Hebrew Cantillation Marks And Their Encoding

by Helmut Richter

V. Unicode Problems

1. Error pertaining to the characters U+0598 and U+05AE

Since the inclusion of cantillation marks in Unicode version 2.0 (1996), there is confusion about the characters U+0598 HEBREW ACCENT ZARQA and U+05AE HEBREW ACCENT ZINOR.

All sources other than code tables, that is, various grammars of Biblical Hebrew and Breuer's book on cantillation marks (Mordekhai Breuer, Taamey hammiqra be-21 sefarim uvsifrey eme"t; Jerusalem, TShM"B (=1981)), which I took as ultimate referee, agree on the following:

Zarqa, written postpositive to the word, is a distinctive accent used in 21 books of the Bible. The same accent, also postpositive and also distinctive, is called Tsinor in the other 3 books. Such postpositive accents are usually positioned above left of the last letter of the word, but sometimes one may find them also on top of the last letter, with no effect on semantics.
Tsinorit, written on top of a consonant in the beginning or the middle of the word, is a conjunctive accent in the 3 books.
The names Tsinor and Tsinorit are both written with initial TSADI (U+05E6) and not with initial ZAYIN (U+05D6). Following the transcription for all other Hebrew names in Unicode, they should therefore be written with initial "TS-" instead of initial "Z-". Geminated consonants are never reflected in the transcription used for Unicode character names; therefore we write here consistently "Tsinor" and "Tsinorit" instead of the transcription "Tsinnor(it)" in the other chapters of this article.

In contrast to these findings, Unicode (here following Israeli national standard SI 1311-2) makes a distinction between ZARQA and ZINOR (sic!) where ZINOR seems to play the role of Tsinorit, as the much more similar names suggest. This interpretation, to wit that ZINOR should have been TSINORIT, is also supported by the order of the accents: first all distinctive accents in decreasing strength, then the conjunctive accents; in each class first the accents for the 21 books (or for all books), then for the 3 books. From this order, one sees that U+0598 was intended to be a distinctive accent of medium strength in the 21 books - exactly what Zarqa is. However, the glyph chart shows the two characters swapped, and the combining classes (whose impact on normalisation is minimal in this particular case) are in accordance with the glyph chart and not with the above interpretation of the character names.

After the problem was discovered, Unicode decided to fix it by making the minimum possible change to the standard. The characters remain swapped, and the misleading character names remain as well. From Unicode version 4.0 (2003) onward, U+0598 with the name ZARQA denotes such a mark on top of a letter, usually a Tsinorit (or else a Tsinor or Zarqa in an unusual position), and U+05AE with the name ZINOR denotes such a mark above left of the word, i.e. a Tsinor or Zarqa. Note in particular that ZARQA is normally not the right Unicode character to denote a Zarqa. The logical order of the marks, first distinctive then conjunctive marks, has an exception here.

2. Order of characters between Holam and Vav

In the case that a vowel is represented in vocalised text by both a vowel point and a consonant (a mater lectionis), older versions of Unicode failed to define the order of these two characters. In nearly all cases, this order is evident from the typographical appearance which is the same as if one of the consonants had no vowel point. In the case of the combination of Holam and Vav (Holam Male), however, there is a need to define the intended sequence. While many users find the sequence Vav-Holam more natural, some encoding schemes used Holam-Vav in analogy to other pairs, e.g. Hiriq-Yod, in which the mater lectionis follows the vowel point.

Beginning with Unicode version 5.0 (2006), there is an explanation about the possible typographic difference between a Holam Male and a Vav followed by a Holam Haser, and the way this difference can, but need not, be represented in Unicode. Now, one can conclude that the Unicode representation of Holam Male is first Vav then Holam, otherwise this explanation would not make sense.

3. Unclear glyphs

The pictures in the glyphs in the glyph chart are unclear for the following accents. Here is what they should look like:

The accent SEGOL (U+0592) consists of three dots that are close together and not scattered around the top of the base character. Take the picture of the point SEGOL (U+05B6), rotate the whole picture by 180°, and shift the accent into an upper left position like U+0599.
SHALSHELET (U+0593) consists of three complete < signs touching each other, not of two and a half.
DARGA (U+05A7) has sharp corners; it looks like a mirrored Z, not like an S.