Re: Yiddish spelling

BP Jonsson wrote:

> What is the normal spelling of Yiddish /e/ anyway?  If i understand my
> source correctly -- which is far from certain -- it should be Ayen,
Yes, or rather the YIVO transliteration of Ayin is "e".

> but then it transcribes Tsvey Yudn as E with a grave accent, rather than as EY,
Bizarre.

> 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.)
Because the spirit of the Hebrew alphabet is against it.  The use of yod and
vav as matres lectionis (vowel letters) predates the whole diacritic system.

> Finally one wonders why/if nobody has hit on the idea to vocalize modern
> hebrew Yiddish-style...
In principle, the whole vowel-sign system *is* available.  For example, when
Yud is adjacent to Tsvey Yudn, one may write a hiriq in the latter
(Unicode 3.0 introduces the combined character YOD YOD HIRIQ for this).
It's just that most of the time it isn't necessary.  The only real innovation
is the use of Ayin for "e".

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