Yiddish Pronounciation

Yiddish speakers do pronounce words somewhat differently depending on the country and region they (or their Yiddish-speaking ancestors) come from. Of course it's also true that the English that you hear in Hahvahd Yahd is not quite the same as you'd hear on toity-toid street in Brooklyn. Y'all get my drift?

That said, the native alphabet in which Yiddish is written is, of course, Hebrew, and Yiddish is written and read right-to-left when the Hebrew alphabet is used. The Ashkenazic pronunciation of most Hebrew letters and vowels is used for Yiddish. In addition, there are a few Hebrew letter combinations used frequently in Yiddish which do not traditionally occur in Hebrew. There are a few other variations for Yiddish usage as well. Note the overscores on בֿ and פֿ.

^*  The letters תּ(t), ת(s), כּ(k), and ח(ch as in "loch") occur in words which Yiddish has taken from Hebrew.
    ט(t), ס(s), ק(k), and כ[or ך](ch) are generally used for these sounds in words of other derivations.

Yiddish Transliteration

For those of us not readily comfortable with Ashkenazic Hebrew we'll attempt to transliterate and represent the Yiddish in the characters of the Roman alphabet, and to write and read it left-to-right. It seems there are many variations on this theme. As much as possible we'll use the transliteration scheme which is used for Hebrew in the publications of the Union for Reform Judaism, as that scheme is fairly straight-forward and familiar. Again it needs some extensions for Yiddish.

In addition we will follow the lead of most other transliterations and agree that if a Yiddish word has already become common in everyday English usage, we will use a "normal English" spelling even if that may not be the best transliteration. For example, we'll use "Shabbos" rather than "Shabes".