Talk:Yiddish orthography

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Cyrillic

Was Yiddish ever written with the Cyrillic alphabet in the Soviet Union? Angr (talk • contribs) 11:39, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Soviet language planning for Yiddish is documented in great detail in several of the works listed in the bibliography for this article. The material provided by Estraikh is particularly useful. There is no suggestion anywhere that the use of the Cyrillic alphabet was even considered for Yiddish, much less applied to it. There was a clear expectation that the establishment of a global Communist regime would result in a single language being spoken everywhere and the imperialistic associations of the Cyrillic alphabet excluded it from being the script used in that global post-revolutionary environment. Organized efforts toward the introduction of Latin script for that purpose were initiated in 1922 with the provision of a new alphabet for Azerbaijan. Just as an imperialist script was not suitable in a proletarial society, those with religious anchorage were also looked upon disfavorably. In actual practice, as far as Yiddish goes, this never proceeded beyond the abolition of the etymological orthography for words of Semitic origin. --futhark 09:12, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the answer. I thought there might have been at least an attempt to cyrillicize Yiddish at the same time the Turkic languages in the Soviet Union (plus Tajik) were switched from the Arabic alphabet to Cyrillic. I also remember reading somewhere on the net about someone helping an elderly Jewish lady in New York by reading out loud to her a letter from her brother back in Russia who had written in Yiddish using the Cyrillic alphabet. But that may have been simply because he was illiterate in Yiddish and so had to use Russian letters he was familiar with to write a language he knew only in its spoken form. Also, the article Jewish Autonomous Oblast says, "some efforts were also made to Russify Yiddish culture: the most notable of these was an attempt to replace the Hebrew alphabet used for writing Yiddish with the Cyrillic one", but the claim doesn't have a source. (Personally I think Yiddish is far more suited to being written in Cyrillic than it is to being written in either the Hebrew or the Latin alphabet, but that's a purely linguistic opinion without political influence.) User:Angr 09:29, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

There were plans for abandoning Hebrew script altogether, but as documented in all the literature that I've seen, this was a part of the broader Latinization campaign initiated in 1922. This in no way reduces the possibility of Cyrillic at times being used for writing Yiddish in local and/or unofficial contexts. There are anecdotal references in addition to the ones you mention that suggest this, but none seem to have withstood attempts at being traced to a citable origin. From the perspective of Wikipedian credibility, it may be time to modify the statement in the article on Birobidzhan. --futhark 11:03, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I removed a reference to the use of Cyrillic in Birobidzhan that had just been added to the article here. Unless the contributor provides a verifiable source for it (something which I would be quite delighted to see) I am going make the corresponding edit to the article on Birobidzhan, with reference to the present discussion. Although not specifically relevant to a discussion of Yiddish orthography, a good deal of material about the Soviet government's use of traditional written Yiddish in the secularization of that language community — including in Birobidzhan — is provided in, Anna Shternis, Soviet and Kosher; Jewish Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2006, ISBN 0-253-34726-2. (I'll also add this reference to the other article.) --Futhark|Talk 09:40, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Yud and khirik yud

Isn't yidish (for example) written ייִדיש? If so, then the first yud is a consonant, and the khirik yud is a vowel that's being written between two consonants and not part of a diphthong. That's why the description was changed to say "or next to the y sounding yud". What are examples of khirik yud being used following a stressed vowel or part of a stressed diphthong? Angr (talk) 08:22, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

The prevalent pre-YIVO spelling of Yiddish, and one that is still commonly encountered, is אידיש. Depending on the dialect being spoken, this is pronounced both without and with an initial [j]. The spelling with the khirik yud unambiguously indicates the latter -- ergo it is the "y" in Yiddish regardless of letter order. Given the confusion (including in one of my own earlier responses), I took the description of khirik yud provided in the Weinreich dictionary and put it in the table here. I certainly have no objection to that description being further clarified, but reference to "y sounding yud" is hardly a precise statement, given that "y" is both a consonant and a vowel in English, and "yud" is both a consonant and vowel in Yiddish. (Which y sounding which yud?) It may also not necessarily be a good idea to ascribe vowel/consonant status to a sequence of Yiddish letters in terms of the functionality of a corresponding sequence of Roman letters. futhark 12:54, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

