Yiddish orthography

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Yiddish language is written using Hebrew script as the basis of a full vocalic alphabet. This adaptation uses letters that are silent or glottal stops in Hebrew, as vowels in Yiddish. Other letters that can serve as both vowels and consonants are either read as appropriate to the context in which they appear, or are differentiated by diacritical marks derived from the Hebrew nikud, and commonly referred to as "points". Additional phonetic distinctions between letters that share the same base character are also indicated by pointing, or by the adjacent placement of otherwise silent base characters. Several Yiddish points are not commonly used in any present-day Hebrew context and others are used in a manner that is specific to Yiddish orthography. There is significant variation in the way this is applied in literary practice. There are also several differing approaches to the disambiguation of characters that can be used as either vowels or consonants.

Words of Aramaic and Hebrew origin are normally written in the traditional consonant-based orthographies of the source languages. All other Yiddish vocabulary is represented with a phonemic orthography. Both can appear in a single word, for example, where a Yiddish affix is applied to a Hebrew stem. Yiddish pointing may also be applied to words that are otherwise written entirely with traditional orthography.

Please note: The correct display of some text in this article requires fonts with full support for the pointed characters in the Yiddish alphabet, plus the International Phonetic Alphabet. Additional display issues may be observed and are explained under the heading Computerized Text Production, below.

[edit] Early 20th century reform

In the early twentieth century, for both cultural and political reasons, focused efforts were initiated toward the development of a uniform Yiddish orthography. A specimen initial practice was described in detail by the Yiddish lexicographer Alexander Harkavy in a Treatise on Yiddish Reading, Orthography, and Dialectal Variations first published in 1898 together with his Yiddish-English Dictionary (Harkavy 1898), and available online (beginning with the section headed Yiddish reading). Additional illustrations of this variation are provided in source excerpts in Fishman 1981, which also contains a number of texts specifically about the need (pro and con) for a uniform orthography. A detailed chronology of the major events during this normative action, including rosters of conference participants, bibliographic references to the documents they produced, and summaries of their contents, is given in Yiddish in Schaechter 1999. There is a less detailed (but extensive nonetheless) English language review of this process in Estraikh 1999.

The first action formally undertaken by a government was in the Soviet Union in 1920, with the abolition of the separate etymological orthography for words of Semitic origin. This was extended twelve years later with the elimination of the five separate final-form consonants (as indicated in the table below) which were, however, widely reintroduced in 1961. The efforts preliminary to the 1920 reform, which took place in several countries — most notably in Poland with focus on a uniform school curriculum — resulted in other devices that were not implemented by governmental mandate. These were further considered during the 1930s by the Yidisher visnshaftlekher institut, YIVO, in the development of their תּקנות פֿון ייִדישן אויסלייג (takones fun yidishn oysleg - "Rules of Yiddish Orthography"), also known as the "SYO" (Standard Yiddish Orthography) or the "YIVO Rules". This has become the most frequently referenced such system in present-day use (SYO 1999). Although it regularly figures in pedagogical contexts, it would be misleading to suggest that it is similarly dominant elsewhere. Alternative orthographies are frequently encountered in contemporary practice, and are house standards for many publishers.

A useful review of this variation is provided in the Oxford University כלל־תקנות פון יידישן אויסלייג (klal takones fun yidishn oysleg - "Standard Rules of Yiddish Orthography") (Oxford 1992) — the "Oxford Code" — written in and codifying a more conventional orthography than the one put forward by YIVO, and adopted by several universities. Differences in the systems can be seen simply by comparing the titles of the two documents, but they differ more fundamentally in their approaches to the prescription and description of orthographic detail. The former treats orthographic variation as a positive attribute of the Yiddish literature and describes essential elements of that variation. The latter presents a uniform Yiddish orthography, based on observed practice but with proactive prescriptive intent. Strong difference of opinion about the relative merit of the two approaches has been a prominent aspect of the discussion from the outset, and shows little sign of abating. Although the Yiddish alphabet as stated in the SYO is widely accepted as a baseline reference (with a few minor but frequently encountered variations), the spelling rules, and the phonetic aspects of the YIVO system of romanized transliteration as discussed below, remain subjects of particular contention. It can, in any case, be noted that the intent of the SYO is not to describe the spectrum of traditional orthographic practice, that the bulk of Yiddish literature predates the formulation of those rules, and that the discrepancies are significant.

