Standard Yiddish, as established by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research beginning in the 1930s, provides the basis for the Yiddish grammar, lexicon, orthography, and phonology presented in this book. All Yiddish terms are romanized, in italics, using the YIVO system and reflect Standard Yiddish pronunciation, except when demonstrating dialect variants. In some cases, accepted scholarly spellings of certain terms (e.g., Haskalah) are used and are not italicized. Romanizations of Yiddish that appear in citations preserve their sources’ spellings.
Some Yiddish terms also appear in this book in the Jewish alphabet (i.e., the alef-beys) when this is relevant to the discussion. Except where noted, these terms are spelled according to YIVO Standard orthography, and they are also romanized. Hebrew and Russian terms are romanized using the Library of Congress system, minus diacritics. Yiddish, Hebrew, and Russian names of people and organizations are romanized according to their own preferred spellings, when known (e.g., Sholem Asch, Bais Yaakov). When a preferred spelling is not known, an authoritative version (per the Library of Congress catalog or YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe) is used; otherwise, names are romanized according to one of the aforementioned systems.
Endnotes indicate when translations of cited works are by the author; otherwise, they are per the sources cited.