Yiddish Orthography - Standard Yiddish Orthography

Standard Yiddish Orthography

The SYO is presented in Yiddish, and a few romanized transcriptions are included only where needed to indicate variant pronunciation. Given that the YIVO standardization initiative has been severely criticized for failing to accommodate such 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 dialectal differences. These are identical to what is contained in the table in the preceding section, with the following exceptions:

YIVO took Litvish as the standard dialect with only slight modification, to a large extent because of the consistency with which its phonemic attributes could be represented by a standardized orthography similarly requiring only minimal elaboration of traditional practice. The important distinctions between Litvish, Poylish, and Ukrainish are therefore not indicated in either the SYO or Weinreich dictionary. These are, however, discussed in detail in the LCAAJ to which Uriel Weinreich was a major contributor. The Roman characters appearing in the SYO correspond to those used in the LCAAJ, and their marking according to Central European orthographic convention provides greater flexibility in notating dialectal distinction than does an English-oriented approach. Phonetic transcription is therefore common in linguistic discourse about Yiddish, often using a wide range of diacritical marks in clear contrast to the totally undecorated YIVO romanization.

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, nor are the additional consonant digraphs and trigraphs listed at all:

דער סדר פֿון אותיות אין אַלף־בית איז אַזאַ׃ 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 רעכענען זיך ניט פֿאַר קײן באַזונדערע אותיות אין אַלף־בית

The order of the letters in the alphabet is as follows, from right to left:

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.