89-1206: Greenblatt or Greenblat ( Yiddish : "green leaf") is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: Ariana Greenblatt (born 2007), American actress C. H. Greenblatt (born 1972), American writer and storyboard artist Evelyn Greenblatt Howren (1917–1998), American woman aviator and WASP Jack Greenblatt , Canadian scientist James Marshall (born 1967 as James David Greenblatt), American actor Jason Greenblatt (born 1967), American lawyer, United States Special Representative for International Negotiations Joel Greenblatt (born 1957), American financier Jonathan Greenblatt (born 1970), American entrepreneur and corporate executive Richard Greenblatt (born 1944), American computer programmer Richard Greenblatt (born 1953), Canadian actor/playwright Robert Greenblatt (born 1959/1960), American television executive and chairman of NBC Entertainment Rodney Alan Greenblat , American graphic artist Shon Greenblatt , American actor Stephen Greenblatt (born 1943), American new historicist literary critic and theorist [REDACTED] Surname list This page lists people with
178-534: A "doubled" letter, making the list BeGeD KePoReT . ( Sefer Yetzirah , 4:1) The following table contains the pronunciation of the Hebrew letters in reconstructed historical forms and dialects using the International Phonetic Alphabet . The apostrophe-looking symbol after some letters is not a yud but a geresh . It is used for loanwords with non-native Hebrew sounds. The dot in the middle of some of
267-416: A Hebrew text with these letters would require using the spelling in the language from which the transliteration to Hebrew was originally made). The non-standard " ו׳ " and " וו " are sometimes used to represent / w / , which like / d͡ʒ / , / ʒ / and / t͡ʃ / appears in Hebrew slang and loanwords. The Sound / χ / (as "ch" in loch ) is often transcribed "ch", inconsistently with
356-720: A cantillation mark used for Torah recitation, though its visual appearance and function are different in that context. In much of Israel 's general population, especially where Ashkenazic pronunciation is prevalent, many letters have the same pronunciation. They are as follows: * Varyingly Some of the variations in sound mentioned above are due to a systematic feature of Ancient Hebrew. The six consonants /b ɡ d k p t/ were pronounced differently depending on their position. These letters were also called BeGeD KeFeT letters / ˌ b eɪ ɡ ɛ d ˈ k ɛ f ɛ t / . The full details are very complex; this summary omits some points. They were pronounced as plosives [b ɡ d k p t] at
445-641: A central dot called dagesh ( דגש ), while the soft sounds lack a dagesh . In modern Hebrew, however, the dagesh only changes the pronunciation of ב bet , כ kaf , and פ pe , and does not affect the name of the letter. The differences are as follows: In other dialects (mainly liturgical) there are variations from this pattern. The sounds [ t͡ʃ ] , [ d͡ʒ ] , [ ʒ ] , written ⟨ צ׳ ⟩, ⟨ ג׳ ⟩, ⟨ ז׳ ⟩, and [ w ] , non-standardly sometimes transliterated ⟨ וו ⟩, are often found in slang and loanwords that are part of
534-534: A collection of narrative poems on themes from the Hebrew Bible and the Haggadah . The advent of the printing press in the 16th century enabled the large-scale production of works, at a cheaper cost, some of which have survived. One particularly popular work was Elia Levita 's Bovo-Bukh ( בָּבָֿא-בּוך ), composed around 1507–08 and printed several times, beginning in 1541 (under the title Bovo d'Antona ). Levita,
623-438: A different final form used at the end of words, the final forms are displayed beneath the regular form. The block (square, or "print" type) and cursive ("handwritten" type) are the only variants in widespread contemporary use. Rashi is also used, for historical reasons, in a handful of standard texts. Following the adoption of Greek Hellenistic alphabetic numeration practice, Hebrew letters started being used to denote numbers in
712-682: A form of the paleo-Hebrew script called the Samaritan alphabet . After the fall of the Persian Empire in 330 BCE, Jews used both scripts before settling on the square Assyrian form. The square Hebrew alphabet was later adapted and used for writing languages of the Jewish diaspora – such as Karaim , the Judeo-Arabic languages , Judaeo-Spanish, and Yiddish. The Hebrew alphabet continued in use for scholarly writing in Hebrew and came again into everyday use with
801-485: A lesser extent, the United Kingdom. This has resulted in some difficulty in communication between Yiddish speakers from Israel and those from other countries. There is significant phonological variation among the various Yiddish dialects . The description that follows is of a modern Standard Yiddish that was devised during the early 20th century and is frequently encountered in pedagogical contexts. Uvular As in
890-501: A number of reverse letter orders; such as vav - he , chet - zayin , pe - ayin , etc. A reversal to pe-ayin can be clearly seen in the Book of Lamentations , whose first four chapters are ordered as alphabetical acrostics. In the Masoretic text , the first chapter has the now-usual ayin-pe ordering, and the second, third and fourth chapters exhibit pe-ayin . In