How about a more phonetic description, like "adjacent to yud standing for /j/"? Angr (talk) 13:11, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Better -- but I'd like to see what the other orthographic authorities referenced in the article say about it, first. (I have them all at hand, so it shouldn't take much time.) Again, this needs to be described in terms of native Yiddish practice, which is not necessarily identical to an Anglophone analysis of Yiddish in romanized transliteration. futhark 13:24, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Splitting off section on typography

The article is now being flagged for excessive length. Does anyone object to my moving the material about typography to a separate article? --futhark 08:56, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Split to Yiddish typography on 11 July 2007. --futhark 09:58, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Good idea. I'm moving this article to Yiddish orthography accordingly. User:Angr 10:10, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

That was quick! I had just tried to post a request here but couldn't save it because someone else had edited the discussion page in the interim. Thanks! --futhark 10:14, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Second thoughts. Please see Talk:Yiddish_typography --futhark 09:31, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Solomon Birnbaum

Unless anybody feels it to be inappropriate, I'm going to move the material about Solomon Birnbaum's work on Yiddish orthography from the present article to the one headed by his name. I'll probably also expand it there with a fuller specification of his transcription system. --Futhark|Talk 11:16, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Wrong picture explanation

The pic [KJ bus stop sign.jpg] (in the current article) does not writen in Yiddisch. Its pure English with Hebrew alphabet. (0). Jiddisch 10:17, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Left or right?

This article doesn't say if Yiddish text flows from left to right, or from right to left. That is rather fundamental, I think! It should expend three or four words in the first paragraph on this point. Hu (talk) 06:54, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Anything written in Hebrew "square script", including Yiddish when written, as is usual, in that script, flows RTL. When Yiddish is written using Latin script, which is less common but not totally unheard of, it flows LTR like anything written in Latin script. IOW, LTR or RTL is not a property of the language (Yiddish or Hebrew vs. German, English or Russian) but of the script (Hebrew, Syriac or Arabic vs. Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, etc.). — Tonymec (talk) 23:58, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

transcription

I don't understand why all these romanization systems focus on the use of the roman alphabet in English rather than the German use. It would make much more sense to stick to the way the words are written in German, as this is the closest related language. The idea that spelling has to represent pronunciation and then stick to the way English-speakers pronounce the various letters is more than just odd. --193.171.131.238 (talk) 12:10, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

there are diffrent "standards" / "suggestions" some of before WWII, others by DIN used in in the German National Library (DNB), the Bavarian State Library (BSB) etc. Not being able to found these notes. At the BSB there are 10,000 books. A catalog is available: ISBN 3598240619 Jiddischen Drucke der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek, Die

‫·‏לערי ריינהארט‏·‏T‏·‏m‏:‏Th‏·‏T‏·‏email me‏·‏‬ 13:26, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

punctuation of abbreviation and numbers

Hi! How is the proper abbreviation of "un azoy vayter", "rekhts nokh links" etc. רנל׳׳ (and רנל״ using the precombined - HEBREW PUNCTUATION GERSHAYIM (U 05F4) - which is changed by MediaWiki software because of Unicode normalisation) character is wrong. I have been told to punctuate underneath the letters but was not asking what character I should use. Thanks for any help.
references:

1. di yidishe shraybmashinke · di yidɪʃɛ ʃʁɑjbmɑʃiŋkɛ · די ייִדישע שרײַבמאַשינקע
2. Unicode Characters in the Hebrew Block

Regards ‫·‏לערי ריינהארט‏·‏T‏·‏m‏:‏Th‏·‏T‏·‏email me‏·‏‬ 13:26, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Pasekh; komets; etc.

Does anyone know the translation of pasekh, komets, or other words that are part of the names of some letters?? Georgia guy (talk) 22:44, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

See also: A Yiddish grammar from 1879

by L. L. Zamenhof, later published in Lebn un Visnshaft, Vilnius, 1909: see this paragraph of the article about Zamenhof. — Tonymec (talk) 23:27, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

The SYO is not generic

The Standard Yiddish Orthography is a document maintained by YIVO with normative intent. The section of the article under that heading reports the contents of the SYO. It cannot be amended with reference to external sources. The article treats other sets of orthographic rules at length, including Harkavy's work. A more extensive discussion of his approach might well enhance the value of the article but it cannot simply be injected into, and thereby corrupt, a table taken from the SYO. Please also keep in mind that this is an article on Yiddish orthography with a separate one covering dialectal variation.--Futhark|Talk 23:25, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

Error in table under "Yiddish Alphabet"?

