Customer Reviews

English-Yiddish Yiddish-English Dictionary: Romanized, Expanded Edition (Hippocrene Practical Dictionary)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I think that giving this book four stars was fairly generous of me. This book has it's advantages and disadvantages as any dictionary does. The thing that I liked about it was that you get alot considering what you pay for it. It has many of the most common words, and even if it doesn't have a word you are looking for, it has enough words that it probably has a similar word to what you are looking for. I think it is a very good buy. Now to the disadvantages. A similar word isn't always close enough for all of us. I know it usually isn't good enough for me. The other really huge disadvantage is that it is romanized. If you are a beginner in learning Yiddish, you might not know what romanization is. Romanization is also known as transliteration. It is awful. What it means is that it doesn't use anything but English letters. In other words, it doesn't use any Yiddish letters. You're probably wondering "why is this a huge problem?", but just try reading THE YIDDISH FORVERTS newspaper, and you will see what the big problem is. It only makes sense that things written in the Yiddish language use the Yiddish alphabet. If you see something in Yiddish characters, and try to look it up in English characters, you might have a really hard time, and possibly not ever find the word at all, because many Yiddish words come frome the Hebrew language, and Hebrew isn't always written exactly as it sounds. Romanization generally is written fairly near how it sounds. It really just depends what you are looking for, buy I certainly can't say I enjoyed the romanization.

This isn't at all comprehensive, but is fine for speedy access to common words.

This book is helpful, especially when writing in Yiddish, and you want to find the romanized word. It is particularly beneficial for Yiddish beginners.