Yiddish diacritics (niqqud/nikkud) are not displayed properly

The diacritics are called nikkuq/niqud, and are used in yiddish, but not Hebrew. 

As far as I understand it, niqqud can also be used in Hebrew to mark vowels, even though that is only rarely done? Is that correct?

That is correct. 

To shed a little light on the topic:

The niqud act as a sort of vowel for the hebrew alphabet. In the hebrew language, these diacritics are often unused. However, in Yiddish, they do show up. They can be either above, in the middle of, or below a letter, and help to distinguish how letters should be pronounced.

Let's take, for example, the letter פ.

In Hebrew, this reads as either a "p" or an "f", depending on context.

In Yiddish, this letter makes a "p" when shown w/o niqud, or when it looks like this:  פּ and an "f" when it looks like this: פֿ. For many keyboards (like the one I'm currently using), these diacritics are separate letters that you type after the letter, so that each one isn't bound to a specific character (since that bar is also used for letters like "v": בֿ). However, in doing this, you sometimes come across fonts and the like that recognize it as wholly separated from its letter, and thus puts it to the side with a circle around it to show where a letter would go. This style makes the language very hard to read.

I would recommend finding a keyboard layout that has the letters with the diacritics attached, rather than one that "combines" them as mentioned above.

It is strange, however, that there are times where the letters are combined correctly and times where they are not. In the attached screenshot, I have two letters for whom the diacritics are not combined, and the same two in another word where the diacritics are combined. 

In the uppermost row, the last five letters, from right to left, are: פּלאַטע. (Sounds like "plateh", but not exactly.)

In the lower row, the penultimate word is "פֿאַר" (like the word "far").

They both make use of the same letter אַ, but it would appear as though only in the first row is it counted as two letters. The other circled letters are the "p" sound and the "f" sound (respectively), as mentioned in an earlier comment.

Here is another case, which has the same letter show up twice in the same word, once combined and once not.

It is true that Yiddish uses some diacritical marks in its script. The usage of diacritics in Yiddish is vastly different from that of Hebrew, as Yiddish has vowels built into its alphabet, while Hebrew on the other hand is technically an abjad. In Yiddish these diacritics do not hold any phonetical value compared to Biblical Hebrew, and most Yiddish speakers (myself included) do not rely on these diacritics in order to understand the language. (During my entire Yiddish education I did not use diacritics once).

I am currently working within Minecraft's Crowdin version in order to remove all nikud from the language. This is an extensive task and requires some cooperation with the site's managers and operators. I have currently contacted the appropriate people for permission, but things take time. So for the time being I have only suggested these edits, as well as some fixes to translations that have been wrongfully translated. Please contact me if you have any questions, or upvote my suggestions on the Yiddish Project on Crowdin.

There has also been another issue concerning Yiddish being formatted wrong and appearing left-to-right on the HUD and on the Creative Menu. This is also something I will contact Mojang and the managers on Crowdin in order to get fixed.

Sincerely,

Thomas Jensen
Twitter: @_baecien
Email: [email protected]

Confirmed in 1.16-pre2.

Confirmed in 1.16-pre5.

In 1.16.1

Can this still be reproduced in 20w30a or later?

Yes, it's still reproducible in 1.16.5.

Can confirm in 1.17.1

I think its need to be merged in one ticket with MC-157148 and MC-41808 ,because if mojang will fix the bug with combining marks, it will fix all of them, cause they all are use the same method to render them.
Someone on MC-157148 arleady said that, and i am think it would be more logical too

Can confirm for Hebrew in 1.17.1.

Can confirm in 21w40a, the same glith just for Hindi (MC-41808) was closed as "Won't Fix", so i very sceptical about the future of this ticket, but i still think that this ticket need to be merged into MC-157148.

I think its very wierd, cause that bug makes languages illegible for native speakers. I dont get it, what point of adding, translating, introducing languages to game if it will be impossible to read them? What makes its even more wierd to me is that this bug not that hard to fix, and thats a pretty serious.

Can confirm in 1.18 Pre-Release 7

Can confirm in 1.18 Pre-Release 8

Can confirm in 1.18 Release Candidate 1

Can confirm in 1.18 Release Candidate 3