yeshivish orthography

Despite the lack of seriousness with which it is treated, it seems to me that the Yeshivish sociolect of English bears great similarity to other Jewish languages in their formative states. It is interesting to speculate how it would be written if the Hebrew alphabet were adapted to it, as happened to many other Jewish languages. Although I doubt this will ever happen given the contemporary sociolinguistic situation, here is an experimental proposal (which probably requires some tweaking):

1) Hebrew and Yiddish loanwords are written in their original orthography. Thus nezek = נזק, Yiddish = אידיש, etc.

2) English words which contain sounds that also exist in Yiddish are written phonetically according to Yiddish conventions:
soon = סון
eat = איט
table = טייבל

This allows acceptable variation where Yiddish orthography would also vary:
do = דו or דוא
nod = נאַד or נאד

Silent consonants may be included if desired:
debt = דעט or דעבט

3) The English consonants /θ ð ŋ w/ (written ) have the following representations:

/θ/ : ת
thimble = תימבל
(other options: ת', תה)

/ð/ : ד
this = דיס
(other options: ד', ת, תה, דה)

/ŋ/ : נג
thing = תינג

/w/ : ו; if needed to distinguish from vocalic ו or consonantal וו, use וא;
week = ואיק
well = ועל
womb = ואומב

4) Each word below shows how its first vowel is written. Note the influence of Daytshmerish-style doubled consonants on vowel quality:

cat = קאַטט
cot = קאַט
caught = קאָט
about = עבאַוט
[spott]ed = ספ?טעד
sit = סיטט
seat = סיט
date = דייט
bed = בעד
bird = בערד
bared = ביירד
but = באָט
put = פוטט
you = יו
my = מײַ
boy = בוי
no = נאָו
now = נאַו

Note that there is some ambiguity (the quality of אָ), but this is probably an acceptable amount. Also, the Daytshmerish doubling is optional and lengthening ה's may be used instead or in addition, e.g. סיהט = seat.

Now to illustrate this orthography, here is an excerpt from the Yeshivish Gettysburg address:
בערך א יובל אַנד א האַלף עגאָו, דע מייסדים שטעלד אַוועק אָן דיס מקום א נײַע מלכות ואית דע כוונה דאטט נאָואָן שולד האוו בעלות אָואווער דייר חבר, אנד אָן דיס יסוד דאטט עווריואָן האזז דע זעלבע זכותים.
Be'erech a yoivel and a half ago, the meyasdim shtelled avek on this makom a naiya malchus with the kavana that no one should have bailus over their chaver, and on this yesoid that everyone has the zelba zchusim.

Lateral stability

The letter 'sin' שֹ is known to have originally been pronounced distinctly from both 'shin' שׁ and 'samekh' ס. The letter 'sin' occurs precisely in words where Arabic has a /ʃ/ sound (like in ship), e.g. עשרה = Ar. /ʕaʃra/, showing that the common ancestor of Hebrew and Arabic had a distinct sound wherever this letter occurs. In fact, some obscure Semitic languages (the Modern South Arabian languages) have preserved this sound.

It's thought that sin was originally pronounced as a voiceless lateral fricative /ɬ/, like Welsh llwyd 'gray'. This sound is pronounced similarly to /l/ (as in land), but without vibration of the vocal cords, as if whispering, and often with a 'hushing' articulation. It's also often found in disordered speech. (I personally know someone who pronounces /ʃ/ as [ɬ] in English.) Some English loanwords show that sin had an l-like sound, like Balsam for Hebrew בשם and Chaldean for כשדי.

/ɬ/ (sin) and /s/ (samekh) must have begun merging quite early, since samekh is often used for sin in later books of the Tanakh. However Samaritans pronounce sin as /ʃ/, merging it with shin rather than samekh.

Why did the letter ש serve to indicate two consonants? The Hebrew alphabet was borrowed from the Phoenicians, for whom the sound /ɬ/ had already been lost, so the letter ש was adopted for this purpose. Actually other letters in the Hebrew alphabet also indicated multiple sounds, but that can wait for a different post...

'yk 'pšr lqr' dbr kzh?

I highly recommend Emuanuel Tov's Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible. It's thorough and well-written. Unfortunately Tov's citations rub me the wrong way. Let me give an example:

• S. Goren, "htpylyn mmdbr yhwdh l'wr hhlkh," Mḥnym 62 (1962) 5-14.

I understand the idea. Hebrew has never acquired a standard romanization scheme, its potential pinyin confounded by conflict between the historical and modern, the written and the spoken. It seems logical to avoid the issue by mapping graphemes one-to-one, with few diacritics needed (only for ח,ט,ש, and some sort of chupchik for ע)...

...however, this borders on insanity. Who is helped by the omission of vowels? Excluding the typist (laziness is no excuse), no reader could be facilitated by this wholesale omission. No one has practice reading sans vowel in Latin script besides Egyptologists, and anyone who knows enough Hebrew to actually check out an article in the language would be able to read any other sort of transcription and infer how to write it in its original script. For that matter, what's wrong with just writing the title in Hebrew script?

Unfortunately, I find that it's rare to read anything that's been transliterated without feeling some sort of disdain towards someone. And I admit to the crime myself: I code-switch between Israeli, Ashkenazi, and Academic. There's lots more I could say about this matzav but I think I'll save myself some material for another post...