Quickstart

This keyboard layout works intuitively with the QWERTY (English) keyboard. Type Yiddish by transliteration: type ש (shin) with sh or אײַ (pasekh tsvey yudn) with ay.

You can use idle keys to speed up typing but you do not have to:

Key	Alternate method	Yiddish	Note
c	ts	ץ	From Eastern European orthographies
j	ey	ײ	The name of j rhymes with ey
w	sh	ש	Looks like
x	kh	ך	Phonetic symbol

Khof, mem, nun, fey and tsadek are shaped automatically:  they take their final forms at the end of words and their regular forms otherwise.  Isolated final forms can be typed with shifted keys:

Key	Yiddish	Note
[SC]	ץ	Final tsadek
[SX]	ך	Final khof

Shtumer Alef is automatically inserted before ay, ey, i, oy, or u at the beginning of words.  You can type a word-internal shtumer alef with [SA]

Occasionally, you may need initial ay, ey, etc. without a shtumer alef, e.g. when you want to list the letters of the alefbeys.  You can type them with the following key combinations:

Key	Yiddish	Note
[SE]	ײ
[SI]	י
[SJ]	ײ	The name of J rhymes with ey
[SO]	ױ
[SU]	ו
[SY]	ײַ	The name of Y rhymes with ay

Hebrew-specific letters are typed with shifted keys, too:

Key	Hebrew	Note
[SB]	בֿ	veys
[SH]	ח	khes
[SK]	כּ	kof (Hebrew kaf)
[SS]	ת	sof
[ST]	תּ	tof
[SW]	שׂ	sin

Geresh is typed with [SG] and curly double quotes are typed with the q key.  The opening quotation mark is low if Q is unshifted and high if shifted.

The \ key functions as a temporary place holder to separate letters or parts of compound words.  Type s\h to output סה (samekh hey) instead of ש (shin), or type ge\aylt to insert a shtumer alef between the ayen and the pasekh tsvey yudn.

The - key outputs a makef after a Yiddish letter and a hyphen otherwise.  If, for some reason, you need a hyphen after a Yiddish letter, press the hyphen key twice.

A hyphen after a hyphen turns the hyphen into an en dash.
A hyphen after an en dash turns the en dash into an em dash.
A geresh after a geresh turns the geresh into gershayim.