Your spelling lesson of the day:
Nov. 26th, 2011 07:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conulyYarmulke
That thing that Jewish men wear on their heads? That's a Yiddish word, and that's the accepted English spelling.
Transliterating from Yiddish is tough because it's a Germanic language that's generally (but not, I think, exclusively) written in Hebrew, and when it's NOT written in Hebrew the transliterations seem to follow rules that make sense in German (I'm guessing, I can't find out where people came up with the transliteration conventions from) instead of in English, so you end up with weird spellings like, well, yarmulke.
It's tough to spell, but please - get it right. Variations along the lines of "yamaka" look Japanese instead. You could call it a kippah, which is the Hebrew word and much easier to spell in English, but of course then most people* wouldn't know what you're talking about.
*Well, I guess most Jews would know? I don't know. I only picked up that it's called a kippah as well from a murder mystery, of all things. The hapless housewife runs a needlework shop and a young girl came in for a pattern to make one for her bat mitzvah, and she argued with her grandmother over whether or not to use the Yiddish word or the Hebrew one as she'd been taught in her religious education classes. I learn more things from murder mysteries than you'd expect...!
That thing that Jewish men wear on their heads? That's a Yiddish word, and that's the accepted English spelling.
Transliterating from Yiddish is tough because it's a Germanic language that's generally (but not, I think, exclusively) written in Hebrew, and when it's NOT written in Hebrew the transliterations seem to follow rules that make sense in German (I'm guessing, I can't find out where people came up with the transliteration conventions from) instead of in English, so you end up with weird spellings like, well, yarmulke.
It's tough to spell, but please - get it right. Variations along the lines of "yamaka" look Japanese instead. You could call it a kippah, which is the Hebrew word and much easier to spell in English, but of course then most people* wouldn't know what you're talking about.
*Well, I guess most Jews would know? I don't know. I only picked up that it's called a kippah as well from a murder mystery, of all things. The hapless housewife runs a needlework shop and a young girl came in for a pattern to make one for her bat mitzvah, and she argued with her grandmother over whether or not to use the Yiddish word or the Hebrew one as she'd been taught in her religious education classes. I learn more things from murder mysteries than you'd expect...!
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no subject
Date: 2011-11-28 04:07 pm (UTC)I know next to nothing about Polish, though - perhaps the spelling makes sense there?
no subject
Date: 2011-11-28 04:13 pm (UTC)See, now I really need to know more about how transliteration of Yiddish into the Roman alphabet works, and I can't find anything!
no subject
Date: 2011-11-29 10:26 am (UTC)German wikipedia says that the orthography of Yiddish in Roman letters has been officially fixed by the YIVO in NYC, so maybe you can find out more on their page?
(Probably "Some linguist decided that this was how to do it". But still...)
no subject
Date: 2011-12-06 03:38 pm (UTC)That's sort of like saying "the orthography of English in Roman letters has been officially fixed by [someone]".
Some people use the YIVO orthography, just like some people use the OED orthography - while others use "color" and "theater" and instead follow Merriam-Webster or something like that. Similarly, while YIVO romanisation is *a* standard, I don't think it's the only orthography in common use for Yiddish.