StringerBell wrote:I just saw a thread where someone has been asking about how to write sounds that certain Yiddish letters make in Polish. I'm assuming that Yiddish uses the same alphabet and sounds as Hebrew (though maybe I'm wrong here). I'm not sure if you can answer this question, but if anyone here can, I think it would be you! I'm not sure if you've seen the thread, so here is a link:
https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 14&t=10225
Well... almost but not quite. Yiddish uses the Hebrew alphabet, but it isn't used the same way. Unlike in Hebrew, Yiddish words are completely phonetic and you can tell the exact vowels that are used. The exception is Hebrew loanwords, which are spelled the same as in Hebrew so you won't know the vowels unless you know the word. But, Yiddish Hebrew pronunciation is very different from standard Modern Hebrew. For example, Yiddish had a vowel shift from Middle High German where a long /o/ becomes the diphthong /oi/. This is why the Yiddish equivalent to the modern German phrase "o Weh ist mir" (meaning "oh woe is me") is "oy vey iz mir". This sound shift also applies to the Yiddish pronunciation of Hebrew, so the Hebrew name for Moses, משה, is pronounced Moshe /mo.'ʃɛ/ in standard Modern Hebrew but Moyshe /'moi.ʃɛ/ in Yiddish.
Also, the letter ת (tav) could be either hard or soft in classical Hebrew. The hard sound was a /t/, but the soft sound was pronounced /θ/, the voiceless "th" sound. These sounds have merged in Modern Hebrew and are both pronounced /t/, but in Yiddish the distinction is preserved with the soft ת being pronounced /s/ instead of /t/, so the letter ב (bet /bet/ in Modern Hebrew) would be prounced "beys" (/beis/) in Yiddish. The original /θ/ sound is often preserved in English, which is why you may see a Temple Beth Israel or talk about the Sabbath rather than Shabes (Yiddish) or Shabat (Modern Hebrew).
Also, the question doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the Polish language. It has to do with a vowel difference between standard Yiddish and the dialect of Yiddish that comes from Poland, and specifically the question was about how to reflect the difference in an original romanization system.