
Typing in Yiddish - gruseom
https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/284087/typing-in-yiddish
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jsharf
It's interesting to see that the old yiddish typewriter layout is actually not
identical to the modern hebrew typing layout.

While they're almost identical, about 5 letters have been swapped: ח, א, ס, ף,
and ב is just removed from where it is in the modern layout, and moved to the
top right, in a location that modern keyboard's don't have (to the right of
where P would be, in QWERTY).

~~~
azernik
Well of course it's not identical - they were assembled independently (this
one by some random schmoe in New York) optimized for different letter and
digram frequencies in different languages. I'm actually impressed by how
_similar_ they are.

Another reason for difference, aside from frequency differences in the two
languages, is that this keyboard distinguishes some characters that aren't on
modern Hebrew keyboards. For example, there are separate אָ and א, בּ and ב,
etc.

~~~
MagicPropmaker
And double yod and double vov. Microsoft still had a proper Yiddish keyboard
map available. Apple doesn’t.

~~~
nanna
> Microsoft still had a proper Yiddish keyboard map available

Do they?

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nanna
Oh my. I'm the maker of the only-cross platform Yiddish keyboard (well, macOS,
Windows, Linux). I've made variants of QWERTY and the Israeli keyboard and
they've been well received but life got in the way, they've suffered from
bitrot, I had to take my site down,[0] people have asked me to put it back up
and its been nagging me on my to do list for ages.

This post has given me resolve to sort it out today!

Also, I'd never heard of this Jonas and I'm going to add his variant too.

[0]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20141218093006/http://shretl.org...](https://web.archive.org/web/20141218093006/http://shretl.org/)

~~~
metaprotocol
The archived images of your Yiddish keyboard look good.

~~~
nanna
Thanks for looking!

Apparently the Windows one never survived the transition to Windows 10, so I
need to look at it again.

As for the macOS and Linux ones... I must admit I haven't actually tried them
in a while... Assistance or testing really appreciated!

[https://gitlab.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&snippets=&scope=&se...](https://gitlab.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&snippets=&scope=&search=yiddish)

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metaprotocol
Assimil have an excellent Yiddish language course.

I would like to one day, be able to read Isaac Bashevis Singer in the
original.

~~~
nanna
Haven't tried Assimil's course, but I'd recommend Lily Kahn's excellent
Routledge guide, Colloquial Yiddish, which aside from being pedagogically
excellent is very funny and had me laughing a lot.

[https://www.amazon.com/Colloquial-Yiddish-Lily-
Kahn/dp/04155...](https://www.amazon.com/Colloquial-Yiddish-Lily-
Kahn/dp/0415580196)

There are also many courses on offer around the world. One of the great things
about them is they tend to also pass down Yiddish culture too, not just the
language. Happy to help you find one and get you on track to read IB Singer!

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ngcc_hk
It is a manual for basically one or max two writer of the author! Private
language we may argue but we know private typewriter existed.

