Re: Aleph-umlaut

From: Asmus Freytag via Unicode <unicode_at_unicode.org>
Date: Sun, 11 Nov 2018 13:16:01 -0800

On 11 Nov 2018, at 07:03, Beth Myre via Unicode <unicode@unicode.org> wrote:

Hi Mark,

This is a really cool find, and it's interesting that you might have a relative mentioned in it.  After looking at it more, I'm more convinced that it's German written in Hebrew letters, not Yiddish.  I think that explains the umlauts.  Since the text is about Jewish subjects, it also includes Hebrew words like you mentioned, just like we would include beit din or p'sak in an English text.

Here's a paragraph from page 22:

Actually page 21.

<Paragraph.jpg>

I (re-)transliterated it, and it reads:

Taking a picture in the Google Translate app, and then pasting the Hebrew character string it identifies into translate.google.com for Yiddish gives the text:

Wir sind uns dessen bewusst, dass von Seite der Gegenpartei weder Reue(?), noch Einsicht zu erwarten ist und dass sie die Konsequenzen dieser rabbinischen Gutachten von sich abschüttelen werden mit der Motivierung, dass:

vir zind auns dessen bevaust dass fon zeyte der ge- gefarthey veder reye , nakh eynzikht tsu ervarten izt aund dast zya dya kansekventsen dyezer rabbinishen gutakhten fon zikh abshittelen verden mit der motivirung ,  dass :

This agrees rather well with Beth's retranslation.

Mapping "z" to "s",  "f" to "v" and "v" to "w" would match the way these pronunciations are spelled in German (with a few outliers like "izt" for "ist", where the "s" isn't voiced in German). There's also a clear convention of using "kh" for "ch" (as in English "loch" but also for other pronunciation of the German "ch"). The one apparent mismatch is "ge- gefarthey" for "Gegenpartei". Presumably what is transliterated as "f" can stand for phonetic "p". "Parthey" might be how Germans could have written "Partei" in earlier centuries (when "th" was commonly used for "t" and "ey" alternated with "ei", as in my last name).  So, perhaps it's closer than it looks, superficially.

From context, "Reue" is by far the best match for "Reye" and seems to match a tendency elsewhere in the sample where the transliteration, if pronounced as German, would result in a shifted quality for the vowels (making them sound more Yiddish, for lack of a better description).

"abschüttelen" - here the second "e" would not be part of Standard German orthography. It's either an artifact of the transcription system or possibly reflects that the writer is familiar with a different spelling convention (to my eyes the spelling "abshittelen" looks somehow more Yiddish, but I'm really not familiar enough with that language).

But still, the text is unquestionably intended to be in German.

A./

Received on Sun Nov 11 2018 - 15:16:13 CST