That said, if you plan on printing something in Hebrew that is going to be read by someone not fully fluent in Hebrew, including vowels is a good idea.Ĭategory 3 is the largest category of fonts. Vowels are also frequently used in the publication of Hebrew prayer books. Newspapers published for people new to Hebrew (such as immigrants to Israel) use vowels, as it makes it easier to read the Hebrew (one doesn’t need to figure out the word based on context). You won’t, for example, see them in most books or newspapers. In modern Israeli Hebrew, these vowels are usually not used. There are other interpretations of the Taamim, but they are beyond the scope of this post.Ĭategory 2 includes Hebrew vowels, which unlike in English, are not letters, but diacritical marks. Taamim (cantillation marks) are used to show the reader of a passage how to pronounce that passage when reading it aloud in synagogue. So first, I should point out that there are different ways to divide Hebrew fonts, and I’ll take a look at a few.įirst, Hebrew fonts can be divided into three categories:ġ) Fonts that support Nikudot (vowels) and Taamim (cantillation marks – also called Trop in Yiddish)Ģ) Fonts that support Nikudot (vowels) but do not support Taamimģ) Fonts that support neither Nikudot nor TaamimĬategory 1 is essentially only needed when one is reproducing a biblical passage, and not always. Keep in mind I’m not going to explain how to use these fonts on your computer, that’s a whole different topic. Most of the sites I’m going to point out have free fonts, although I’ll also include a few commercial sites. In this post I’m going to share some places you can find Hebrew fonts. By the way, if you do want to transcribe Yiddish, an interesting tool online is called the Yiddish Typewriter and it lets you enter Yiddish in various forms, and it then outputs it into many more forms (including YIVO transcription, IPA transcription, PDF, Image (GIF, etc.) – it looks quite useful. Another use is transcribing family letters written in Yiddish (Yiddish uses the Hebrew alphabet). When publishing books on your family history, having the right fonts to publish those transcriptions can be very important. One problem is that I don’t have a lot of Hebrew fonts on my computer, and usually whatever project I’m working on requires something slightly different (requiring me to find an appropriate font).įor genealogists, one use for Hebrew, even for those who do not speak Hebrew, is to transcribe the exact text on Jewish gravestones, which are frequently partially (and sometimes completely) in Hebrew. That said, I occasionally have the need to do some work in Hebrew, which presents some problems. Even though I live in Israel, my computer operating system runs using English, and almost all the work I do is in English.
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