Intensive Beginner III&IV Yiddish

Class starts Feb 22 11:00am-12:30pm

Tuition: $850 | YIVO members: $675**
Students: $425 (Must register with valid university email address)

This is a live, online course held weekly on Zoom. Enrollment will be capped at about 15 students. All course details (Zoom link, syllabus, handouts, assignments, etc.) will be posted to Canvas. Students will be granted access to the class on Canvas after registering for the class here on the YIVO website. This class will be conducted in Yiddish and English.

Instructor: Alexandra Polyan

Who should take this course?
This course is appropriate for those who have completed Intensive Beginner I&II Yiddish or equivalent coursework.

What topics will this class cover?
This intensive course will help students improve their basic language skills: reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Grammatical structures will include future and past tense of verbs, the dative of nouns and articles, contractions, declension of adjectives, and personal pronouns. Lexical topics will include health, clothes, food, weather, and professions. We will be covering chapters 6b to 11 in Lily Kahn’s Colloquial Yiddish. In addition, Yiddish songs will be read and sung, texts about Jewish holidays will be presented.

Is knowledge of the Yiddish alphabet required?
Yes, knowledge of the Yiddish alphabet is required.

Course Materials:
The instructor will provide all course materials digitally throughout the class on Canvas. Course materials will include excerpts from Colloquial Yiddish by Lily Kahn, Yiddish fun onheyb by Daniel Birnbaum, Yiddish: An Introduction to the Language, Literature and Culture by Sheva Zucker, and College Yiddish by Uriel Weinreich, as well as songs, poetry, dialogues, folk tales, and stories prepared by the instructor. The audio files for Lily Kahn's textbook are available free of charge on the publisher's website.

Questions? Read our 2024 Spring Classes FAQ.

Alexandra Polyan holds a PhD in Linguistics from the Institute of Linguistics (Russian Academy of Sciences), is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Jewish Studies (Institute of Asian and African Studies, Moscow State University), and a postdoctoral Researcher at Regensburg University. She is a member of the “Short Life of Soviet Yiddish Literature” project team. Her current research is devoted to Peretz Markish's poetry. Together with Professor Sabine Koller, she published an annotated edition of Dovid Bergelson's prose in German translation. She has taught Yiddish at MSU, Project Judaica (Russian State University for the Humanities in cooperation with Jewish Theological Seminary, NY), Naomi Prawer Kadar Summer Yiddish Program (Tel Aviv University), and The Workers Circle. From 2012-2017, she was a journalist of Forward Yiddish Radio. She lives in Frankfurt (Germany).

**Become a member today, starting at $54 for one year, and pay the member price for classes! You’ll save on tuition for this course and more on future classes and public programs tickets.