Litvish and Chassidish Yiddish: How They Sound Different

Ask two Yiddish speakers to wish you a good Shabbos and you may hear gut shabes from one and git shabes from the other. Same words, same spelling (גוט שבת), different vowels. This page sets out where Litvish and Chassidish Yiddish sound different, which of those differences are regular enough to learn as rules, and where the standard (YIVO) pronunciation fits in.

One thing first, because it makes the rest easy: the spelling does not change. A Hasidic weekly in Brooklyn and a YIVO textbook write גוט, קומען and זאָגן with the same letters. The Hasidic press usually leaves out the small marks under the alef (it prints זאגן, not זאָגן), but the letters are the same. What changes is how a speaker reads them aloud. Learn the correspondences below and you can speak one accent and still follow the other.

What the names mean

Litvish (ליטוויש) is the Yiddish of Jews from Lithuania, Latvia and Belarus. Linguists call this area Northeastern Yiddish.

Chassidish (חסידיש) is not a term a dialectologist would use. People mean by it the Yiddish spoken in Hasidic communities today. Its roots are in the southern dialects: Central Yiddish (Poland and Galicia), Southeastern Yiddish (Ukraine, Bessarabia, Romania) and the Yiddish of Hungary and Transylvania, where several of the largest Hasidic groups came from after the war. Those dialects differ among themselves in plenty of details. They share the main vowel shifts below, which is why "Chassidish" works as a practical label.

Standard Yiddish, often called YIVO Yiddish after the institute in Vilna that published the spelling rules in the 1930s, is what most textbooks, dictionaries and university courses teach. Its vowels are mostly the Litvish ones, with one important exception (the וי sound, section 4). Few people grew up speaking exactly this way. Think of it as a reference pronunciation for the classroom and the stage.

The four vowels that differ

In each table the first column is the word as it is written, then how the standard, Litvish and Chassidish read it.

1. ו: u or i

The vowel u, written with a plain ו, stays u in Litvish and in the standard. In Chassidish it moves forward in the mouth to i.

This is the difference people notice first, and it is very regular. One side effect: in Chassidish, און ("and") and אין ("in") both come out as in. Context sorts them out, and a native speaker never hesitates.

2. אָ: o or u

The komets-alef, אָ, is o in the standard and in Litvish. In Chassidish it becomes u in a great many words.

The same shift reaches Hebrew-origin words whose first vowel is a komets, even though they are spelled the Hebrew way with no אָ: that is why the name שלום is Sholem in one family and Shulem in another. Not every אָ moves, and which ones do is something you pick up by listening, not from a rule you can apply blind.

3. ײ (tsvey yudn): ey or ay

Two yuds, ײ, are ey (as in English "grey") in the standard and in Litvish. In Chassidish they are ay (as in English "my").

This one belongs above all to the Polish and Hungarian side; speakers whose families came from Ukraine may keep ey.

4. וי: oy or ey

Here the standard goes with Chassidish, not with Litvish. The vov-yud, וי, is oy in the standard and in Chassidish. Litvish says ey.

Hebrew-origin words with a kholem follow the same split without the letters וי: משה is Moyshe in the standard and in Chassidish, Meyshe in Litvish.

The result is that Litvish has fewer distinct vowels than the standard. ברויט (bread) and ברייט (wide) are both breyt in Litvish. A Litvak hears no problem with that, but it is one reason the standard did not adopt this vowel: in print and in the classroom, keeping oy and ey apart is clearer.

Smaller differences

These vary more from place to place, so treat them as things to listen for rather than rules to apply.

• ײַ (ay). Many Chassidish speakers say ײַ as a long a: בײַ (bay, at) sounds close to ba, and מײַן (mayn, my) close to man. How far this goes differs between communities and between speakers.
• Vowel length. The southern dialects keep a difference between long and short vowels that Litvish and the standard do not have. A learner can ignore it at first.
• s and sh. In some parts of Lithuania and Latvia, s and sh fell together, so that שבת could sound like sabes. This was a local feature, joked about enough to get its own name, sabesdiker losn ("Sabbath language", said the way those speakers said it), and the standard never took it up.

Where each is spoken today

Nearly all children who grow up speaking Yiddish today grow up in Hasidic families, and they speak Chassidish. It is the everyday language of Williamsburg and Borough Park in Brooklyn, Kiryas Joel and New Square in New York State, Stamford Hill in London, Antwerp, and Hasidic neighbourhoods in Jerusalem and Bnei Brak. It is a living, changing language: in New York it borrows English words, in Israel Hebrew ones, and each group keeps some features of the region its grandparents came from.

Litvish as a home language has very few speakers left. Its vowels live on mainly through the standard: university courses, summer programmes, YIVO, Yiddish theatre, most recorded literature and most textbooks. Some yeshivas of the Lithuanian tradition still give their lectures in Yiddish, with older speakers keeping the Litvish vowels.

Which one to learn

Choose by the people and the texts you want to reach.

• You want to talk with Hasidic Jews, work or live in those communities, or understand what your neighbours in Stamford Hill are saying: learn Chassidish. The standard will sound bookish to them, and your gut will be heard as an outsider's.
• You want literature, a university course, the big dictionaries, or recordings of Yiddish poetry and theatre: learn the standard. Almost every textbook and course is built on it.
• You want to read family letters or memoirs: either works, because reading does not depend on accent. If your family came from Poland, Galicia or Ukraine, their speech was probably closer to the southern vowels; from Vilna or Minsk, closer to Litvish. To check by town and by the words you remember them saying, try Which Yiddish did your family speak?.

My own view: pick one and be consistent, and learn the other as a set of listening rules. The grammar is nearly the same, the spelling is the same, and the four correspondences above cover most of what trips people up. What does sound strange to native ears is a mixture inside one phrase, like a gitn tog (a southern i next to a northern o). Everyone will understand you, but it belongs to no one.

Quick reference