979-407: A variant of tiutsch , the contemporary name for Middle High German . Colloquially, the language is sometimes called מאַמע־לשון ( mame-loshn , lit. "mother tongue"), distinguishing it from לשון־קודש ( loshn koydesh , "holy tongue"), meaning Hebrew and Aramaic. The term "Yiddish", short for Yidish Taitsh ("Jewish German"), did not become the most frequently used designation in
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#17328837527401068-424: A vowel instead of a consonant (which would be, respectively, /ʔ/, /ʕ/, /v/ and /j/ ). When they do, ו and י are considered to constitute part of the vowel designation in combination with a niqqud symbol – a vowel diacritic (whether or not the diacritic is marked), whereas א and ע are considered to be mute, their role being purely indicative of the non-marked vowel. Niqqud
1157-531: Is Avroham ben Schemuel Pikartei, who published a paraphrase on the Book of Job in 1557. Women in the Ashkenazi community were traditionally not literate in Hebrew but did read and write Yiddish. A body of literature therefore developed for which women were a primary audience. This included secular works, such as the Bovo-Bukh , and religious writing specifically for women, such as the צאנה וראינה Tseno Ureno and
1246-619: Is a true alphabet, with all vowels rendered in the spelling, except in the case of inherited Hebrew words, which typically retain their Hebrew consonant-only spellings. The Arabic and Hebrew alphabets have similarities because they are both derived from the Aramaic alphabet, which in turn derives either from paleo-Hebrew or the Phoenician alphabet , both being slight regional variations of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet used in ancient times to write
1335-480: Is also used in the adjectival sense, synonymously with "Ashkenazi Jewish", to designate attributes of Yiddishkeit ("Ashkenazi culture"; for example, Yiddish cooking and "Yiddish music" – klezmer ). Hebrew Judeo-Aramaic Judeo-Arabic Other Jewish diaspora languages Jewish folklore Jewish poetry By the 10th century, a distinctive Jewish culture had formed in Central Europe. By
1424-472: Is called a gershayim and is a punctuation mark used in the Hebrew language to denote acronyms. It is written before the last letter in the acronym, e.g. ר״ת . Gershayim is also the name of a cantillation mark in the reading of the Torah , printed above the accented letter, e.g. א֞ . The following table displays typographic and chirographic variants of each letter. For the five letters that have
1513-450: Is different from Wikidata All set index articles Yiddish language Yiddish ( ייִדיש , יידיש or אידיש , yidish or idish , pronounced [ˈ(j)ɪdɪʃ] , lit. ' Jewish ' ; ייִדיש-טײַטש , historically also Yidish-Taytsh , lit. ' Judeo-German ' ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews . It originated in 9th century Central Europe , and provided
1602-493: Is printed in Hebrew script.) According to a study by the German media association Internationale Medienhilfe (IMH), more than 40 printed Yiddish newspapers and magazines were published worldwide in 2024, and the trend is rising. The Western Yiddish dialect—sometimes pejoratively labeled Mauscheldeutsch , i. e. "Moses German" —declined in the 18th century, as the Age of Enlightenment and
1691-506: Is pronounced [haɡˈdɔmɜ] . The vowel phonemes of Standard Yiddish are: In addition, the sonorants /l/ and /n/ can function as syllable nuclei : [m] and [ŋ] appear as syllable nuclei as well, but only as allophones of /n/ , after bilabial consonants and dorsal consonants , respectively. The syllabic sonorants are always unstressed. Stressed vowels in the Yiddish dialects may be understood by considering their common origins in
1780-588: Is reflected in some Ashkenazi personal names (e.g., Kalonymos and Yiddish Todres ). Hebrew, on the other hand, was regarded as a holy language reserved for ritual and spiritual purposes and not for common use. The established view is that, as with other Jewish languages , Jews speaking distinct languages learned new co-territorial vernaculars, which they then Judaized. In the case of Yiddish, this scenario sees it as emerging when speakers of Zarphatic (Judeo-French) and other Judeo-Romance languages began to acquire varieties of Middle High German , and from these groups
1869-519: Is simply pronounced /t/. Likewise, historical /ð/ is simply pronounced /d/. Shin and sin are represented by the same letter, ש , but are two separate phonemes . When vowel diacritics are used, the two phonemes are differentiated with a shin -dot or sin -dot; the shin -dot is above the upper-right side of the letter, and the sin -dot is above the upper-left side of the letter. Historically, left-dot-sin corresponds to Proto-Semitic * ś , which in biblical-Judaic-Hebrew corresponded to
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#17328837527401958-487: Is the system of dots that help determine vowels and consonants. In Hebrew, all forms of niqqud are often omitted in writing, except for children's books, prayer books, poetry, foreign words, and words which would be ambiguous to pronounce. Israeli Hebrew has five vowel phonemes, /i e a o u/ , but many more written symbols for them: Note 1: The circle represents whatever Hebrew letter is used. Note 2: The pronunciation of tsere and sometimes segol – with or without
