Hebrew spelling – what about the vowels?

How to spell when localizing for Hebrew

 

  Basically, there are three ways to spell Hebrew words:

• Punctuated Spelling (Ktiv Menukad), some vowels are only used in the punctuation:
  We remove some letters that sound like vowels, and replace them with punctuation marksthat sound like vowels. This is the traditional spelling, used in dictionaries and children’s books. This spelling method is not common in modern texts. Maybe because most people wouldn’t know how to punctuate this way, and typing the punctuation marks is complicated.

• Plene Spelling (Ktiv Male), the vowels are in the letters:We use letters that sound like vowels, to replace vowels punctuation marks.
  This is the spelling method used in modern books and newspapers, often, with some exceptions. This is also the spelling the Hebrew Language Academy’s prefers, when Punctuated Spelling is not used.

• Deficient Spelling (Ktiv Hasser), some vowels are missing: We  remove the punctuation marks, but we don’t use the vowels that should replace them.
  This way, as you can imagine, scores the lowest usability mark and is not commonly used. 

So what’s the problem?

1. We can’t use dictionary spelling with Plene Spelling
   One of the problems is that the rules for using vowels in Plene Spelling are a bit complicated… And when we are not sure, dictionaries don’t help, as they use Punctuated Spelling with vowels punctuation. So, some people use Deficient Spelling as a spelling method, because it saves the struggle with Plene Spelling rules, and it allows using dictionary spelling. But then, they can’t punctuate vowels like the dictionaries do, so the reader is left to struggle with missing vowels.   

2. Books and newspapers often use Plene Spelling mixed with Deficient SpellingBooks and newspapers use Plene Spelling but often spell specific common words in Deficient Spelling.Why? Because the readers got used to read those words in that way, and the Plene Spelling way would look like a spelling mistake.

3.   Usability sometimes forces spelling corrections against spelling rules
   When words are spelled in a way that makes it difficult to read them, or differentiate them from other words spelled the same way, we sometimes ad the vowel, even if it’s against the rules. And some common words spelled with ‘’usability corrections’’ in newspapers and modern texts, end up being the most known forms of those words.

How usability spelling corrections work

 

Think, for example, of the word ‘door’ in English. It’s spelled with oo, that should sound like in ’book’, but actually sounds like o in ’dog’. I’m sure there are good grammatical reasons why it’s spelled with oo and not with o, but it makes reading it a bit difficult. So if ’door’ were a Hebrew word, people and usability could have changed it into ‘dor’. And once this ’dor’ becomes more familiar than ‘door’, sounds correct, and is used by the most popular content publishers, would you be the one who still uses ‘’door’’?

Resolving the ’linguistic vs. usability’ conflict in a localized way

 

When I need to make a spelling choice for a commercial website, I let Google decide. This means I search for each spelling option and look at two things: 1st - The number of results for each option, and 2nd - the popularity and character of the websites that use it. Then, if the usability option gets numerous more results with top native proper websites, I go for it.
Still, if I write / localize for educational websites, I must take the linguistic way, no matter how unpopular it is.

Naturally, once I make a spelling choice, I add it to a list of ’preferred spelling choices’, to make sure it’s used consistently.
And as for breaking spelling rules, I say: when usability wins big, linguistic eventually joins in.

 More info about this:
-Wiki’s clarifications (English)
- A linguist’s Clarifications (Hebrew)