ייִדישער אַלף־בית (yidisher alef-beys)
Yiddish is written in the Hebrew alphabet, from right to left. Unlike Hebrew it spells out every vowel with letters such as אַ, אָ, ע and ײ, while words from Hebrew keep their Hebrew spelling.
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The 22 Hebrew letters plus the pointed letters and letter pairs that Yiddish treats as letters of their own, in YIVO order. Final forms are shown next to their letter.
Sounds written with two or three letters.
Hebrew leaves most vowels unwritten; Yiddish writes all of them. אַ is a, אָ is o, ו is u, י is i, ע is e, and the pairs ײ, ײַ and ױ are ey, ay and oy. So a Yiddish word of Germanic or Slavic origin can be read aloud straight from its spelling: קאַץ is kats (cat).
Words from Hebrew and Aramaic are spelled as in Hebrew, mostly without vowels, so they must be learned: חתונה is khasene (wedding), חבֿר is khaver (friend). The letters בֿ, ח, כּ, שׂ, תּ and ת are used only in such words.
A word never starts with a vowel written ו, י, ױ, ײ or ײַ. A silent alef (shtumer alef) is written in front instead: אױג (oyg, eye), איך (ikh, I), אײַז (ayz, ice).
A dot or a small bar turns one letter into another: פּ is p and פֿ is f, כּ is k and כ is kh, תּ is t and ת is s, שׂ is s and ש is sh, בֿ is v and ב is b. Outside Hebrew words, only פּ and פֿ need these marks.
As in Hebrew, five letters have a special form at the end of a word: כ → ך, מ → ם, נ → ן, פֿ → ף, צ → ץ. The sound stays the same: בוך (bukh, book).
This page uses the standard YIVO spelling and romanization. Many books, newspapers and Hasidic texts use older or different spellings, often leaving out the vowel points, for example ײַ without its pasekh, or אידיש instead of ייִדיש (Yiddish).
Letter inventory checked against Unicode CLDR.