Yiddish digraphs

There are three so-called "Yiddish digraphs" in Unicode:
  U+05F0 wawayim
  U+05F1 waw yod
  U+05F2 yodayim

What is specifically Yiddish about these digraphs?
They can be used in the same way in Hebrew.
But this isn't done. Why not?

http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%F8%E9%E9_%F7%E5%F8%F6%E5%E5%E9%E9%EC
http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%F8%D6_%F7%E5%F8%F6%D4%D6%EC

Why should Yiddish be written with special digraphs
but Hebrew with sequences of two letters?

But even in Yiddish, the digraphs are not really used:

http://yi.wikipedia.org/wiki/%F8%F2%F7%E9%E0%E5%E5%E9%F7
http://yi.wikipedia.org/wiki/%F8%F2%F7%E9%E0%D4%E9%F7

The Unicode Standard says:
| ... to distinguish the digraph double vav from an occurrence
| of a consonantal vav followed by a vocalic vav.

By that reasoning you would need an English digraph "sh"
to distinguish "sh" in "shit" from "s-h" in ***hole. ;-)
Received on Wed Oct 19 2011 - 12:43:41 CDT