The text with Nikudot and Taamim came from the Mechon Mamre web site.Īs you can imagine, designing fonts that take into consideration the proper placement of all of those marks is complicated. The font is called Taamey Frank CLM, part of the free Culmus font collection I mention below. This is a passage from Exodus Chapter 7 – roughly translated as “and the river will swarm with frogs, which will go up and come into your houses”. Nikudot (Vowels) in Blue, Taamim (Cantillation Marks) in Red Here’s an example of Hebrew text with both Nikudot and Taamim: Most modern Hebrew fonts will fall into this category, not only because Israelis don’t use vowels, but because implementing vowels as diacritical marks is a pain in the neck for font designers. 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. Just try it.Even though I live in Israel, my computer operating system runs using English, and almost all the work I do is in English. Of course you can choose between light mode and dark mode.
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With “Display” you can change the color and opacity for the text and background of your Bionic Reading® Reader. With “Letter Spacing” you change the space between the letters and with “Column Width” you give your text the right frame. Choose your preferred “Font” and “Font Size” and adjust the “Line Height”. With “Details” you refine your individual Bionic Reading reading mode. You can also adjust the visibility of the remaining letters individually to your needs. With “Opacity” you define the visibility of your Fixation. Maybe you only want to read nouns, verbs and adjectives with Bionic Reading®.
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With “Advanced Settings” you decide which part of speech the Bionic Reading® algorithm should consider. For monosyllabic words, your Fixation setting is taken into account. With “Syllables” the syllables of the word are used as a basis for the Fixation. Your defined settings for Fixation and Saccade are used by the Bionic Reading® algorithm. With “Letters” you define your personal selection of Fixation and Saccade. With “Saccade” you define the visual jumps from Fixation to Fixation. With “Fixation” you define the expression of the letter combinations.