Re: Second invention of the alphabet?

Michael Everson wrote:

>At 15:37 -0400 2004-05-27, cowan@... wrote:
>
>
>>Peter T. Daniels scripsit:
>>
>>
>>
>>> Yiddish uses an alphabet, based on German, but with Hebrew shapes.
>>>
>>>
>>In what way is Yiddish writing derived from German writing?
>>It seems to me a natural development from scriptio plena Hebrew writing.
>>
>>
>
>I rather agree. Some of the orthographic choices made by the
>orthographers of Yiddish may have been informed by German
>orthographic practice (obviously it wasn't made in a vacuum), but I
>don't see Yiddish orthography as just being a transliteration of the
>German alphabet.
>

True. Yiddish orthography doesn't map well to German, and never was
supposed to. Of course, it's only relatively recently that Yiddish has
a consistent orthography. I've seen old Yiddish documents that have all
kinds of bizarre spellings, before things got regularized.

~mark