Make cholem vowel distinguishable from letter "sin" in Hebrew

[TYA]

Please make the cholem vowel distinguishable from letter sin in Hebrew (see attached).

[TYA]

And the same, if I'm correct that there is a dagesh hidden behind the aleph in this word.  (But if I'm wrong, let a Hebrew teacher correct me here).

[mbcvida]

the dagesh forte does not appear in the gutteral letters

 

cf:  Ethelyn Simon, Irene Resnikoff, and Linda Motzkin, The First Hebrew Primer: The Adult Beginner’s Path to Biblical Hebrew, 3d; Accordance electronic ed. (Berkeley: EKS Publishing Co., 2005), 21.https://accordance.bible/link/read/First_Hebrew_Primer#465

 

 

 

If the letter 'sin' is not final and has no following vowel, a holem is implied as the dot of the holem coalesces with the dot on the sin - but this depends on the font used - certain fonts will distinguish the two 'dots'

Edited July 9, 2019 by mbcvida

[TYA]

the dagesh forte does not appear in the gutteral letters

 

Great, thanks so much.

 

If the letter 'sin' is not final and has no following vowel, a holem is implied as the dot of the holem coalesces with the dot on the sin

 

Not so sure I understand what you are saying here.

 

The word וְהַשֹּׂרֵף ("the one who burns") in Num 19:8 is tagged as Qal participle masculine singular.  So also is the word הַשֹּׁפֵט (the judge) in Deu 17:12, but the latter has the letter shin instead of sin, so the cholem is clearly visible.  What is the difference between shin and sin, except where the dot sits above it?

 

If the cholem exists for the shin in Deu 17:12, then why not for the sin in Num 19:8?  So, are you saying that the sin in Num 19:8 does have a cholem behind it, and it just isn't visible because of the dot.  Or are you saying that there isn't a cholem behind it, and there doesn't need to be?

 

I see no reason why the dot above the sin would "coalesce," except if the scribes who came up with the nikkudot made an initial rule about this.

Edited July 9, 2019 by TYA

[mbcvida]

The letters sin and shin are distinguished from one another by the placement of a 'dot' over the left side of the letter (sin) or the right side of the letter (shin). Since the sin has the 'dot' on the left side, when a holem is the vowel immediately following the sin, there will often be  the "dot" of the holem, as well as the dot identifying the sin, thus showing two dots. But at other times the "dot" of the holem and the dot of the shin, appear as one dot. The BHS is not consistent in its usage. For instance:

 

Lev 16.28 - one 'dot' serving as the identifier of the letter sin and vowel holem.

2 Kings 17.31 - two 'dots' one for the vowel holem and one for the identifier of the letter sin.

 

If the letter 'sin' only has the one dot, and there does not appear to be a vowel following, the 'dot' of the 'sin' is also the holem.

[TYA]

Lev 16.28 - one 'dot' serving as the identifier of the letter sin and vowel holem.

2 Kings 17.31 - two 'dots' one for the vowel holem and one for the identifier of the letter sin.

 

It actually seems that the words in question in both of these verses have two dots--not just one (see attached).

 

If so, then my request is still that Accordance separate the regular sin dot from the cholem vowel. These two verses mentioned by Dick both show evidence that one dot is occluding the other (and yet that both are indeed present at the same time).  It would be nice if there was a way to separate them a little bit.

Edited July 9, 2019 by TYA

[MattChristianOT]

I could be wrong but I don't think the print versions or the Len. codex is consistent in separation either.

[Iconoclaste]

In the HMT-W4, both verses have a melded cholem+seen-dot, in the BHS, both print and Accordance, there is the difference that is pointed out. 

[Benjamin Denckla]

For purposes of comparison, here's what the 3 element Unicode sequence of shin, sin dot, holam looks like in MS Word, in Windows 10, in 3 of the most popular fonts for pointed Hebrew, and 2 general-purpose fonts, not particularly known for their support of pointed Hebrew. All 5 fonts show the sin dot distinctly from the holam dot. Almost every font takes a different strategy in where the two dots are placed, relative to the base character (shin), but they all "agree" that the two dots should be placed distinctly.

[JonathanHuber]

Michael Carasik noted in his video course on Biblical Hebrew for The Great Courses that some fonts will only show a single dot when a shin has a cholem, and sometimes that merged dot will be slightly larger than normal as an indicator. But even if not, you can still recognize what's going on because there's no other vowel. So this isn't specific to Accordance. 

[Benjamin Denckla]

The Accordance font, when used outside of Accordance, suffers not only from the "coincident collision" of the original post (sin dot coinciding with cholam [chaser]), but also from a somewhat complementary problem, where the cholam [chaser] dot of a lamed collides completely (i.e. coincides) with a shin.

 

Here's a screen shot in Microsoft Word:

And here's a screen shot in Accordance, where somehow the rendering ("shaping") is smarter:

(Reference is Jeremiah 52:31).

 

Perhaps the Accordance font isn't really supposed to be used outside of Accordance?

 

I.e. maybe it is just provided as a nicety for Accordance users, but with no goal of having it behave as well as it does within Accordance?

[Benjamin Denckla]

Small correction to my previous post:

 

When used outside of Accordance, the Accordance font does not suffer from the original post's issue (sin dot coinciding with cholam [chaser] dot). For example:

But it does suffer from this issue when used inside Accordance. For example:

(Reference is Numbers 19:8.)

 

So the two issues are complementary not only in that one affects sin and the other shin, but also in that the sin one only occurs inside Accordance, and the shin one only occurs outside Accordance!

[Benjamin Denckla]

Note that it is not just with respect to shin with shin dot that the combination of lamed with a cholam [chaser] dot causes problems by "invading" the next letter's "above" region. Outside of accordance, consider:

from 1 Kings 12:15 and the same word with a qadma accent instead of a zaqef qatan accent (1 Kings 11:29):

Inside Accordance, the problem is avoided by a rather unconventional placement of the cholam [chaser] dot before the ascender of the lamed, as can be seen here: