Re: Aleph-umlaut

On 11/11/2018 1:37 PM, Hans Åberg wrote:
>> On 11 Nov 2018, at 22:16, Asmus Freytag via Unicode <unicode_at_unicode.org> wrote:
>>
>> On 11/11/2018 12:32 PM, Hans Åberg via Unicode wrote:
>>>> On 11 Nov 2018, at 07:03, Beth Myre via Unicode <unicode_at_unicode.org>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hi Mark,
>>>>
>>>> This is a really cool find, and it's interesting that you might have a relative mentioned in it. After looking at it more, I'm more convinced that it's German written in Hebrew letters, not Yiddish. I think that explains the umlauts. Since the text is about Jewish subjects, it also includes Hebrew words like you mentioned, just like we would include beit din or p'sak in an English text.
>>>>
>>>> Here's a paragraph from page 22:
>>>>
>>> Actually page 21.
>>>
>>>
>>>> <Paragraph.jpg>
>>>>
>>>> I (re-)transliterated it, and it reads:
>>>>
>>> Taking a picture in the Google Translate app, and then pasting the Hebrew character string it identifies into translate.google.com for Yiddish gives the text:
>>>
>>>
>>>> Wir sind uns dessen bewusst, dass von Seite der Gegenpartei weder Reue(?), noch Einsicht zu erwarten ist und dass sie die Konsequenzen dieser rabbinischen Gutachten von sich abschüttelen werden mit der Motivierung, dass:
>>>>
>>> vir zind auns dessen bevaust dass fon zeyte der ge- gefarthey veder reye , nakh eynzikht tsu ervarten izt aund dast zya dya kansekventsen dyezer rabbinishen gutakhten fon zikh abshittelen verden mit der motivirung , dass :
>> This agrees rather well with Beth's retranslation.
>> Mapping "z" to "s", "f" to "v" and "v" to "w" would match the way these pronunciations are spelled in German (with a few outliers like "izt" for "ist", where the "s" isn't voiced in German). There's also a clear convention of using "kh" for "ch" (as in English "loch" but also for other pronunciation of the German "ch"). The one apparent mismatch is "ge- gefarthey" for "Gegenpartei". Presumably what is transliterated as "f" can stand for phonetic "p". "Parthey" might be how Germans could have written "Partei" in earlier centuries (when "th" was commonly used for "t" and "ey" alternated with "ei", as in my last name). So, perhaps it's closer than it looks, superficially.
>> From context, "Reue" is by far the best match for "Reye" and seems to match a tendency elsewhere in the sample where the transliteration, if pronounced as German, would result in a shifted quality for the vowels (making them sound more Yiddish, for lack of a better description).
>>
>> "abschüttelen" - here the second "e" would not be part of Standard German orthography. It's either an artifact of the transcription system or possibly reflects that the writer is familiar with a different spelling convention (to my eyes the spelling "abshittelen" looks somehow more Yiddish, but I'm really not familiar enough with that language).
>>
>> But still, the text is unquestionably intended to be in German.
> One should not rely too much these autotranslation tools, but it may be quicker using some OCR program and then correct by hand, than entering it all by hand. The setup did not admit transliterating Hebrew script directly into German. It seems that the translator program recognizes it as Yiddish, though it might be as a result of an assumption it makes.

Well, the OCR does a much better job than the "translation".

> The German translation it gives:
> Unsere Sünde kommt von der Seite der Verletzten, nachdem sie darauf gewartet hat, erwartet zu werden, und nachdem sie die Vorstellungen dieser rabbinischen Andachten kennengelernt haben, haben sie begonnen, mit der Motivation zu schließen:

This is simply utter nonsense and does not even begin to correlate with
the transliteration.

> And in English:
> Our sin is coming out of the side of the injured side, after waiting to be expected, and having the concepts of these rabbinical devotiones, they have begun to agree with the motivation:

In fact, the English translation makes somewhat more sense. For example,
"Gegenpartei" in many legal contexts (which this sample isn't, by the
way) can in fact be translated as "injured party", which in turn might
correlate with an "injured side" as rendered. However "Seite der
Verletzten" makes no sense in this context, unless there's a Hebrew word
that accidentally matches and got picked up.

(I'm suspicious that some of the auto translation does in fact work like
many real translations which often are not direct, but involve an
intermediate language - simply because it's not possible to find
sufficient translators between random pairs of languages.).

>
> From the original Hebrew script, in case someone wants to try out more possibilities:
> וויר זינד אונס דעססען בעוואוסט דאסס פֿאָן זייטע דער גע־ געפארטהיי וועדער רייע , נאך איינזיכט צו ערווארטען איזט אונד דאסט זיא דיא קאַנסעקווענצען דיעזער ראבבינישען גוטאכטען פֿאָן זיך אבשיטטעלען ווערדען מיט דער מאָטיווירונג , דאסס :
>
>
I don't know what that will tell you. You have a rendering that produces
coherent text which closely matches a phonetic transliteration. What
else do you hope to learn?

A./
Received on Sun Nov 11 2018 - 17:00:06 CST