Soviet Yiddish
The Soviet Union designated Yiddish an official ethnic language but required a number of changes, often for ideological reasons. Gennady Estraikh has written about this in detail in his book,
Soviet Yiddish: Language Planning and Linguistic Development.
Estraikh discusses a number of orthographic changes, but the most obvious seem to be:
- Elimination of word-final forms (nun, mem, fey, khof, tsadik)
- Phonetic spelling of Hebrew-Aramaic derived words
- Use of [ba] for either preposition or prefix
- No pasekh alef (same letter--for vocalized or silent alef).
- Explicit spelling of [af] (preposition) and [uf] (prefix), instead of spelling [oyf] for both
These changes are evident in a collection of Y.L.Perets stories published in Moscow in 1959. His well known story, "Sholem Bayis" can be compared here in
Buffalo Yiddish Home
Contact: yiddish@bfn.org