2047-493: Is uncertain). An additional distinctive semicursive typeface was, and still is, used for rabbinical commentary on religious texts when Hebrew and Yiddish appear on the same page. This is commonly termed Rashi script , from the name of the most renowned early author, whose commentary is usually printed using this script. (Rashi is also the typeface normally used when the Sephardic counterpart to Yiddish, Judaeo-Spanish or Ladino ,
2136-554: The Haskalah led to a view of Yiddish as a corrupt dialect. The 19th century Prussian-Jewish historian Heinrich Graetz , for example, wrote that "the language of the Jews [in Poland] ... degenerat[ed] into a ridiculous jargon, a mixture of German, Polish, and Talmudical elements, an unpleasant stammering, rendered still more repulsive by forced attempts at wit." A Maskil (one who takes part in
2225-559: The Ktav Ashuri , Jewish script , square script and block script , is an abjad script used in the writing of the Hebrew language and other Jewish languages , most notably Yiddish , Ladino , Judeo-Arabic , and Judeo-Persian . In modern Hebrew, vowels are increasingly introduced. It is also used informally in Israel to write Levantine Arabic , especially among Druze . It is an offshoot of
2314-528: The Dead Sea Scrolls version (4QLam/4Q111), reversed ordering also appears in the first chapter (i.e. in all the first four chapters). The fact that these chapters follows the pre-exilic pe-ayin order is evidence for them being written shortly after the events described, rather than being later, post-exilic compositions. The descriptions that follow are based on the pronunciation of modern standard Israeli Hebrew. pronunciation By analogy with
2403-650: The Haskalah ) would write about and promote acclimatization to the outside world. Jewish children began attending secular schools where the primary language spoken and taught was German, not Yiddish. Yiddish grates on our ears and distorts. This jargon is incapable in fact of expressing sublime thoughts. It is our obligation to cast off these old rags, a heritage of the dark Middle Ages. – Osip Aronovich Rabinovich , in an article titled "Russia – Our Native Land: Just as We Breathe Its Air, We Must Speak Its Language" in
2492-620: The High Holy Days ) and בֵּיתֿ הַכְּנֶסֶתֿ , 'synagogue' (read in Yiddish as beis hakneses ) – had been included. The niqqud appears as though it might have been added by a second scribe, in which case it may need to be dated separately and may not be indicative of the pronunciation of the rhyme at the time of its initial annotation. Over the course of the 14th and 15th centuries, songs and poems in Yiddish, and macaronic pieces in Hebrew and German, began to appear. These were collected in
2581-612: The Imperial Aramaic alphabet , which flourished during the Achaemenid Empire and which itself derives from the Phoenician alphabet . Historically, a different abjad script was used to write Hebrew: the original, old Hebrew script, now known as the paleo-Hebrew alphabet , has been largely preserved in a variant form as the Samaritan alphabet , and is still used by the Samaritans . The present "Jewish script" or "square script", on
2670-568: The Middle High German diphthong ei and long vowel î to /aɪ/ , Yiddish has maintained the distinction between them; and likewise, the Standard German /ɔʏ/ corresponds to both the MHG diphthong öu and the long vowel iu , which in Yiddish have merged with their unrounded counterparts ei and î , respectively. Lastly, the Standard German /aʊ/ corresponds to both the MHG diphthong ou and
2759-525: The Odessan journal Рассвет (dawn), 1861. Owing to both assimilation to German and the revival of Hebrew , Western Yiddish survived only as a language of "intimate family circles or of closely knit trade groups". In eastern Europe, the response to these forces took the opposite direction, with Yiddish becoming the cohesive force in a secular culture (see the Yiddishist movement ). Notable Yiddish writers of
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2848-577: The Proto-Canaanite alphabet , called the paleo-Hebrew alphabet by scholars, began to emerge around 800 BCE. An example is the Siloam inscription ( c. 700 BCE ). The paleo-Hebrew alphabet was used in the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah . Following the Babylonian exile of the Kingdom of Judah in the 6th century BCE, Jews began using a form of the Imperial Aramaic alphabet , another offshoot of
2937-480: The Slavic languages with which Yiddish was long in contact (Russian, Belarusian , Polish , and Ukrainian ), but unlike German, voiceless stops have little to no aspiration ; unlike many such languages, voiced stops are not devoiced in final position. Moreover, Yiddish has regressive voicing assimilation , so that, for example, זאָגט /zɔɡt/ ('says') is pronounced [zɔkt] and הקדמה /hakˈdɔmɜ/ ('foreword')
