Yiddish orthography

Writing of the Yiddish language Letter from Ber Borochov to Shmuel Niger 1913, a sample of Yiddish handwriting. Yiddish orthography is the writing system used for the Yiddish language. Yiddish is written with the Hebrew script, whose letters are used as the basis of a full vocalic alphabet (unlike the abjad system used for the Hebrew language). Over its history, the spelling rules that govern Yiddish orthography have evolved and been subject to several reforms and standardisations, especially in the 20th century. Nonetheless, there remains variation between different ways of writing Yiddish in the present day. In Yiddish orthography, letters that are silent or that represent glottal stops in Hebrew are used to represent Yiddish vowels. There are letters that can serve as both vowels and consonants, which are either read based on context or are differentiated by diacritical marks. These diacritics are derived from Hebrew nikkud and are commonly referred to as "nekudot" or "pintalach" (literally 'points', as they are mostly point-like signs). Additional phonetic distinctions between letters that share the same base character are also indicated by either pointing or adjacent placement