Маъсул муҳаррир: Филология фанлари доктори, профессор: Г. Х. Боқиева Тақризчилар

The Yiddish dialects
Yiddish has two main branches: Western and Eastern. References to the language without either qualifier are normally taken to apply to Eastern Yiddish, which is the one almost exclusively encountered in present-day speech. This includes three major dialects: Northeastern or Litvish (spoken in the Baltic region, Belarus, and adjacent areas), Mideastern or Poylish (spoken in Poland and other areas of Central Europe), and Southeastern or Ukrainish (spoken in Ukraine and the Balkans). Western Yiddish also included three dialects: Northwestern (spoken in Northern Germany and the Netherlands), Midwestern (spoken in central Germany), and Southwestern (spoken in southern Germany and neighboring regions). These have a number of clearly distinguished regional varieties, plus many local subvarieties.
Some authors use the term Southeastern Yiddish as a collective designation for both Poylish and Ukrainish while still applying the term Northeastern Yiddish to Litvish. The single most populous dialect is Poylish, which together with Ukrainish is used by as many as three quarters of all Yiddish speakers.
As with many other languages with strong literary traditions, there was a more or less constant tendency toward the development of a neutral written form acceptable to the speakers of all dialects. In the early twentieth century, for both cultural and political reasons, particular energy was focused on developing a modem Standard Yiddish. This contained elements from all three Eastern dialects but its phonetic attributes were predominantly based on Northeastern pronunciation. A separate article describes the resulting modem Standard Yiddish phonology, without separate detail about the phonetic variation among the three contributing dialects or the further distinctions among the myriad local varieties that they subsume.
"There is no standard pronunciation in Yiddish. However, the members and friends of the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research, New York, have strong views on the subject. They are convinced that Yiddish should not differ in this respect from the great Western languages, and so they are willing to introduce a standard one. In their publications they speak as if it were already in existence, but this is wishful thinking - acceptance of their system being restricted to their circle. The original proponents of this “standard” were speakers of the Northern dialect and so, without further ado and without discussing the matter or giving any reasons, they decided that their own pronunciation was the 'standard'. However, the man in the street knows nothing about it. If he happens to be a Southerner he does not exchange his rich phonemic system for the meagre one of the Northern dialect. He does not even know that this is 'supposed to be' the 'standard'. And if he is a Northerner, he goes on speaking as before, without realizing that he would need to change only one of his vowels in order to qualify as a speaker of the 'standard'. It is ironic that the partisans of the 'standard' - all convinced democrats - should ask the majority of Yiddish-speakers to switch over from their own pronunciation to that of a minority, comprising only a quarter of all Yiddish speakers."
Recent criticism of modern Standard Yiddish is expressed by Michael Wexin several passages in Wex 2005. Regardless of any nuance that can be applied to the consideration of these arguments, it may be noted that modern Standard Yiddish is not used by mother-tongue speakers and is not evoked by the vast bulk of Yiddish literature. It has, however, become the norm in present-day tuition of Yiddish as a foreign language and is therefore firmly established in any discourse about the development of that language.
Between 1992 and 2000, the Institute for Jewish Research published a three-volume Language and Cultural Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry, commonly referred to as the LCAAJ. This provides a detailed description of the phonetic elements of what is presented as an Eastern-Western dialect continuum, and mapping their geographic distribution.
The Yiddish language is written using Hebrew script as the basis of a full vocalic alphabet. Some letters that are consonants in the Hebrew language are used in Yiddish to indicate vowels. Other letters that can serve as either vowels or consonants are differentiated by combining diacritical marks with the base character. Additional phonetic distinctions between letters that share the same base character are also indicated by diacritics, or by the adjacent placement of otherwise silent base characters. The Yiddish. Combining marks, commonly .referred to as "points", are derived from the Hebrew nikud. Several Yiddish points are, however, not commonly used in any present-day Hebrew context and others are used in a manner that is specific to Yiddish orthography. There is significant variation in the way this is applied in literary practice. There are also several differing approaches to the disambiguation of characters that can be used as either vowels or consonants.
Words of Aramaic and Hebrew origin are normally written in the traditional orthographies of the source languages. All other Yiddish vocabulary is represented with a phonetic orthography. Both can appear in a single word, for example, where a Yiddish affix is applied to a Hebrew stem. Yiddish pointing may also be applied to words that are otherwise written entirely with traditional orthography.
In the early twentieth century, for both cultural and political reasons, focused efforts were made at developing a uniform Yiddish orthography. A specimen initial practice is described in detail by the Yiddish lexicographer Alexander Harkavy in a Treatise on Yiddish Reading, Orthograph and Dialectal Variations first published in 1898 together with his Yiddish-English Dictionary (Harkavy 1898), and available online (beginning with the section headed Yiddish reading). Additional illustrations of this variation are provided in source excerpts in Fishman, 1981, which also contains a number of texts specifically about the need (pro and con) for a uniform orthography.
The first action formally undertaken by a government was in the Soviet Union in 1920, with the abolition of the separate etymological orthography for words of Semitic origin. This was extended twelve years later with the elimination of the five separate final-form consonants (as indicated in the table below) which were, however, reintroduced in 1961. The efforts preliminary to the 1920 reform, which took place in several countries - most notably in Poland with focus on a uniform school curriculum - resulted in other devices that were not implemented by governmental mandate.
Individual Yiddish letters and letter combinations may be pronounced quite differently in the various Yiddish dialects. Whatever impact this may have on the discussion of standardized orthography, it becomes a significant factor when Yiddish is transliterated into other scripts. It is entirely possible to assign a specific character or sequence of characters in, for example, the Roman alphabet to a specific character or character sequence in the Yiddish, alphabet. This is a fundamental consideration in the preparation of multilingual dictionaries and any such work will either explicitly or implicitly be associated with a single consistent transliteration system. The transliterated form of an individual word will, however, be pronounced in a manner that appears natural in the target language. A choice therefore needs to be made about which of the several possible pronunciations of the Yiddish word is to be conveyed prior to its transliteration.
The Harkavy treatise cited above describes a system of romanization that is based on the pronunciation of the Northeastern Yiddish dialect, Litvish. This was also a mainstay of the standardization efforts of YIVO, resulting in the romanization system described in detail below. These two initiatives provide a convenient framework within which the intervening developments may be considered. There was significant debate about many aspects of that sequence, including contention about the need for any form of standardized orthography at all.
There was also consideration of the outright replacement of Hebrew script with Roman script in the native representation of written Yiddish. Romanization can therefore not be seen exclusively in a lexicographical perspective. A number of Yiddish books are currently available in Romanized editions, including Yiddish dictionaries.
There is no general agreement about the transliteration of Hebrew into the Roman alphabet. The Hebrew component of a Yiddish text will normally reflect the transliterator's preference without being seen as a component of the methodology applied to the romanization of words presented in the phonetic orthography.