MetaChat is an informal place for MeFites to touch base and post, discuss and
chatter about topics that may not belong on MetaFilter. Questions? Check the FAQ. Please note: This is important.
14 August 2006
Anyone here read Hebrew and want to help me with something?
There are two difference you're noticing on the marked up version vs the non marked up version.
The first difference is that the first two words of the prayer (viyal kol) are two separate words in the non marked up version while they seem to have been smooshed together into one word in the marked up version. Looking at the source of the page, this appears to be because you've just forgotten a space in there, but that is one difference.
The second (larger) difference is the lack of vowels in the marked up version. This is not intrinsincly wrong. The small entities you mentioned are used to notate vowels in Hebrew. The large characters (with some exceptions) are all consonants. When reading Hebrew it is not uncommon to see the vowels taken out, because they're a pain to write quickly and nearly every fluent speaker can read the words without them. I imagine they're taken out of the marked up version to make room for the underline of the link style. The phrase would still be perfectly readable (especially considering this is the first line of the kaddish; even I knew it) to most people who speak Hebrew.
Just for your info, you are correct that the entities modify other entities... vowels in Hebrew usually ride along with the consonant they are sounded with.
Yup, the first line fixes the smooshed words problem.
I'm not entirely sure what you're asking with the second question. It's ok in that it's still readable, but the vowels aren't visible (even if the unicode elements are in the HTML), because it's still linked, and I don't think the renderer (firefox in my case) can do both vowels and underline. The unicode is still there, however, since if you copy and paste the linked version, the vowels pop up again.