Yiddish Orthography - Graphic Innovation

Graphic Innovation

Orthographic reform as considered here, embraces two distinct actions. The first is concerned with the way Yiddish words are spelled, as illustrated in the preceding section with the name of the language, itself. The second relates to the graphic devices used to distinguish, for example, between א when representing what in English is an /a/ and when representing an /o/. The pointed אַ and אָ came into use for that purpose in the mid-18th century and were thus well established by the time the 20th century reforms were initiated, as were several other traditional Yiddish pointings. The most deeply entenched of these was the distinction between פ fey and פּ pey. YIVO proposed the additional use of pointed letters that were not in the Yiddish (or Hebrew) fonts of the day. This is a frequently cited reason for the SYO being slow to gain acceptance, but regardless of any opinion about their utility, most of the graphic elements introduced in that manner are now readily available. (The SYO explicitly states that pointing to disambiguate vowels does not change the identity of the base character; a pointed alef, for example, is not a letter of its own.)

The first edition of the SYO was published in 1937. It was preceded by a collection of essays published by YIVO in 1930, entitled "A Standard of Yiddish Spelling; Discussion No. 1" ( דער איינהייטלעכער יידישער אויסלייג - der eynheytlekher yidisher oysleyg). Neither the title of this work, nor its contents, were written using the conventions that YIVO was subsequently to put forward on its basis. The pivotal essay in the 1930 collection was written by Max Weinreich: This "A Projected Uniform Yiddish Orthography" was not written with the pointing that is prescribed in the SYO, and introduces a character that was entirely absent from the previous repertoire. This is the V-shaped grapheme in the second line, replacing the tsvey vovn in Weinreich's name, and in the name of the city where the work was published, Vilna. It appears in two other essays in the same collection but did not appear in any subsequent printed work. It was however, included in the SYO as a recommendation for use in handwritten text, where it is also encountered. Yudl Mark, who authored one of the other 1930 essays in which the typeset form was used, was later to dub this character the shpitsik maksl ("acute Maxy"), and it remains enshrined in the YIVO logotype.

Further orthographic variation is seen in other YIVO publications from the same period, also using markings that were not included in the SYO, but which did have typographic precedent (for example, אֵ to represent /e/). The way in which the pasekh tsvey yudn are set in the heading of the Weinreich article (in his name) is discussed below.