3026-554: The high medieval period , their area of settlement, centered on the Rhineland ( Mainz ) and the Palatinate (notably Worms and Speyer ), came to be known as Ashkenaz , originally a term used of Scythia , and later of various areas of Eastern Europe and Anatolia. In the medieval Hebrew of Rashi (d. 1105), Ashkenaz becomes a term for Germany, and אשכּנזי Ashkenazi for the Jews settling in this area. Ashkenaz bordered on
3115-535: The surname Greenblatt . If an internal link intending to refer to a specific person led you to this page, you may wish to change that link by adding the person's given name (s) to the link. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Greenblatt&oldid=1233340481 " Categories : Surnames Surnames of Jewish origin Yiddish-language surnames Hidden categories: Articles with short description Short description
3204-412: The voiceless alveolar lateral fricative /ɬ/ (or /ś/). Historically, the consonants ב bet , ג gimmel , ד daleth , כ kaf , פ pe and ת tav each had two sounds: one hard ( plosive ), and one soft ( fricative ), depending on the position of the letter and other factors. When vowel diacritics are used, the hard sounds are indicated by
3293-431: The תחנות Tkhines . One of the best-known early woman authors was Glückel of Hameln , whose memoirs are still in print. The segmentation of the Yiddish readership, between women who read מאַמע־לשון mame-loshn but not לשון־קדש loshn-koydesh , and men who read both, was significant enough that distinctive typefaces were used for each. The name commonly given to the semicursive form used exclusively for Yiddish
3382-629: The 1925 founding of the Yiddish Scientific Institute, YIVO . In Vilnius , there was debate over which language should take primacy, Hebrew or Yiddish. Yiddish changed significantly during the 20th century. Michael Wex writes, "As increasing numbers of Yiddish speakers moved from the Slavic-speaking East to Western Europe and the Americas in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they were so quick to jettison Slavic vocabulary that
3471-559: The 2006 precise transliteration system of the Academy of the Hebrew Language; for " צ " SBL uses "ṣ" (≠ AHL "ẓ"), and for בג״ד כפ״ת with no dagesh, SBL uses the same symbols as for with dagesh (i.e. "b", "g", "d", "k", "f", "t"). In transliterations of modern Israeli Hebrew, initial and final ע (in regular transliteration), silent or initial א , and silent ה are not transliterated. To
3560-580: The Ashkenazi community took shape. Exactly what German substrate underlies the earliest form of Yiddish is disputed. The Jewish community in the Rhineland would have encountered the Middle High German dialects from which the Rhenish German dialects of the modern period would emerge. Jewish communities of the high medieval period would have been speaking their own versions of these German dialects, mixed with linguistic elements that they themselves brought into
3649-410: The Hebrew alphabet, and not loanwords . Geresh is also used to denote an abbreviation consisting of a single Hebrew letter, while gershayim (a doubled geresh ) are used to denote acronyms pronounced as a string of letters; geresh and gershayim are also used to denote Hebrew numerals consisting of a single Hebrew letter or of multiple Hebrew letters, respectively. Geresh is also the name of
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3738-548: The Proto-Yiddish sound system. Yiddish linguistic scholarship uses a system developed by Max Weinreich in 1960 to indicate the descendent diaphonemes of the Proto-Yiddish stressed vowels. Each Proto-Yiddish vowel is given a unique two-digit identifier, and its reflexes use it as a subscript, for example Southeastern o 11 is the vowel /o/, descended from Proto-Yiddish */a/. The first digit indicates Proto-Yiddish quality (1-=*[a], 2-=*[e], 3-=*[i], 4-=*[o], 5-=*[u]), and
3827-631: The approximately six million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust were Yiddish speakers, leading to a massive decline in the use of the language. Assimilation following World War II and aliyah (immigration to Israel) further decreased the use of Yiddish among survivors after adapting to Hebrew in Israel. However, the number of Yiddish-speakers is increasing in Hasidic communities. In 2014, YIVO stated that "most people who speak Yiddish in their daily lives are Hasidim and other Haredim ", whose population
3916-580: The area inhabited by another distinctive Jewish cultural group, the Sephardi Jews , who ranged into southern France . Ashkenazi culture later spread into Eastern Europe with large-scale population migrations. Nothing is known with certainty about the vernacular of the earliest Jews in Germany, but several theories have been put forward. As noted above, the first language of the Ashkenazim may have been Aramaic ,
4005-455: The beginning of a syllable, or when doubled. They were pronounced as fricatives [v ɣ ð x f θ] when preceded by a vowel (commonly indicated with a macron, ḇ ḡ ḏ ḵ p̄ ṯ). The plosive and double pronunciations were indicated by the dagesh . In Modern Hebrew the sounds ḏ and ḡ have reverted to [d] and [ɡ] , respectively, and ṯ has become [t] , so only the remaining three consonants /b k p/ show variation. ר resh may have also been
