Many people who grew up hearing Yiddish, and even some who read Yiddish newspapers, find old family letters very hard going. Online translation tools don’t help either. The reasons are worth knowing, because they explain what a specialist actually does.
1. It is cursive, not print
Yiddish uses the Hebrew alphabet, but letters were written in a cursive script that looks very different from printed text. Several letters are almost identical in handwriting. Each writer also had personal habits: shortcuts, joined letters, and a slant that changes as the page fills up.
2. The spelling was not standardized
Modern Yiddish spelling was standardized in the twentieth century, and many writers, especially in America, never used it. They often spelled words the German way. In a Brooklyn minute book from 1936 that I transcribed, the writer uses אונד for “and” and דיא for “the”, where modern Yiddish has און and די.
3. English hiding in Yiddish letters
Immigrants borrowed English words freely and wrote them in Hebrew letters. In that same page from Brooklyn you find מיטינג (meeting), סעמעטערי (cemetery), אטענדעט (attended) and דאללער (dollars). A dictionary of standard Yiddish will not help with these. You need to hear them as English.
4. Hebrew inside every letter
Yiddish is full of Hebrew words, and letters were full of blessings and abbreviations: ב״ה at the top of the page, נ״י or שליט״א after a name. Some letters switch to Hebrew entirely.
5. Dates by the Torah portion
Many letters are not dated by month at all. A letter headed יום ב׳ בא תש״א means Monday of the week in which the portion Bo was read, in the Hebrew year 5701. That was January 27, 1941. Converting such dates is part of the work, and it can matter a great deal for family history.
6. Time and damage
Ink fades, paper browns, folds wear through, and ink from the back bleeds through to the front. Often the most important words, a name or a town, sit right on a fold.
What this means for you
A reliable result starts with a careful transcription by someone who reads all of these layers: the script, the old spelling, the English borrowings and the Hebrew. Only then can the translation be trusted. That is the work I have specialized in since 1980. You can see real examples on the samples page.