Hebrew Orthography: Does Anyone Care?
Spelling isn’t quite as important as it used to be. When I was a kid, spelling – orthography for the monocle-wearing crowd – was essential since most of writing and correspondence was done by hand. In class, everything was done by hand and my sinister nature (left-handed-ness) caused my teachers great consternation. Being understood correctly without the ubiquity of spell checkers necessitated command of English spelling; otherwise, you’re stuck with the dictionary and look like a moron if you misspell “mispell”.
Nearly everything outside of a pen and paper has a spell checker along with it. In Israel, however, no one seems to care how anything is spelled. One can chalk it up to the fact that Hebrew, despite its ancient origins, is a new language and the country is made up of non-native Hebrew speaking immigrants and Hebrew orthography is not yet calcified.
However, this is no excuse for the blatant disregard for the abundants mispellings decorating Israel.
For instance, at the Ayalon Ha-Shalom junction (next to the Azraeli Towers) there are two signs for Ayalon; one is a blue sign that points to Ayalon North (איילון)and another that signals the off-ramp for Ayalon North (אילון). This is one of the busier intersections in Israel; how can the Roads Authority (or whomever is responsible…) be so clumsy? Both of the signs spell “A-Y-A-L-O-N” in Roman characters so why the disparity in the Hebrew spelling?
To further confuse the situation (and elucidate the orthographic laziness), there are restaurants around the area that incorporate variations of Ayalon, that is אייילון and אילון, so it’s totally unclear which spelling is correct or even if one is actually considered correct.
(To make matters more confusing, the Arabic transliteration of Ayalon is spelled three different ways on three consecutive signs; roughly, Ayaalon, Ayalon, and Aalaayon.)
Another word that one would think would be standardized would be the word for bathroom — sharutim (שרותים). The spelling of bathroom varies from שרותים to שירותים in the same building in the same hallway. Clearly this isn’t cause for much confusion but for consitency it’s baffling. I think שרותים is the correct spelling but who knows.
Part of the blame lies with the Hebrew language itself; as a Semitic language, the vowels are written diacritically (that is, above or below the consonant on which they are supposed to sound). Called nekudot (נקודות), they are a series of dots corresponding to specific sounds. In modern Hebrew, they are generally not written; thus if the pronounciation of the word is unknown to the reader, it may be impossible to tell exactly how to pronounce it.
While the lack of vowels may be part of the reason for the varied spellings of certain Hebrew words, that certainly doesn’t explain all of it. The bulk of the fault lies with whomever writes the words on the signs and the general lack of concern for this from the populace at large.
Having pointed out these glaring omissions to many Israeli, I receive the same response; a shrug of the shoulders and an exasperated, “what do you expect?” I understand the blase response because there are more pressing issues facing the country but the indifferent attitude persists throughout Israeli culture and is indicative of something much more serious than just orthography.
[...] the theme of yesterday’s post about Hebrew orthograpghy, today I’d like to discuss the horrible state of affairs of Hebrew-to-English translation and [...]