Re: Yiddish spelling

On Fri, 7 Jan 2000 21:29:26 +0100 BP Jonsson <bpj@...> writes:
> But Alef was also being used as a mater lectionis all the the way
> from
> Cadiz to Kucha long before the Hebrew diacritic system was invented,
> and I
> took for granted that it was so used in Hebrew as well since ancient
> times.
> Not so?
>
> /BP
.

Alef has never really been an eim-qeri'a in Hebrew until Israeli started
using it in foreign words, probably taking the use from Yiddish.  In some
cases it marks where a vowel would be, but it doesn't mark a specific
vowel, and as far as i know it can always be traced back to a root -
usually a last letter of a root which is now at the end of a word, where
/?/ is very weak.


-Stephen (Steg)
 "Eze-guvdhab wa'hrikh-a tze, / "zhoutzii wa'esh," i eze-mwe."