Yiddish spelling

At 14:47 -0500 6.1.2000, Steg Belsky wrote:

> When my parents named me, they spelled the _hersh_ part with a 3ayin,
>representing Yiddish /e/, instead of a yud, for /i/.  Not that it really
>matters, since Americans usually pronounce Hersh/Hirsh/Hirsch just like
>"heard" with a /S/ instead of /d/, so the exact vowel doesn't matter.
What is the normal spelling of Yiddish /e/ anyway?  If i understand my
source correctly -- which is far from certain -- it should be Ayen, but
then it transcribes Tsvey Yudn as E with a grave accent, rather than as EY,
which suggests that it too should be pronounced /e/ in some contexts, or is
the idea that some dialects realize /ey/ as [E:]?  BTW it beats me why /ay/
is written asPaseh Tsvey Yudn, and not as Alef Yud, since even tho some
dialects do merge /ay/ and /ey/ the standardizers did obviously prefer
keeping them distinct -- they seem to have introduced a good deal of
innovations anyway.  Similarly if /o/ were written as Alef Yud one could
dispense with diacritics altogether (or almost; the dagesh sign would still
be necessary.)

Finally one wonders why/if nobody has hit on the idea to vocalize modern
hebrew Yiddish-style...

(Says I who vainly have invented vowel-letters for Perso-Arabic: Waw with
two vertical dots above for /o/, Waw for /u/, Ye with two vertical dots
below for /i/, Ye with two vertical dots above for /e/, and He with one dot
below for final /&/, plus Fe or Waw with three dots above for /v/.  Medial
/&/ will thus remain unwritten for the most part, but that's not really all
that impractical.)


/BP

 B.Philip Jonsson  <mailto: bpj@...> <mailto: melroch@...>
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