4094-521: The contrary, is a stylized form of the Aramaic alphabet and was technically known by Jewish sages as Ashurit (lit. "Assyrian script"), since its origins were known to be from Assyria ( Mesopotamia ). Various "styles" (in current terms, " fonts ") of representation of the Jewish script letters described in this article also exist, including a variety of cursive Hebrew styles. In the remainder of this article,
4183-548: The earliest named Yiddish author, may also have written פּאַריז און װיענע Pariz un Viene ( Paris and Vienna ). Another Yiddish retelling of a chivalric romance, װידװילט Vidvilt (often referred to as "Widuwilt" by Germanizing scholars), presumably also dates from the 15th century, although the manuscripts are from the 16th. It is also known as Kinig Artus Hof , an adaptation of the Middle High German romance Wigalois by Wirnt von Grafenberg . Another significant writer
4272-528: The end of the high medieval period. It is first recorded in 1272, with the oldest surviving literary document in Yiddish, a blessing found in the Worms machzor (a Hebrew prayer book). This brief rhyme is decoratively embedded in an otherwise purely Hebrew text. Nonetheless, it indicates that the Yiddish of that day was a more or less regular Middle High German written in the Hebrew alphabet into which Hebrew words – מַחֲזוֹר , makhazor (prayerbook for
4361-425: The everyday Hebrew colloquial vocabulary. The symbol resembling an apostrophe after the Hebrew letter modifies the pronunciation of the letter and is called a geresh . The pronunciation of the following letters can also be modified with the geresh diacritic. The represented sounds are however foreign to Hebrew phonology , i.e., these symbols mainly represent sounds in foreign words or names when transliterated with
4450-445: The extensive inclusion of words of Slavic origin. Western Yiddish is divided into Southwestern (Swiss–Alsatian–Southern German), Midwestern (Central German), and Northwestern (Netherlandic–Northern German) dialects. Yiddish is used in a number of Haredi Jewish communities worldwide; it is the first language of the home, school, and in many social settings among many Haredi Jews, and is used in most Hasidic yeshivas . The term "Yiddish"
4539-459: The eye of readers orientating themselves on Latin (or similar) alphabets, these letters might seem to be transliterated as vowel letters; however, these are in fact transliterations of the vowel diacritics – niqqud (or are representations of the spoken vowels). E.g., in אִם ("if", [ʔim] ), אֵם ("mother", [ʔe̞m] ) and אֹם (" nut ", [ʔo̞m] ), the letter א always represents the same consonant: [ ʔ ] ( glottal stop ), whereas
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#17328837527404628-621: The juxtapositions ת״ק , ת״ר , ת״ש , ת״ת , and תת״ק respectively. Adding a geresh (" ׳ ") to a letter multiplies its value by one thousand, for example, the year 5778 is portrayed as ה׳תשע״ח , where ה׳ represents 5000, and תשע״ח represents 778. The following table lists transliterations and transcriptions of Hebrew letters used in Modern Hebrew . Clarifications: Note: SBL's transliteration system, recommended in its Handbook of Style , differs slightly from
4717-468: The language to children. The Tiberian system also includes a set of cantillation marks , called trope or te'amim , used to indicate how scriptural passages should be chanted in synagogue recitations of scripture (although these marks do not appear in the scrolls). In everyday writing of modern Hebrew, niqqud are absent; however, patterns of how words are derived from Hebrew roots (called shorashim or "triliterals") allow Hebrew speakers to determine
4806-431: The language's origins, with points of contention being the characterization of its Germanic base, the source of its Hebrew/Aramaic adstrata , and the means and location of this fusion. Some theorists argue that the fusion occurred with a Bavarian dialect base. The two main candidates for the germinal matrix of Yiddish, the Rhineland and Bavaria, are not necessarily incompatible. There may have been parallel developments in
4895-525: The late 15th century by Menahem ben Naphtali Oldendorf. During the same period, a tradition seems to have emerged of the Jewish community's adapting its own versions of German secular literature. The earliest Yiddish epic poem of this sort is the Dukus Horant , which survives in the famous Cambridge Codex T.-S.10.K.22. This 14th-century manuscript was discovered in the Cairo Geniza in 1896, and also contains
4984-708: The late 19th and early 20th centuries are Sholem Yankev Abramovitch, writing as Mendele Mocher Sforim ; Sholem Rabinovitsh, widely known as Sholem Aleichem , whose stories about טבֿיה דער מילכיקער ( Tevye der milkhiker , " Tevye the Dairyman") inspired the Broadway musical and film Fiddler on the Roof ; and Isaac Leib Peretz . In the early 20th century, especially after the Socialist October Revolution in Russia, Yiddish
