Yiddish typography
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[edit] Printed books
Yiddish is normally printed using a Hebrew square typeface. Prior to the early 19th century, however, it was more common to use an Ashkenazi semicursive typeface, colloquially named Vaybertaytsh, and also referred to as Masheyt (both terms having several variant forms). This is related to, but not the same as the Sephardi semicursive typeface known as Rashi. That term is sometimes used as a generic designation for what are also termed Rabbinic typefaces, but distinctions are made among at least five separate semicursive Hebrew scripts. [1] (Adding to the confusion, the term Masheyt is also used both as an umbrella designation for them all, and as a specific synonym for Rashi.) The Sephardi variant bears the same relationship to the Ladino language as the Ashkenazi variant does to Yiddish, but remains in present-day use. The two are commonly termed Rashi and Masheyt, respectively, with no similarly abbreviated designations applied to the other semicursive forms. Regardless of any overlap in the descriptive terminologies applied to Yiddish typography, the commonplace earlier distinction between Hebrew and Yiddish typefaces in the presentation of Yiddish text was a significant attribute, not just of typographic practice, but of the language itself. This has been lost without counterpart in present-day usage and may deserve renewed attention.
[edit] Manuscript
Early Yiddish manuscripts were predominantly written in Masheyt. Present-day written Yiddish is fully cursive (using a script that was also adopted for contemporary Hebrew) and Ashkenazi cursive typefaces are also encountered both in print and as fonts for computerized text processing. Since Rashi is used in the presentation of certain Hebrew texts, fonts are available for it, also serving the purposes of the Ladino community. In principle, an Ashkenazi semicursive font could be made available for similar use in Yiddish, enabling the revival of a traditional aspect of the conceptualization and presentation of texts in that language.
[edit] Computerized text production
[edit] Combining marks
Fonts that support Hebrew script do not always correctly render the combining marks that are specific to Yiddish. Some applications display an extraneous blank space adjacent to a letter with such a mark, and the mark may be displayed in that space rather than properly positioned with the base character. This problem is likely to be revealed on systems prone to it with the following:
גוּט טַק אִים בְּטַגְֿא שְ וַיר דִּיש מַחֲזֹור אִין בֵּיתֿ הַכְּנֶסֶתֿ טְרַגְֿא
(gut tak im betage se waer dis makhazor in beis hakneses terage
may a good day come to him who carries this prayer book into the synagogue)
This is the oldest surviving literary statement in Yiddish (a blessing decoratively embedded in a Hebrew prayer book from 1272, described in detail in Frakes 2004) and illustrates the extent of the issues that need to be dealt with in the modern rendering of historical Yiddish material. One freely available font specifically designed for heavily marked Hebrew script is Ezra SIL.
There are also problems specific to the display of pointed Hebrew text in Wikipedia articles. These are discussed in detail at Wikipedia:Niqqud.
[edit] References
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Fishman, Joshua A. (ed.), Never Say Die: A Thousand Years of Yiddish in Jewish Life and Letters, Mouton Publishers, The Hague, 1981, (in English and Yiddish), ISBN 90-279-7978-2.
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Frakes, Jerold C., Early Yiddish Texts 1100-1750, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2004, ISBN 0-19-926614-X.
- Frank, Herman, Jewish Typography and Bookmaking Art, Hebrew-American Typographical Union, New York, 1938.
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Schaechter, Mordkhe, The Standardized Yiddish Orthography: Rules of Yiddish Spelling, 6th ed., and The History of the Standardized Yiddish Spelling, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York, 1999, (in Yiddish with introductory material in English), ISBN 0-914512-25-0.
- Yardeni, Ada, The Book of Hebrew Script, The British Library, London, 2002, ISBN 1-58456-087-8.
