Hebrew Alphabet

האלף־בית העברי

Customarily, Jews have written not only the Scriptural/Liturgical "Language of Holiness", Hebrew, and the legal language of the Talmuds, Aramaic, in the Hebrew alphabet, but also — in mildly altered forms — their vernacular languages as well. In Mueva Sefarad, the Hebrew alphabet is also used to write a number of Native languages, whose orthographies have spread into the old-young province of Nunavik.

יודייכא Jūḑajcā

Judajca is the official and majority language of Judea. A Levantine Romance language strongly affected by a Hebrew substrate, it is written in a very traditional Hebrew style that conforms to the Tiberian Masoretic orthography for Hebrew.

גלילאה Glīlāā

Galilean is a minority language of Judea, spoken primarily in the Galilee. Closely related to Judajca, it developed from a Romance base with an Aramaic substrate. While objectively a separate language, Galilean is looked down on by many Judeans as "bad Judajca". Also written in a very traditional style.

ייִדיש Yidiš

Yiddish or Judeo-German is the vernacular of the Eastern Ashkenazic Jews of Europe. Spoken in the Republic of the Two Crowns, Russia, and other Eastern European countries, it is also found in Ashkenazic immigrant communities around the world, especially in America.

Yiddish is the Hebrew-alphabet language with the most exact alphabetic orthography. It uses full letters to represent each vowel, and includes mandatory diacritics — especially the dageish dot and rafeh macron — to distinguish between variants of the same letter. Some of the special letters are:

/a/   אַ
/o/   אָ
/dʒ)/ דזש 
/u/   ו
/u/   וּ (used when ambiguous next to the digraph below)
/v/   װ
/oj/  ױ
/ʒ/   זש
/tʃ)/ טש
/i/j/ י
/i/   יִ (used when ambiguous next to /j/ or /u/)
/ej/  ײ
/aj/  ײַ
/x/   כ (used in non-Semitic words)
/e/   ע
/p/   פּ
/f/   פֿ

לאדינו Ladino

Ladino or Judeo-Spanish is the main official language of Mueva Sefarad, and shares characteristics with the other Romance languages of the Iberian peninsula. While it represents all vowels with full letters, it only uses the same matres lectionis place-holders as Hebrew does, leaving the exact quality of the vowel ambiguous.

Ladino uses one modifying diacritic on consonants, the varika — a breve-shaped mark over the letter. Do to the exclusive use of this diacritic in Ladino and Ladino-derived orthographies, technical difficulties sometimes arise when using typewriters and computers made for Yiddish-speaking or Judean markets. When no varika is available, the rafeh may be used instead.

/a/       א (and silent)
/v/       ﬞב
/dʒ)/tʃ)/ ﬞג
/a/       ה (word-finally)
/w/o/u/   ו
/j/e/i/   י
/f/       ﬞפ
/ʒ/       ﬞש

ביאטיקו Beátiko

Beothuk is the Native language of the island region of Mueva Sefarad. Like the other Hebrew orthographies of Native North American languages, Beothuk is written in a Ladino style, with ambiguous vowels and consonants modified by a varika.

 /θ/ ﬞת

איננו איימון Innu Aimun

Innu Aimun refers to the two languages of the Native Innu people, who live on the mainland region of Mueva Sefarad, in New Francy and in Nunavik. Since the Innu consider themselves all one People, their two closely-related languages are known as Innu Aimun Kostero (Coastal Innu) and Innu Aimun Interyor (Inland Innu).

/a/a:/   א (and silent)
/tʃ)/    ﬞג
/h/      ה
/w/u/u:/ ו (Coastal)
/w/o/o:/ ו (Inland)
/j/e:/   י (Coastal)
/j/i/i:/ י (Inland)

אינוטטיטוט Inuttitut

Inuttitut is the majority language of the North American province of Nunavik, most of whose people are Native Inuit. In adapting the Hebrew alphabet to Inuttitut, it was considered to represent /k/ and /q/ as if transliterating from Arabic, with "kaf" and "quf" respectively. However, it was eventually decided to go with the more intuitive Ladino style of representing /k/ with the letter quf, and /q/ with quf-varika.

/a/a:/   א (and silent)
/v/      ﬞב
/ɣ/      ג
/h/      ה
/u/u:/   ו
/j/i/i:/ י
/k/      ק
/ɬ/      ﬞל
/ŋ/      ﬞנ
/q/      ﬞק
/ʁ/      ר