"Anyone know yiddish?" Topic

Hi all,

Perhaps some of you have already seen somewhere this flag, that belonged to the Naftali-Botwin Jewish Company (International Brigades):

I've recently learnt the reverse of this flag was completely different --plain red with texts in Yiddish and Polish languages repeating those shown in Spanish at obverse.

I'vew tried to re-create the look such flag reverse would have, and it wasn't much difficult to obtain a Polish version thanks to Google Translate, but I'm pretty doubtful about results in Yiddish. Would anyone mnind to gently revise it and warn me about eventual errors?

Thanks!!!
Lluís
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Grew up in the Lower East Side of Manhattan but my Yiddish is limited to knowing when I'm being cursed and responding. And I can order in a kosher deli.

From my very limited research the phrase in English reads "For your freedom and ours". You can use this site to translate
link.

When I pasted the Hebrew letters here they became something else and I'm not savvy enough to fix it.

I do not speak or read Yiddish so I can't vouch for the accuracy of the translation. You'll see it does appear to be similar to yours. Hope this helped.

Is it Yiddish or actually Hebrew?

It's Hebrew. Yiddish is spoken, a mish-mash of several languages including Hebrew.

Oy vey!

The top two lines are in Hebrew, if you have a local Synagogue they would probably be happy to translate it for you. As has been pointed out Yiddish is an amalgam of German, some Hebrew, and various other Eastern European Languages.

raker, whitphoto and jowady – note Yiddish is written with the hebrew alphabet (as is hebrew!). I assume the smaller script is simply a translation of what is written in Spanish on the top part of the flag Luis posted – but I can't make out the Spanish. What does it say Luis? The larger hebrew type is simply 'Comp Naftali Botwin'.

Apologies to you all, I should have explained you the obverse Spanish texts first:

On the upper red stripe, Por vuestra libertad y la nuestra, that is, "For your Liberty and ours own";
On the central yellow stripe, Compañía Naftali-Botwin, obviously reading as "Naftali-Botwin Company";
On the lower purple one, Batallón Palafox or "Palafox Battalion" (one of the 13th IB battalions this coy was a part of)

All these sentences are reproduced in Polish on reverse lower half:
Zawolnosc wasza i nasza (a common motto in most SCW Polish units, seemingly),
Komp Naftalego Botwina, "Komp" apparently stating for Kompanie, and
Batallon Palafox in Spanish again.

Only two of the sentences above are shown in Yiddish version, on the upper half. The first one should read "For your Liberty and ours", while the second one would intendedly mean "Comp[any] Naftali Botwin". Or that is what I've understood after several crossed translations among Spanish, Polish and Yiddish on Google Translate.

As some of you have already pointed out before, what I have understood after some reading about a matter unknown to me so far, Yiddish was (and perhaps still is) a language spoken by European Jews, mostly related to German, with words and expressions from other Eastern European languages (along with Biblic Hebrew too, I guess). It is written from right to left like Hebrew, and Hebrew alphabet is used to write it --but if you transcribed it into Latin alphabet and reversed it from left to right, it would probably sound much like German.

I'm starting to believe my translations aren't that bad, after reading your kind comments.

Lluís

Lluis – Ok so looking at it again, the translations seem to be right. The middle word of the top line of text reads 'freiheit' or freedom, the last word 'dayn' means yours.
I think you're OK with your translations – however laborious the route! Are you going to be doing your recent flags (like 5th regiment ones for example) in 1/56 as well as 1/72 and 1/100 ?
yours
EC

Yes @Eclaireur, I'm planning to work out some IB flags, as an expansion of our SCW paper flags range --and I believed it interesting enough not to start with the renowned "Abraham Lincoln" 15th Brigade, or "Thälmann" 11th IB for instance, but with the less known but colourful "Mickiewicz" 13th Brigade instead. That's why of it all

About making them in 1/56th scale too… yes, I'm currently studying which ones haven't been printed yet by other makes.

Lluís,
Be aware that "Polish" version was probably copied by someone who did'n speak Polish, as it lack some Polish letters. Polish speakers would write the slogan (very popular in Poland since 1840's) this way:
goo.gl/images/voXTqF

Also, Polish word BATALION is very similar to Spanish BATALLON. Maybe this word was also written in Polish and what we see as Spanish is simply a typo ?

Ah OK Maciek! Your clarifications have arrived just in time , for I had already prepared a draft for printshop.