5073-539: The late 2nd century BC, and performed this arithmetic function for about a thousand years. Nowadays alphanumeric notation is used only in specific contexts, e.g. denoting dates in the Hebrew calendar , denoting grades of school in Israel, other listings (e.g. שלב א׳ , שלב ב׳ – "phase a, phase b"), commonly in Kabbalah ( Jewish mysticism ) in a practice known as gematria , and often in religious contexts. The numbers 500, 600, 700, 800 and 900 are commonly represented by
5162-482: The letter yod – is sometimes ei in Modern Hebrew. This is not correct in the normative pronunciation and not consistent in the spoken language. Note 3: The dagesh , mappiq , and shuruk have different functions, even though they look the same. Note 4: The letter ו ( waw/vav ) is used since it can only be represented by that letter. By adding a vertical line (called Meteg ) underneath
5251-510: The letter and to the left of the vowel point, the vowel is made long. The meteg is only used in Biblical Hebrew , not Modern Hebrew . By adding two vertical dots (called Sh'va ) underneath the letter, the vowel is made very short. When sh'va is placed on the first letter of the word, mostly it is "è" (but in some instances, it makes the first letter silent without a vowel (vowel-less): e.g. וְ wè to "w") The symbol ״
5340-721: The letter is combined with a previous vowel and becomes silent, or by imitation of such cases in the spelling of other forms. Also, a system of vowel points to indicate vowels (diacritics), called niqqud , was developed. In modern forms of the alphabet, as in the case of Yiddish and to some extent Modern Hebrew , vowels may be indicated. Today, the trend is toward full spelling with the weak letters acting as true vowels. When used to write Yiddish , vowels are indicated, using certain letters, either with niqqud diacritics (e.g. אָ or יִ ) or without (e.g. ע or י ), except for Hebrew words, which in Yiddish are written in their Hebrew spelling. To preserve
5429-408: The letters י ו ה א can also function as matres lectionis , which is when certain consonants are used to indicate vowels. There is a trend in Modern Hebrew towards the use of matres lectionis to indicate vowels that have traditionally gone unwritten, a practice known as " full spelling ". The Yiddish alphabet , a modified version of the Hebrew alphabet used to write Yiddish,
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#17328837527405518-628: The letters, called a " dagesh kal", also modifies the sounds of the letters ב , כ and פ in modern Hebrew (in some forms of Hebrew it modifies also the sounds of the letters ג , ד and/or ת ; the "dagesh chazak" – orthographically indistinguishable from the "dagesh kal" – designates gemination , which today is realized only rarely – e.g. in biblical recitations or when using Arabic loanwords ). س א alef , ע ayin , ו waw/vav and י yod are letters that can sometimes indicate
5607-522: The limitations of its origins. There were few Yiddish words for animals and birds. It had virtually no military vocabulary. Such voids were filled by borrowing from German , Polish and Russian . Yiddish was particularly good at borrowing: from Arabic , from Hebrew , from Aramaic and from anything with which it intersected. On the other hand, it contributed to English – American . [sic] Its chief virtue lay in its internal subtlety, particularly in its characterization of human types and emotions. It
5696-546: The literature until the 18th century. In the late 19th and into the 20th century, the language was more commonly called "Jewish", especially in non-Jewish contexts, but "Yiddish" is again the most common designation today. Modern Yiddish has two major forms : Eastern and Western. Eastern Yiddish is far more common today. It includes Southeastern (Ukrainian–Romanian), Mideastern (Polish–Galician–Eastern Hungarian) and Northeastern (Lithuanian–Belarusian) dialects. Eastern Yiddish differs from Western both by its far greater size and by
5785-512: The long vowel û , but in Yiddish, they have not merged. Although Standard Yiddish does not distinguish between those two diphthongs and renders both as /ɔɪ/ , the distinction becomes apparent when the two diphthongs undergo Germanic umlaut , such as in forming plurals: The vowel length distinctions of German do not exist in the Northeastern (Lithuanian) varieties of Yiddish, which form the phonetic basis for Standard Yiddish. In those varieties,
5874-479: The mid-1950s. In Weinreich's view, this Old Yiddish substrate later bifurcated into two distinct versions of the language, Western and Eastern Yiddish. They retained the Semitic vocabulary and constructions needed for religious purposes and created a Judeo-German form of speech, sometimes not accepted as a fully autonomous language. Yiddish was a rich, living language, the chattering tongue of an urban population. It had
5963-577: The most prominent Yiddish writers of the time—the founders of modern Yiddish literature, who were still living in Slavic-speaking countries—revised the printed editions of their oeuvres to eliminate obsolete and 'unnecessary' Slavisms." The vocabulary used in Israel absorbed many Modern Hebrew words, and there was a similar but smaller increase in the English component of Yiddish in the United States and, to
