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Does anyone know where I can find a transliterator?

It should be for Yiddish and not Hebrew.

EDIT: 02/17/12
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I've been talking to some of the people I play with about using the Yiddish alphabet in my fluff, the way I also use the Cyrillic alphabet for appropriate symbolism. They seemed to think it would work well, and I painted one tank with Yiddish letters on the side.

My opinion of it is that it looks better than I thought it would, especially with a san-serif font. I think, and one of my friends said this also, is that it looks pretty 40k like, specifically sort of like Eldar or Tau letters. (Which could also be based on real life alphabets.)

Another question I have is, how similar is the Yiddish alphabet to the Hebrew alphabet, particularly in terms of sounds that the letters make? I ask because it would be useful for transliterating Latin letters to Yiddish letters. I used Google translate to write (what I believe to be) "for the Emperor" on one of my tanks. I plan to write in German with Latin letters, and then transliterate it. I don't plan for German to be the fluff language, but I'll do something like GW did with High Gothic where in real life it's mostly just Latin with some changes to it, but in the fluff it's supposed to be completely different.

וואַרהאַממער 40000

I take it that says "Warhammer 40,000?"

I say it'd look pretty awesome.

Does anyone know where I can find a transliterator?

It should be for Yiddish and not Hebrew.

it would look realy good on Tau

I think it would look great! This is definitely something I would like to see.

Here some background information about the alphabet:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yiddish_orthography

Here an online dictionary:
http://www.yiddishdictionaryonline.com/

Zol zayn mit mazel!
! זאָל זײַן מיט מזל
Good luck!

Thanks.

Is there a program that does it, for typing?

Also, do you know if there's a way to align text to the right in MediaWiki Text?

Thanks for that, I'll work on making a reference sheet based on that, with the Latin letters in alphabetical order.

The dictionary offers the words and common sentences in Hebrew letters. And you don't want babelfish/googletranslate nonsense written on your tanks, esp. as vocals in Hebrew are tricky (often not written explicitely, sometimes only as marks above the letters, that's why people made Jehova out of the Hebrew word Jahwe, just a wrong guess about where the vocals are). If in doubt, ask your local Rabbi

Here's a tank I'm working on:

Freiwehrkrieg Aschknas built Chimera

Translator?

http://translate.google.com/

It would look sweet if you can pull it off. I intend to have Greek letters on my SM.

Ha, cool interest in a dead language. My grandfather only remembers fragments of his parents speaking yiddish back in the 40's, and even then, my great grandparents probably didn't know too much of either. Plus, there isn't much written yiddish, so it's tough. Some words have just been lost to the times.

I'm not sure, but I think that the differences between Hebrew and Yiddish written language are pretty slim, although some sounds aren't covered by hebrew that have to be subbed in.

Samus_aran115 wrote:Ha, cool interest in a dead language. My grandfather only remembers fragments of his parents speaking yiddish back in the 40's, and even then, my great grandparents probably didn't know too much of either. Plus, there isn't much written yiddish, so it's tough. Some words have just been lost to the times.

I'm not sure, but I think that the differences between Hebrew and Yiddish written language are pretty slim, although some sounds aren't covered by hebrew that have to be subbed in.

I asked about the similarities between German and Yiddish, and they're apparently very similar. If it's rare, that could be helpful for using it in 40k. I do also intend to make changes to languages that I use, since it's not likely that there would be a carbon copy of any current languages in 40k.


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clively wrote:Translator?

http://translate.google.com/

Thanks. I was actually looking for a transliterator though, that would just change the letters after I write out the words. If I don't find one, this will still be useful.

But I would be cautious to mix the German-Nazi-theme (Sturmkrieg) with the Jewish theme, just saying.
(although there were of course Jewish patriots for the German Kaiserreich).

Kroothawk wrote:(although there were of course Jewish patriots for the German Kaiserreich).

That's one of the things I was going for. The subject came up when I was asking my German teacher about words I made up to make sure none of them meant #2 or anything like that, and he said to go for it.

He did ask if they were portrayed positively, which they are. As far as there are good guys in 40k, Aschknas could be considered part of them.

BTW here the Jewish partisan song from WW2, sung in Yiddish by Zupfgeigenhansl:




More Yiddish songs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMXz6K5D8v8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efK-difrlR8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZN80LDku2A

All from this CD: http://www.polkart.de/pages/Zupf/ZF12.html

Thanks.