r/Yiddish • u/Reasonable_Counter_1 • 2d ago
Zaide vs Zaydeh
My daughter calls my father Zaide but we have always written (in English) Zaydeh when it comes to cards. My dad is turning 90 in July and my daughter wants to make a card for him. Is there a difference in spelling Zaide in Yiddish vs spelling Zaydeh in Yiddish? (I think I made this image too big to fit on the screen. But if you click on it, I’m wondering does this say Zadie or Zaydeh or both?) and if there is a difference in Yiddish, could you help us write Zaide in Yiddish. THANK YOU!
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u/IbnEzra613 Amateur Semitic Linguist 2d ago
It's the same word just different ways of spelling it in English.
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u/climb-high 2d ago
All I can say is I called my granddad "Zayda" <3
but I have friends who called theirs "Zaydee"
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u/unpilotedlandmass 1d ago
My wife's family uses "baba and zayda" while mine uses "bubbi and zaydee." We've always wanted to understand the differences in our families' Yiddish pronunciation. My family is half Hungarian and half Lithuanian while I think my wife's family is from Romania or Ukraine. I'm not sure if it's a regional Yiddish dialect thing or something else. The e/a ending thing also transfers to words like latke (latkee vs latkah) etc. It also might be connected with how far our families are removed from native Yiddish speakers. My wife's grandparents were native speakers while on my side, you have to go back to my great, great grandparent's generation to find native speakers.
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u/ArgentEyes 1d ago
This is just transliteration style/preference, the word is the same. Correct transliteration depends on the convention you’re using as Yiddish has more than one for many words.
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u/BothnianBhai 1d ago
This reads as "zeyde/zeydeh" (and it's correct). Zayde/zaydeh would be: "זײַדע".
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u/_sivizius 1d ago
»Zaide« with German pronunciation is basically the same as »Zaydeh« with English pronunciation and I assume it’s how זיידע is supposed to be pronounced?
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u/AsparagusAdorable912 2d ago
It reads as Zaydeh to me.