[edit] Transliteration

Individual Yiddish letters and letter combinations may be pronounced quite differently in the various Yiddish dialects. Whatever impact this may have on the discussion of standardized orthography, it becomes a significant factor when Yiddish is transliterated into other scripts. It is entirely possible to assign a specific character or sequence of characters in, for example, the Roman alphabet to a specific character or character sequence in the Yiddish alphabet. The transliterated form will, however, be pronounced in a manner that appears natural to the reader. A choice therefore needs to be made about which of the several possible pronunciations of the Yiddish word is to be conveyed prior to its transliteration, with parallel attention to the phonemic attributes of the target language.

The Harkavy treatise cited above describes a system of romanization that is based on the pronunciation of the Northeastern Yiddish dialect, Litvish, for an anglophone audience. This was also a mainstay of the standardization efforts of YIVO, resulting in the romanization system described in detail below. These two initiatives provide a convenient framework within which intervening developments may be considered. There was significant debate about many aspects of that sequence, including the need for any form of standardized orthography at all (Fishman 1981).

There was also consideration of the outright replacement of Hebrew script with Roman script in the native representation of written Yiddish. Although this had no impact on mainstream orthography, a number of Yiddish books are currently available in romanized editions. These include Yiddish dictionaries, a context in which consistent and phonetically tenable transliteration is essential.

There is no general agreement about the transliteration of Hebrew into the Roman alphabet. The Hebrew component of a Yiddish text will normally reflect the transliterator's preference without being seen as a component of the methodology applied to the romanization of words presented in the phonemic orthography.

[edit] Transcription

A transliteration system uses one script to represent another as closely as possible. It will normally permit unambiguous conversion back and forth between the two scripts. Where the intent is to indicate phonetic variation, some form of transcription will be required. This is frequently done by using the International Phonetic Alphabet ("IPA"). There are also many contexts in which phonetic distinctions are indicated by the diacritical marking of the base characters, or through the similar use of some alternate script with which the audience is expected to be familiar. These approaches are all also seen in native Yiddish texts, where distinctions that cannot be directly represented with the basic Yiddish script but do need to be highlighted, are indicated by using additional Hebrew diacritical marks, with Roman letters, and with the IPA.

There is no intrinsic reason why a transcription scheme cannot also be used for transliteration. In general, however, there is no expectation that the representation of a word in the source script can be retrieved from a transcription. Its purpose is to indicate how a word is pronounced, not its native orthography.

The table in the following section indicates two alternatives each for romanized transliteration and phonetic transcription. It is keyed to the Yiddish character repertoire as codified by YIVO. Other transliteration systems are also regularly employed in a variety of contexts but no single one of them represents the full range of variant pronunciation in Yiddish dialects. Nor is the YIVO system equally appropriate phonetically to all languages using Roman script. This issue becomes particularly intricate when dealing with older texts where little is known about pronunciation, and transmitting the fullest possible detail of their notation is historically important. There are several approaches to the romanization of such material. The YIVO transliteration system is solely intended to serve as an English-oriented phonetic counterpart to the modern Standard Yiddish described (and to some extent prescribed) in the SYO. That work does, however, consider the transcription of variant pronunciation as will be discussed below.

YIVO published a major study of the range of Yiddish phonetic variation in The Language and Cultural Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry, commonly referred to as the LCAAJ. This uses an elaborate systems of marked Roman characters to indicate that variation and does not apply standard YIVO transliteration at all. (The phonetic transcription scheme is not amenable to tabular presentation and is therefore not included here.)

[edit] The Yiddish alphabet

This table lists the Yiddish alphabet as described in the Uriel Weinreich English-Yiddish-English Dictionary (Weinreich 1968), with a few variants that may be seen in readily available literature. The YIVO romanizations are taken from the same source, where they are presented as "sound equivalents". The romanizations indicated in Harkavy 1898 are included for comparison. The IPA transcriptions correspond to the examples provided by YIVO at http://yivo.org/about/index.php?tid=57&aid=275 (also with a few added variants). The phonetic transcriptions are taken from Jacobs 2005 with parentheses indicating letters not included there, but consistent with the same system.

