Peter T. Daniels wrote:

> John Cowan wrote:
> >
> > Peter T. Daniels scripsit:
> >
> > > > Returning to the Real World, is Yiddish orthography
> still an abjad,
> > > > or has it too become alphabetic?
> > >
> > > Why would you suggest that Yiddish isn't an alphabet?
> >
> > I was trying to probe whether these labels (alphabet,
> abjad, etc.) refer
> > to scripts or orthographies.
>
> Do explain how such a distinction would work (and how it applies to
> Yiddish). Be sure to include definitions of those two terms as well as
> of "writing system."

While waiting for John's answer, I notice that distinguishing "scripts" from
"orthographies" makes sense by an engineering point of view, such as when
talking about designing typefaces or computer encodings.

In *this* context, you can say that Hebrew and Yiddish use the same "script"
(i.e., they share the same collection of signs, so you can design a typeface
or encoding which works for both languages), although they have different
"orthographic systems" (i.e., the Hebrew language uses all Hebrew letters to
represent consonants, while Yiddish uses some of them for vowels).

Of course, this distinction can be meaningless in other contexts, such as
the scientific study of writing systems.

_ Marco