6052-452: The nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with many elements taken from Hebrew (notably Mishnaic ) and to some extent Aramaic . Most varieties of Yiddish include elements of Slavic languages and the vocabulary contains traces of Romance languages . Yiddish has traditionally been written using the Hebrew alphabet . Prior to World War II , there were 11–13 million speakers. Eighty-five percent of
6141-429: The normal form in the following table (letter names are Unicode standard ). Although Hebrew is read and written from right to left, the following table shows the letters in order from left to right: As far back as the 13th century BCE, ancient Hebrew abecedaries indicate a slightly different ordering of the alphabet. The Zayit Stone , Izbet Sartah ostracon , and one inscription from Kuntillet Ajrud each contain
6230-479: The other dotted/dotless pairs, dotless tav, ת , would be expected to be pronounced /θ/ ( voiceless dental fricative ), and dotless dalet ד as /ð/ ( voiced dental fricative ), but these were lost among most Jews due to these sounds not existing in the countries where they lived (such as in nearly all of Eastern Europe). Yiddish modified /θ/ to /s/ (cf. seseo in Spanish), but in modern Israeli Hebrew, it
6319-535: The proper vowel sounds, scholars developed several different sets of vocalization and diacritical symbols called nequdot ( נקודות , literally "points"). One of these, the Tiberian system , eventually prevailed. Aaron ben Moses ben Asher , and his family for several generations, are credited for refining and maintaining the system. These points are normally used only for special purposes, such as Biblical books intended for study, in poetry or when teaching
6408-579: The rebirth of the Hebrew language as a spoken language in the 18th and 19th centuries, especially in Israel . In the traditional form, the Hebrew alphabet is an abjad consisting only of consonants , written from right to left . It has 22 letters, five of which use different forms at the end of a word. In the traditional form, vowels are indicated by the weak consonants Aleph ( א ), He ( ה ), Waw/Vav ( ו ), or Yodh ( י ) serving as vowel letters, or matres lectionis :
6497-659: The region, including many Hebrew and Aramaic words, but there is also Romance. In Max Weinreich 's model, Jewish speakers of Old French or Old Italian who were literate in either liturgical Hebrew or Aramaic , or both, migrated through Southern Europe to settle in the Rhine Valley in an area known as Lotharingia (later known in Yiddish as Loter ) extending over parts of Germany and France. There, they encountered and were influenced by Jewish speakers of High German languages and several other German dialects. Both Weinreich and Solomon Birnbaum developed this model further in
6586-615: The same family of scripts, which flourished during the Achaemenid Empire . The Samaritans , who remained in the Land of Israel, continued to use the paleo-Hebrew alphabet. During the 3rd century BCE, Jews began to use a stylized, "square" form of the Aramaic alphabet that was used by the Persian Empire (and which in turn had been adopted from the Assyrians ), while the Samaritans continued to use
6675-415: The second refers to quantity or diphthongization (−1=short, −2=long, −3=short but lengthened early in the history of Yiddish, −4=diphthong, −5=special length occurring only in Proto-Yiddish vowel 25). Vowels 23, 33, 43 and 53 have the same reflexes as 22, 32, 42 and 52 in all Yiddish dialects, but they developed distinct values in Middle High German ; Katz (1987) argues that they should be collapsed with
6764-642: The term "Hebrew alphabet" refers to the square script unless otherwise indicated. The Hebrew alphabet has 22 letters. It does not have case . Five letters have different forms when used at the end of a word. Hebrew is written from right to left . Originally, the alphabet was an abjad consisting only of consonants , but is now considered an " impure abjad ". As with other abjads, such as the Arabic alphabet , during its centuries-long use scribes devised means of indicating vowel sounds by separate vowel points, known in Hebrew as niqqud . In both biblical and rabbinic Hebrew,
6853-426: The text being transliterated), resulting in "im", "em" and "om", respectively. The diacritic geresh – " ׳ " – is used with some other letters as well ( ד׳ , ח׳ , ט׳ , ע׳ , ר׳ , ת׳ ), but only to transliterate from other languages to Hebrew – never to spell Hebrew words; therefore they were not included in this table (correctly translating
6942-619: The two regions, seeding the Western and Eastern dialects of Modern Yiddish. Dovid Katz proposes that Yiddish emerged from contact between speakers of High German and Aramaic-speaking Jews from the Middle East. The lines of development proposed by the different theories do not necessarily rule out the others (at least not entirely); an article in The Forward argues that "in the end, a new 'standard theory' of Yiddish's origins will probably be based on