[edit] Standard Yiddish orthography

The SYO is presented in Yiddish and only includes a few romanized transcriptions where needed to indicate variant pronunciation. These are German rather than English phonetic equivalents, and are therefore not included in the preceding table. Given that the YIVO standardization initiative has been severely criticized for failing to accommodate dialectic variation, it may be worth noting that the SYO explicitly references the three major branches of Eastern Yiddish — Litvish (Northern), Poylish (Central), and Ukrainish (Southern), as developed in the regions centered on present-day Lithuania/Belarus, Poland, and Ukraine/Moldova. The SYO gives dialect-specific romanized equivalents for the following characters:

A few further romanized equivalents are provided but do not indicate dialectic differences. These are identical to what is contained in the table in the preceding section, with the following exceptions:

Litvish is often considered a standard dialect. It is the basis for the YIVO transcription and is the form most widely taught in academic contexts. There are however several other important distinctions between Litvish, Poylish, and Ukrainish that are not indicated in either the SYO or Weinreich dictionary, but are discussed in detail in the LCAAJ, to which Uriel Weinreich was also a major contributor. It is worth noting that the Roman characters appearing in the SYO largely correspond to those used for the phonetic transcriptions in the fifth column of the main table. Roman letters marked and used according to Central European orthographic convention provide greater flexibility in the representation of relevant phonemic distinction than does the English-based repertoire adopted by YIVO for purposes of transliteration. Phonetic transcription is therefore a common alternative in linguistic discourse about Yiddish. It is also the basis for many of the alternatives to YIVO romanization, which often include a greater range of diacritical marking. Again, such an approach was extensively developed by YIVO itself in the LCAAJ.

It should also be noted that the SYO listing of the Yiddish alphabet (which predates the Weinreich dictionary) explicitly states that the vowels with combining points, and the vov and yud digraphs, are not counted as separate letters:

The order of the letters in the alphabet is as follows:

א, ב, בֿ, ג, ד, ה, ו, ז, ח, ט, י, כּ, כ, (ך), ל, מ, (ם), נ, (ן), ס, ע, פּ, פֿ, (ף), צ, (ץ), ק, ר, ש, שׂ, תּ, ת

אַ, אָ, וּ, וו, וי, יִ, יי, ײַ are not counted as separate letters in the alphabet.

[edit] Common variation

Yiddish written on bus stop signs in Kiryas Joel, New York. The text here is unpointed; for example stop is written סטאפ rather than סטאָפּ.

There are several areas in which Yiddish orthographic practice varies. One of them is the extent to which pointing is used to avoid ambiguity in the way a word may be read. This ranges from unpointed text, through a small number of pointed characters, to the redundant use of the full system of Hebraic vowel pointing. Most systems do use a certain amount of pointing, and the most frugal application that can be observed is the disambiguation of pey and fey (further details below). Immediately beyond that is the differentiation of the three forms of alef. Where further points are applied, there can be significant variation in their number and disposition from author to author, and there are often internal inconsistencies in a single system. (The belief that this variation was an impediment to the recognition of Yiddish as a literary peer to the other major European languages was a primary driving force toward the development of orthographic norms.)

A detailed generalized description of the pointing of Yiddish text is given in Harkavy 1898, and the topic is also treated briefly in the SYO (which otherwise simply declares the prescribed characters). A more extensive character repertoire is provided and discussed (in German) by Solomon Birnbaum in Birnbaum 1918. He also presents a romanized transcription system (targeted on German) that is frequently cited in academic contexts and was intended to provide extreme flexibility in the representation of differences between dialects. This is further illustrated in his later English work Birnbaum 1979.

Although consonants are basically represented in the same manner, the indication of vowels differs more widely. One noteworthy situation that does pertain to the representation of consonants is the indication of phonetic distinctions between each the four character pairs beys/veys, kof/khof, pey/fey, and tof/sof. The 'hard' (plosive) pronunciation of the first letter in each pair is unequivocally denoted by a dot (dagesh) in the middle of the letter. The 'soft' (fricative) pronunciation is similarly notated with a horizontal bar over the letter (rafe). Most orthographic systems, including the SYO, usually only point one of the two characters in a pair but may be inconsistent from pair to pair in indicating the hard or soft alternative. Text that otherwise conforms to the SYO frequently omits the rafe from fey, in harmonization with its unpointed final form, and makes the contrastive distinction from a pey solely with a dagesh in the latter (פ פּ). The similar avoidance of the rafe and preferential use of the dagesh is a common alternative for the contrastive distinction between beys and veys (ב בּ).

