There are exactly two Hebrew vowels that are spacing glyphs: holam male and shuruq. Neither one is encoded in Unicode. Neither one is a Hebrew letter (in the traditional sense) nor is either a combining mark. I thought some new nomenclature was in order. Since there are general category Lo code points with names like LAO VOWEL SIGN AA [0EB0], I went with that. (Maybe I shouldn't have dropped the "SIGN".)
It seems wrong to be calling a base character a HEBREW MARK. It also seems a little odd to be calling a Hebrew vowel a HEBREW LETTER when every other HEBREW LETTER is a consonant. But if that's what convention requires....
Weingreen, _A practical grammar for classical Hebrew_ (2nd ed., Oxford, 1959, pp.6-7) records yod, vav and he sometimes being used for common vowel prior to the development of the point system, in addition to their usual consonantal role:
he = short a yod = short e and short i vav = short u and short o
Weingreen uses the term 'vowel-letters'.
My Hebrew knowledge is nowhere near good enough to judge the accuracy of Weingreen's explanation nor terminology on this issue.
John Hudson
Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com Vancouver, BC [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The sight of James Cox from the BBC's World at One,
interviewing Robin Oakley, CNN's man in Europe,
surrounded by a scrum of furiously scribbling print
journalists will stand for some time as the apogee of
media cannibalism.
- Emma Brockes, at the EU summit
