@Davïd I have a question... According to the system, QAMATS can be transliterated as 'a' or 'o'. e.g. If my input is בָּרָ֣א (from Gen 1:1 BHS), the possible outputs are bara֣’ or boro֣’. Right? — By the way, I guess I should ignore the MUNAH and its friends.

@PaulVargas The annoying answer is, no, it can only be baraʾ. Qamets is o normally in closed, unaccented syllables: חָכְמָ֫ה ḥokmah with qamets-chatuf (short o) in first syllable and regular qamets (long a) in second. See GKC paras. 9u-9v for rules. Default to "a", is my suggestion!

@PaulVargas Yes, ignore munah. :) Actually, if you could strip out everything but consonants, and convert the consonants only, that would be a good "step 1" - you could then try adding in vowels.

@Davïd Yes, I can strip them. :)

Thanks! — It's time for a coffee.

@Davïd Was just looking at your “a little Hebrew” link. It gets חכמה right, impressively. Seem to mostly not distinguish between long and short vowels (qamet=patach), but qamets-hei = ah ....but hireq-yod = i . But tsere-yod = ei. And dagesh (any) is ignored. They also don’t do the cutsie symbols over the consonants like you do, but “sh” probably makes more sense than š to most English speakers anyhow. I like those, though. Especially if you’re going to go doubling it.

@Susan Cutsie symbols. Aye, we likes our cutsie symbols. ;)

@Susan So the "A Little Hebrew" gives you better results than the transliterate.com (or whatever it was) service?

@Davïd Actually, I take it back. So far it seems to recognize the lene (I know, you call them something Hebrew but I can’t remember and didn’t learn that) and gives alternatively b or v. But ignores the forte. The opposite of what I had been looking at.

@Davïd Yes. transliterate.com leaves half the Hebrew letters in the output. Unpredictably.

You just do it yourself?

@Davïd @Susan What about http://opensiddur.org/tools/transliterate/?

> All Hebrew text must be in Unicode encoding and all vowels must be written correctly. The transliterator is not tolerant of spelling mistakes.

@Davïd Actually, I guess if it's going to ignore the doubling value, it’s easy to just use assume any dagesh in bgdkpt makes it hard. That’s a straightforward way around it.

@PaulVargas I like it!

But: ḥāk̲əmâ - two mistakes there I think....

That’s SBL, which is otherwise very nice on that site Paul gave. I can correct that sort of thing and like it because it forms the cutsie letters for me!

Funny, SBL handbook that is linked there doesn’t turn over the e, rather /ĕ/ for both vocal shewa and hateph segol. My spell checker prefers “seagull."

@PaulVargas Anyway, thanks Paul! I’m going to go with that one until we have yours up and running. :-)

@Susan :-)

@Davïd If only consonants... How to transliterate the letter ש alone? s for שׂ (with SIN DOT) and sh for שׁ (with SHIN DOT). I guess only s.

@PaulVargas What's wrong with /sh/? Or/š/?

Oh, you're saying if the dot in the Hebrew gets stripped? Oh, I see.

@Susan ת הארץ → בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית → br’syt

OR br’syt ← בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית ← ת הארץ

@PaulVargas I don’t follow. The middle part is a different word + letter, but I think you meant the stripped בראשית. Oh, I see that you’re right there’s only one ש on my Hebrew keyboard.

(The middle part is the last letter “t” + the last word in the verse - “the earth”.)

But anyway, I get your point that the sin/shin dot goes away. I don’t know what to do about it. Good idea to ask David. :-)

(left or right, is a mess)

@PaulVargas Absolutely. Star.

@Susan Thanks! :-)

@Susan Sorry, friends! On the run - will catch up as I'm able. Short answer to @Susan's question (linked) - Yes. ;)

Copy/Paste Issue. :-)

@PaulVargas Looks right to me...

@Davïd A model to strive for....actually, after all this discussion that may become easier. If I can only find an easy way to make the cutsie letters.

And ayin/aleph.

@PaulVargas By the way, are you following Hebrew on Area 51? We need voters!

@Susan Now following!

@PaulVargas Excellent, thanks. And let us know if you decide you want to add vowels and want to talk about "the rules."