It should be noted that the rafe is a clear attribute of earlier Yiddish orthographic tradition and that the dagesh is an adaptation of what is more generally a Hebrew practice. This also applies to the alternatives for indicating the distinction between yud when used as a consonant or as a vowel, and the equivalent difference in the use of vov. There is a related need for marking the boundary between a yud and tsvey yudn where they appear adjacent to each other and, again, in the corresponding situation with vov and tsvey vovn. A dot under a yud (khirik yud) and to the left of a vov (melupm vov) unambiguously indicates the vocalic form of those letters. It will, however, be noted in the main table above that Harkavy does not use these pointed forms, which were among the details codified in the early 20th century. In the traditional Yiddish orthographies where these letters are not pointed, the vowel is indicated by preceding it with a shtumer alef (reducing the use of which was a major focus of the normative efforts). The single and digraph forms of, for example, vov can be separated either with a dot or an embedded alef as וווּ or וואו (vu - "where"). Although only the former spelling is consistent with the SYO and appears in Uriel Weinreich's dictionary, he uses the unpointed alternative exclusively in his own "Say it in Yiddish" (ISBN 0-486-20815-X), a phrase book that contains the word in a large number of "Where is...?" queries and was published when the rules had already been well established.

A further graphic example of this distinction is seen in the official announcement, on 14 November 1997, of a change in editorial policy for the prominent Yiddish periodical in the United States, פאָרווערטס (Forverts - "The Yiddish Forward"). It was first during that year that the YIVO orthography was adopted. The previous editorial position overtly opposed any such change and the following is included in the explanation of the shift (quoted in full in Schaechter 1999, p. 109):

"And then we removed the alef in the words ייד and יידיש (previously איד and אידיש) and ייִנגל (previously אינגל), and now will spell the words with a khirik under the second yud as: ייִדיש ,ייִד and ייִנגל".

The appearance of three alternate spellings for the name of the Yiddish language in a statement intended to describe its orthographic standardization might not require any comment if it were not for the clear indication that the cardinal representation — יידיש — was neither the older nor the newer editorial preference. Regardless of the intent of that statement, a word-initial yud is consonantal, and an adjacent yud is vocalic, in all Yiddish orthographic systems, as is the constraint on a word initial tsvey yudn diphthong. Pointing the second yud in ייִדיש is therefore, indeed, redundant. The spelling אידיש also illustrates some of the dialectic breadth of the Yiddish language, the name of which is both written and pronounced with and without an initial consonant.

Finally, letters other than shtumer alef may be used as silent indications of syllable boundaries and in compound consonants, as well as for extending the length of an adjacent vowel. This became particularly common in deliberately Germanized orthographies dating from the late 19th century, collectively termed daytshmerish, and the desire to reverse that trend was one of the reasons for the effort toward the standardization of Yiddish orthography. Publishers of Yiddish newspapers have been particularly conservative in their attitude toward that development, and the preceding editorial statement in Forverts provides a useful capsule summary of the details about which opinions differed. Other current Yiddish newspapers and magazines retain the spelling אידיש and many other elements of daytshmerish. This is typified in the דער אלגעמיינער זשורנאל (der algemeyner zhurnal - "Algemeiner Journal"), which has a larger registered circulation than does Forverts, and is as readily available on newsstands (with even more widely-circulated weekly newspapers also adhering to the earlier orthography). Extensive additional source material relevant to the stance of the daily press on orthographic reform is provided in Fishman 1981.

Editorial acceptance of varying orthographies is a general characteristic of Hasidic publication, and a single work written by multiple authors may differ in that regard from section to section, depending on the preferences of the individual authors, or the typographic context. (The Algemeiner Journal can be further used to illustrate this, with its name appearing in unpointed form in banner presentation, as indicated above, but as אַלגעמיינער זשורנאַל in running text.) This is an expansive component of the contemporary Yiddish press and is likely to require explicit accommodation in future codifications of orthographic practice.

