Talk:Yiddish orthography

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[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)