 I note that for "lange nun" in the table it shows "m" as a possible pronunciation.  I think this is an error; it is pronounced "n" in all cases.  I've seen many textbook and never seen it shown thus.

A final 'n' after a consonant is pronounced as an 'n' or an 'm' depending on what precedes it. The word written hobn is pronounced hobm. --Futhark|Talk 15:09, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

Representation of Yiddish in orthographies of other languages

I just removed a need-for-improvement tag added in Nov 2017 for the reason: "Article lacks information about Yiddish written in Latin script (i.e. properly written in Latin script and not just as a transcription or transliteration). (See e.g. www.jewish-archives.org/content/titleinfo/12372?lang=en (Joseph Ahrons' Das Lied vun die Kuggel): "Westjiddisch in deutscher Schrift".)" Nothing in that source indicates anything other than that it provides a transcription — in the sense described in the present article — of a Yiddish text into German. If there is any form of transcription into Latin script beyond that it should be explained and discussed here before replacing the maintenance tag. --Futhark|Talk 07:47, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Assistance on letter articles?

I added some discussion of their use in Yiddish to the articles on Aleph, Vov, and Yud. But I'm only familiar with the YIVO-promulgated standard, and those new sections could therefore use some attention from editors with more knowledge of the range of variation in Yiddish orthographic practice, to enable a more nuanced discussion. AJD (talk) 07:00, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

WWI poster spelling

This poster (which was POTD in 2011 and still is on display in Yiddish#20th century) uses an orthography very different from that used otherwise. It appears largely as a transliteration of German, even transliterating the signs for vowel lengthening, cf.

• the “ע” in “קריעג”,
• the “ה” in “איהר”.

It seems to me that there are also many inconsistencies:

• /v/ is rendered as “וו” in “וועט” (as usual), but as “פ” in “געפינען”.
• “א” appears to be used for the German “e” for lenghtening /i/ in “זיא” instead of “ע”, as in “קריעג”.
• “ז” is used for /s/ in “מוזען” and “לאזט”, conceivably because of the German spelling with Eszett at the time.

In my admittedly goyish view, I'm not so sure about the language itself, with “מוזען” instead of darfn, apparently just taken directly from German.

Is that an interesting specimen of Yiddish orthography or just a bad example? ◄ Sebastian 10:02, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

It's a good example of the bad example set by daytshmerish, which is discussed in detail in the article. --Futhark|Talk 10:15, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

😀 - thanks! ◄ Sebastian 10:30, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Missing from the bibliography דאָס פֿעלט אין דער ביבליאָגראַפֿיע

דאָס פֿעלט אין דער ביבליאָגראַפֿיע

Gold, David L. 1977. “Successes and Failures in the Standardization and Implementation of Yiddish Spelling and Romanization.” In Fishman 1977:307-369.

Fishman, Joshua A., ed. 1977. Advances in the Creation and Revision of Writing Systems. The Hague Mouton.

Gold, David L. 1985. "A Guide to the Standardized Yiddish Romanization." Jewish Language Review. Vol. 5. Pp. 96-103.S. Valkemirer (talk) 03:15, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

Sebastian: but as “פ” in “געפינען”

but as “פ” in “געפינען”

דאָס איז טאַקע געפֿינען, ניט געװינען

you [= immigrants] came here to F I N D freedomS. Valkemirer (talk) 02:55, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

Wrong text in Tevye's Yiddish (Hebrew alphabet) name

Currently: His own work uses the form שלום־עליכם but in Soviet publication this is respelled phonetically to שאָלעמ־אלײכעמ also dispensing with the separate final-form mem and using the initial/medial form instead. This can be seen, together with a respelling of the name of the protagonist of his Tevye der milkhiker (originally שאָלעמ־אלײכעמטביה, changed to שאָלעמ־אלײכעמטעוויע)

The Yiddish text after Tevye der Milkhiker says Sholom Aleichem, apparently copied from the previous text. I'd supply the correct text here, but I have no idea how to spell it correctly, and no idea how to type it if I could.

Nice catch! Both spellings of the title are non-standard, as is noted in the subsequent text. I’ve therefore simply deleted the parenthetical remark. —Futhark|Talk 09:18, 3 September 2021 (UTC)