7031-461: The various Canaanite languages (including Hebrew, Moabite, Phoenician, Punic, et cetera). The Canaanite dialects were largely indistinguishable before around 1000 BCE. An example of related early Semitic inscriptions from the area include the tenth-century Gezer calendar over which scholars are divided as to whether its language is Hebrew or Phoenician and whether the script is Proto-Canaanite or paleo-Hebrew . A Hebrew variant of
7120-617: The vernacular of the Jews in Roman-era Judea and ancient and early medieval Mesopotamia . The widespread use of Aramaic among the large non-Jewish Syrian trading population of the Roman provinces, including those in Europe, would have reinforced the use of Aramaic among Jews engaged in trade. In Roman times, many of the Jews living in Rome and Southern Italy appear to have been Greek -speakers, and this
7209-785: The vowel qualities in most long/short vowel pairs diverged and so the phonemic distinction has remained. There are consonantal differences between German and Yiddish. Yiddish deaffricates the Middle High German voiceless labiodental affricate /pf/ to /f/ initially (as in פֿונט funt , but this pronunciation is also quasi-standard throughout northern and central Germany); /pf/ surfaces as an unshifted /p/ medially or finally (as in עפּל /ɛpl/ and קאָפּ /kɔp/ ). Additionally, final voiced stops appear in Standard Yiddish but not Northern Standard German. Hebrew alphabet The Hebrew alphabet ( Hebrew : אָלֶף־בֵּית עִבְרִי , Alefbet ivri ), known variously by scholars as
7298-539: The vowel-structure of a given word from its consonants based on the word's context and part of speech. Unlike the Paleo-Hebrew writing script, the modern Hebrew script has five letters that have special final forms , called sofit ( Hebrew : סופית , meaning in this context "final" or "ending") form, used only at the end of a word, somewhat as in the Greek or in the Arabic and Mandaic alphabets . These are shown below
7387-444: The vowels /i/, /e/ and /o/ respectively represent the spoken vowel, whether it is orthographically denoted by diacritics or not. Since the Academy of the Hebrew Language ascertains that א in initial position is not transliterated, the symbol for the glottal stop ʾ is omitted from the transliteration, and only the subsequent vowels are transliterated (whether or not their corresponding vowel diacritics appeared in
7476-608: The work of Weinreich and his challengers alike." Paul Wexler proposed a model in 1991 that took Yiddish, by which he means primarily eastern Yiddish, not to be genetically grounded in a Germanic language at all, but rather as " Judeo-Sorbian " (a proposed West Slavic language ) that had been relexified by High German. In more recent work, Wexler has argued that Eastern Yiddish is unrelated genetically to Western Yiddish. Wexler's model has been met with little academic support, and strong critical challenges, especially among historical linguists. Yiddish orthography developed towards
7565-461: The −2 series, leaving only 13 in the −3 series. In vocabulary of Germanic origin, the differences between Standard German and Yiddish pronunciation are mainly in the vowels and diphthongs . All varieties of Yiddish lack the German front rounded vowels /œ, øː/ and /ʏ, yː/ , having merged them with /ɛ, e:/ and /ɪ, i:/ , respectively. Diphthongs have also undergone divergent developments in German and Yiddish. Where Standard German has merged
7654-513: Was ווײַבערטײַטש ( vaybertaytsh , 'women's taytsh ' , shown in the heading and fourth column in the Shemot Devarim ), with square Hebrew letters (shown in the third column) being reserved for text in that language and Aramaic. This distinction was retained in general typographic practice through to the early 19th century, with Yiddish books being set in vaybertaytsh (also termed מעשייט mesheyt or מאַשקעט mashket —the construction
7743-470: Was emerging as a major Eastern European language. Its rich literature was more widely published than ever, Yiddish theatre and Yiddish cinema were booming, and for a time it achieved the status of one of the official languages of the short-lived Galician Soviet Socialist Republic . Educational autonomy for Jews in several countries (notably Poland ) after World War I led to an increase in formal Yiddish-language education, more uniform orthography, and to
7832-424: Was estimated at the time to be between 500,000 and 1 million. A 2021 estimate from Rutgers University was that there were 250,000 American speakers, 250,000 Israeli speakers, and 100,000 in the rest of the world (for a total of 600,000). The earliest surviving references date from the 12th century and call the language לשון־אַשכּנז ( loshn-ashknaz , "language of Ashkenaz") or טײַטש ( taytsh ),
7921-498: Was the language of street wisdom, of the clever underdog, of pathos, resignation and suffering, all of which it palliated by humor, intense irony and superstition. Isaac Bashevis Singer , its greatest practitioner, pointed out that it is the only language never spoken by men in power. – Paul Johnson , A History of the Jews (1988) Later linguistic research has refined the Weinreich model or provided alternative approaches to
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