Yiddish orthography

How Yiddish is spelled and written Letter from Ber Borochov to Shmuel Niger 1913, a sample of Yiddish handwriting. Yiddish orthography is the writing system used for the Yiddish language. It includes Yiddish spelling rules and the Hebrew script, which is used as the basis of a full vocalic alphabet. Letters that are silent or represent glottal stops in the Hebrew language are used as vowels in Yiddish. Other letters that can serve as both vowels and consonants are either read as appropriate to the context in which they appear, or are differentiated by diacritical marks derived from Hebrew nikkud, commonly referred to as "nekudot" or "pintalach" (literally "points" as those marks 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 of otherwise silent base characters. Several Yiddish points are not commonly used in any latter-day Hebrew context; others are used in a manner that is specific to Yiddish orthography. There is significant variation in the way this is applied in literary practice. There are also several differing approaches to the disambiguation of char