Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Charles David Isbell" <cisbell AT home.com>]

Per your question about teaching the te'amim, I quite agree with your
conclusion that despite the task of learning an extra set of markers,
students should be introduced to the accents.  My method is to describe them
as a rabbinic commentary on the consonantal text explaining a traditional
way in which the rabbis believed the text should be parsed, framed, and even
pronounced and sung.  And I have found that they become invaluable to
beginning students attempting to puzzle through which adjective goes with
what noun, etc.
Thanks for an informative posting.  Is there a site where we can learn about
and perhaps order Bible Windows?
Charles David Isbell
----- Original Message -----
From: "Naama Zahavi-Ely" <nxzaha AT wm.edu>
To: "Biblical Hebrew" <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2000 12:18 PM
Subject: Re: Hebrew Bible Software & Text -- accents


> Hello!
>
> I use Bible Windows by Silver Mountain Software;  full searchable text of
the Hebrew
> Bible including accents, and with full morphological tagging and lexical
entries.  It
> uses the same mapping as the shebrew  font, and one can do grammatical
searches
> easily.  It also has the greek text (New Testament and LXX), the Latin
text, and many
> translations.  It is very helpful for finding examples of texts for my
students, and I
> use it constantly.  In terms of contents, the main difference between
Bible Windows and
> Logos as far as the Hebrew text is concerned is the inclusion of accents.
This was
> reason enough for me to buy Bible Windows, even though I already had a
searchable fully
> vocalized text of the Hebrew Bible.  I don't regret it.  I also find it
friendly and
> easy to use.
>
> There is also a group at Bar Ilan university in Israel who are working on
an electronic
> copy of the Bible with accents, and with very extensive searching
abilities.
> Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge, at this point their software
works with the
> Hebrew version of Windows only.
>
> By the way, I teach my students to use the accents as help in breaking up
a verse into
> smaller units.  This involves learning yet another set of markers, and a
different
> logic of how to understand them than anything they are used to with modern
punctuation
> marks;  but it seems to be helpful, at least to some of them.  Does
anybody have
> experience with teaching accents as syntax help?
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Naama Zahavi-Ely
> College of William and Mary
> nxzaha AT wm.edu
>
> "Karl M. Bunday" wrote:
> <snip>
>
> >
> > I just ordered BibleWorks 4.0 and was dismayed to see your message
> > about the lack of accents just before I placed my order. Oh well, I
> > can still get good use out of the grammatical tag search engine in
> > that product, I think. I teach Hebrew and need a more convenient way
> > of finding example sentences to show to my students than Logos
> > provides.
> >
> > > and the 2.0 version of PCStudy Bible,
> > > which has the BHS designated as GBH.
> >
> > Does that have any features that make it worth getting now that I have
> > the other two?
> >
> > > None of these have accents or massorah magna or parva.
> >
> > It's quite surprising none have the accents. I will make that a
> > suggestion for BibleWorks as a matter of product improvement.
> >
> > > Is there software available that has this capacity?  In a
> > > related vein, are there Hebrew fonts available with accents?
> >
> > Most definitely. The Hebrew fonts available from Linguist's Software
> >
> > http://www.linguistsoftware.com/
> >
> > has the ability to display ANY Tiberian accent. I run into a few
> > glitches in using it under Chinese-language Windows, which are
> > documented in the program manual, but I expect it would work very well
> > indeed under English Windows. I can get the accent symbols I want
> > where I want them with that product.
> >
>
> <snip>
>
>
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