[edit] Graphic innovation

Orthographic reform as considered here, embraces two distinct actions. The first is concerned with the way Yiddish words are spelled, as illustrated in the preceding section with the name of the language, itself. The second relates to the graphic devices used to distinguish, for example, between א when representing what in English is an /a/ and when representing an /o/. The pointed אַ and אָ came into use for that purpose in the mid-18th century and were thus well established by the time the 20th century reforms were initiated, as were several other traditional Yiddish pointings. As noted above, the most deeply entenched of these was the distinction between פ fey and פּ pey. YIVO proposed the additional use of pointed letters that were not in the Yiddish (or Hebrew) fonts of the day. This is a frequently cited reason for the SYO being slow to gain acceptance, but regardless of any opinion about their utility, most of the graphic elements introduced in that manner are now readily available. (It should be noted, nonetheless, that the SYO explicitly states that pointing to disambiguate vowels does not change the identity of the base character; a pointed alef, for example, is not a letter of its own.)

The first edition of the SYO was published in 1937. It was preceded by a collection of essays published by YIVO in 1930, entitled "A Standard of Yiddish Spelling; Discussion No. 1" ( דער איינהייטלעכער יידישער אויסלייג ). Neither the title of this work, nor its contents, were written using the conventions that YIVO was subsequently to be put forward on its basis. The pivotal essay in the 1930 collection was written by Max Weinreich:

This "A Projected Uniform Yiddish Orthography" was not written with the pointings that are prescribed in the SYO, and introduces a character that was entirely absent from the previous repertoire. This is the V-shaped grapheme in the second line, replacing the tsvey vovn in Weinreich's name, and in the name of the city where the work was published, Vilna. It appears in two other essays in the same collection but did not appear in any subsequent printed work. It was however, included in the SYO as a recommendation for use in handwritten text, and has met with some favorable response as such. Yudl Mark, who authored one of the other 1930 essays in which it was used, was later to dub this character the shpitsik maksl ("acute Maxy"), and it remains enshrined in the YIVO logotype.

Further orthographic variation is seen in other YIVO publications from the same period, also using markings that were not included in the SYO, but which did have typographic precedent (for example, אֵ to represent /e/). The way in which the pasekh tsvey yudn is set in the heading of the Weinreich article (in his name) should also be noted in the further discussion of that digraph, below.

[edit] See also

• Yiddish dialects
• Yiddish phonology

[edit] References

• Birnbaum, Salomo A., Praktische Grammatik der Jiddischen Sprache für den Selbstunterricht, Hartleben Verlag, Vienna, 1918, (in German), 5th ed., Grammatik der Jiddischen Sprache, mit einem Wörterbuch und Lesestücken, Buske Verlag, Hamburg, 1988, ISBN 3-87118-874-3.
• Birnbaum, Solomon A., Yiddish: A Survey and a Grammar, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1979, ISBN 0-8020-5382-3.
• Estraikh, Gennady, Soviet Yiddish: Language Planning and Linguistic Development, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1999, ISBN 0-19-818479-4.
• 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.
• 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.
• Harkavy, Alexander, Harkavy's English-Jewish and Jewish-English Dictionary, Hebrew Publishing Company, New York, 1898. Expanded 6th ed., 1910. scanned facsimile
• Harkavy, Alexander, Yiddish-English-Hebrew Dictionary, Hebrew Publishing Company, New York, 1925. Expanded 2nd ed., 1928, reprinted, Yale University Press, 2005, ISBN 0-300-10839-7.
• Herzog, Marvin, et.al. (ed.), YIVO, The Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry, 3 vols., Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tubingen, 1992-2000, ISBN 3-484-73013-7.
• Jacobs, Neil G., Yiddish: A Linguistic Introduction, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005, ISBN 0-521-77215-X.
• Katz, Dovid, Grammar of the Yiddish Language, Duckworth, London, 1987, ISBN 0-7156-2161-0.
• Katz, Dovid (compiler), Code of Yiddish Spelling, Oxforder Yidish Press, Oxford, 1992, (in Yiddish), ISBN 1-897744-01-3.
• 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.
• Weinreich, Uriel, Modern Yiddish-English English-Yiddish Dictionary, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York, 1968, ISBN 0-8052-0575-6.
• Weinreich, Uriel, College Yiddish: an Introduction to the Yiddish language and to Jewish Life and Culture, 6th revised ed., YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York, 1999, ISBN 0-914512-26-9.
• Yardeni, Ada, The Book of Hebrew Script, The British Library, London, 2002, ISBN 1-58456-087-8.

[edit] External links

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of

Yiddish

• Ezra SIL - a freely available font designed for heavily marked Hebrew script
• Jewish Language Research Website
• Yiddish Typewriter - online interconversion of Hebrew script and YIVO transliteration

.