Yiddish Orthography - Early 20th Century Reform

Early 20th Century Reform

In the early 20th century, for both cultural and political reasons, focused efforts were initiated toward the development of a uniform Yiddish orthography. A specimen initial practice was described in detail by the Yiddish lexicographer Alexander Harkavy in a Treatise on Yiddish Reading, Orthography, and Dialectal Variations first published in 1898 together with his Yiddish-English Dictionary (Harkavy 1898), and available online (beginning with the section headed Yiddish reading). Additional illustrations of this variation are provided in source excerpts in Fishman 1981, which also contains a number of texts specifically about the need (pro and con) for a uniform orthography. A detailed chronology of the major events during this normative action, including rosters of conference participants, bibliographic references to the documents they produced, and summaries of their contents, is given in Yiddish in Schaechter 1999. There is a less detailed (but extensive nonetheless) English language review of this process in Estraikh 1999.

The first action formally undertaken by a government was in the Soviet Union in 1920, with the abolition of the separate etymological orthography for words of Semitic origin. This was extended twelve years later with the elimination of the five separate final-form consonants (as indicated in the table below) which were, however, widely reintroduced in 1961. The changes are both illustrated in the way the name of the author Sholem Aleichem is written. His own work uses the form שלום־עליכם but in Soviet publication this is respelled phonetically to שאָלעמ־אלײכעמ also dispensing with the separate final-form mem and using the initial/medial form instead. This can be seen, together with a respelling of the name of the protagonist of his Tevye der milkhiker (originally טביה, changed to טעוויע), by comparing the title pages of that work in the U.S. and Soviet editions illustrated next to this paragraph. Note also the Germanized מילכיגער (milkhiger) in the former exemplifying another widespread trend, daytshmerish, discussed further below.

The efforts preliminary to the 1920 reform, which took place in several countries — most notably in Poland with focus on a uniform school curriculum — resulted in other devices that were not implemented as a result of any governmental mandate. These were further considered during the 1930s by the Yidisher visnshaftlekher institut, YIVO, in the development of their תּקנות פֿון ייִדישן אויסלייג (takones fun yidishn oysleyg - "Rules of Yiddish Orthography"), also known as the "SYO" (Standard Yiddish Orthography) or the "YIVO Rules". This has become the most frequently referenced such system in present-day use (SYO 1999). Although it regularly figures in pedagogical contexts, it would be misleading to suggest that it is similarly dominant elsewhere. Other orthographies are frequently encountered in contemporary practice, and are house standards for many publishers.

A useful review of this variation is provided in the Oxford University כלל־תקנות פון יידישן אויסלייג (klal takones fun yidishn oysleyg - "Standard Rules of Yiddish Orthography") (Oxford 1992, and available online), written in and codifying a more conventional orthography than the one put forward by YIVO. Differences in the systems can be seen simply by comparing the titles of the two documents, but they differ more fundamentally in their approaches to the prescription and description of orthographic detail. The former treats orthographic variation as a positive attribute of the Yiddish literature and describes essential elements of that variation. The latter presents a uniform Yiddish orthography, based on observed practice but with proactive prescriptive intent. Strong difference of opinion about the relative merit of the two approaches has been a prominent aspect of the discussion from the outset, and shows little sign of abating. Although the Yiddish alphabet as stated in the SYO is widely accepted as a baseline reference (with a few minor but frequently encountered variations), the spelling rules, and the phonetic aspects of the YIVO system of romanized transliteration as discussed below, remain subjects of particular contention. The intent of the SYO is not to describe the spectrum of traditional orthographic practice. The bulk of Yiddish literature predates the formulation of those rules, and the discrepancies are significant.