikipedia article for some insight), consider making these adjustments:

  1. Don't use the prefix be-; use ba-.
  2. Don't use the prefix er-; use der-.
  3. Don't use the inseparable verb prefix tsu-; use tse-.
  4. Don't place an h after a vowel to lengthen it; write ey instead of eh, for instance.
  5. If the text doesn't distinguish a tsvey-yudn (ײ) from pasekh-tsvey-yudn (ײַ), try both ay and ey.
  6. Similarly, if the text doesn't distinguish pe (פּ) from fe (פֿ), try both p and f.
  7. If the text has a word starting with alef-yud (such as אינגל), also search for it with yi, as in yingl.
  8. If the text has a word ending in -ig, try -ik.
  9. The epenthetic ayin before a nun en (ענ) is sometimes absent in modern spelling, leaving just the nun.
  10. If the text has a double consonant, such as tt, search with a single consonant, such as t.
  11. If the text has an alef with a segol (אֶ), try e.
  12. Transliterate the khes (ח) as kh. Some books use the khes where standard orthography uses the khof (כ).
  13. If your text has a final khof with a dagesh (ךּ), just ignore the dagesh and use kh.