B-Hebrew: The Biblical Hebrew Forum

The Leningrad Codex has two accents in the Sifrei Emet (Job, Proverbs, Psalms) that are displayed by a single graphic in all the well-known modern Hebrew fonts: SBL Hebrew, Ezra SIL, Taaamey Frank CLM. These accents are the yerach ben yomo (Unicode x05aa) and the atnach hafukh (Unicode x05a2).

Does anyone know of font that distinguishes between these two accents? It need not be pretty1

Chris Kimball
West Redding, CT
USA

I don't think they would be distinguished in any font. It's just like there is no distinction on the keyboard between mappiq (הּ), dagesh (בּ) and the dot of shuruk (וּ).

Jason Hare wrote: ↑Sat Sep 25, 2021 3:44 pm I don't think they would be distinguished in any font. It's just like there is no distinction on the keyboard between mappiq (הּ), dagesh (בּ) and the dot of shuruk (וּ).

Then again, there is a difference in Arial font. U+05A2 is Atnah Hafukh, and U+05AA is Yerah Ben Yomo. So, they have different Unicode standards for position.

The question is if typesetters use them independently. I've noticed that a lot of typesetters don't distinguish between cholam-vav (as in מַצּוֹת) and cholam-chaser on vav (as in מִצְוֺת). This should be a basic distinction, but it isn't observed in all texts.

The Leningrad Codex ca 1006 CE does distinguish between them. The yerach ben yomo (new moon) is a cup semi-circle; the atnach hafukh is an etnachta upside down. They're very different, easily distinguished in the LC. See Psalms 5:10 in the photocopies of the LC for an example of both.

Chris Kimball
West Redding, CT
USA

Oh, you're looking for a font in which they have a different visual appearance? Hmm... I'm not home now and cannot look through my fonts, but I'll check tomorrow to see what I have and if they distinguish. I thought you were asking about different Unicode placements on the fonts, so it was hard to think that they didn't have the distinction, since it exists in the code.

It's kinda like having a visual distinction between kamats and kamats katan. They do exist as different glyphs in Unicode, but most fonts don't distinguish them visually--which really irritates me.

Exactly!

While Unicode has Code points for the kamatz and a kamatz katan, a given font may produce the same graphic for both code points. That is, the font doesn't distinguish between the two codepoints: they look the same.

SBL Hebrew, Ezra SIL, and Taamey Frank CLM do not distinguish between the yerach ben yomo and the atnach hafukh code points. They show a atnach hafukh for both code points.

At current count, the LC has 54 yerach be Yomos and 198 atnach hafukhs; thus the graphic is correct in 4 of 5 instances. A merchha kefula occurs only 14 times, a qarney para only 16 times, a shalshelet only 46 times. So a true yerach ben yomo isn't as rare as some other infrequent marks.

Chris Kimball
West Redding, CT
USA

I've been using the font Shofar a lot recently. Just checked these accents on it, and they look different.

See the attached image.

This font also has a slight visual distinction between kamats and kamats katan, as you can see. I once saw a printing of a Tikkun Kor'im in which the printers circled all instances of kamats katan. I wish I had a font that did that. I would use it for beginners when teaching. The slight elongation just isn't clear enough.

Thanks!

ShofarRegular.ttf does the trick! I got mine from culmus-0.133 at <https://sourceforge.net/projects/culmus ... mus/0.133/> .

Chris Kimball
West Redding, CT
USA

Jason Hare wrote: ↑Sun Sep 26, 2021 10:51 am This font also has a slight visual distinction between kamats and kamats katan, as you can see. I once saw a printing of a Tikkun Kor'im in which the printers circled all instances of kamats katan. I wish I had a font that did that. I would use it for beginners when teaching. The slight elongation just isn't clear enough.


shofar-accents2.jpg

This is off topic, but I wonder why don’t we switch to Tiberian pronunciation of vowels, and avoid complicated rules for Kamats Katan. It appears they had the same sound (ɔ) for Kamats and Kamats Katan.