Re: Summary of bidi branch?

> Cc: [email protected]
> From: David Kastrup <[email protected]>
> Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2007 08:44:10 +0200
> 
> > You could indeed use YIVO, but you could also simply use German.
> 
> For getting Hebrew letters?

Yes.  In Yiddish, Hebrew letters are used as transliterations of Latin
letters.

> > That's because many Yiddish words are actually Hebrew
> > transliterations of German words, and even words whose origin is
> > Hebrew are written in Latin-like transliterations, by adding
> > transliterations of vowels which the Hebrew original doesn't
> > consider part of the word.  For example, where in a Hebrew word an
> > `a' is pronounced, the Yiddish transliteration would add an `א',
> 
> Uh, no.  The vowel mark is missing.

These marks are redundant (as they are in Hebrew): any speaker of the
language will have no difficulty reading the word without the
diacriticals (so-called Nikkud).

> Well, I know how to transliterate Yiddish with Latin characters.  But
> that's not the point.

Frankly, I don't know what is the point.  I thought you needed a way
to write Yiddish without bidi support, so I suggested a
transliteration, but perhaps you want something else.

> The usual alphabet used with Yiddish is a
> slightly modified Hebrew alphabet (pronunciation is somewhat different
> from most Hebrew words

There's no standard for Yiddish pronunciation, but most Yiddish
speakers use German pronunciation.