Displaying Yiddish / Hebrew Text on Websites

This page was last revised on: 21 December 2008 (previously: 12/30/06)
What is the Best Way to Display Yiddish / Hebrew Text on Websites?

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Recommendations for Displaying Yiddish text on Web Pages
Precombined Character Chart NON-Precombined Character Chart
List of Links to Yiddish Websites Worldwide

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Background

On the Internet, Yiddish is sometimes displayed as real text, i.e., text that can be searched. This is ideal.

For this reason, Israeli Hebrew websites are almost universally created with real searchable Hebrew text. (In fact, if you enter Hebrew text into a Google Search dialog box, you'll get many hits. Try it! You'll even find THIS website.)

Unfortunately, Yiddish on the Internet (unlike Hebrew) is usually displayed in GIF or PNG images -- which cannot be searched. Some websites that display Yiddish as GIF images are the Yiddish Forward and Yugntruf.

So the obvious question is (שטעלט זיך די פֿראַגע): If indeed real text is so much better, then why do many Yiddish websites use GIF images?

In a nutshell, the answer is simply because the aforesaid Yiddish websites insist that the Yiddish text that they display must have nikud (diacritics, nekudes, n'kudot). And Yiddish / Hebrew characters with nikud (diacritics) often do not display properly on the user's monitor.

The Israeli Hebrew websites -- and even the Israeli Yiddish websites (see list below) -- avoid this problem by almost universally displaying Hebrew / Yiddish text entirely without nikud.

On her excellent and definitive website http://www.shoshke.net/uyip/sum-web.htm, Shoshke-Rayzl Yuni (Susannah R Juni) discusses this matter. The following is paraphrased from Shoshke's website: "If you want to create web pages with nikud that all Yiddish readers can read, regardless of which computer system is used to visit the web pages, then the only current option is to create pictures of the Yiddish text, and to display it on your pages as graphics, e.g., GIF images."

Shoshke-Rayzl writes further, "While you can create (real text) Yiddish web pages in Unicode (UTF-8) (e.g., using Word 2000/2 in Windows 2000/XP), not everyone will be able to read the complete text (i.e., the characters that contain nikud) without errors, depending on their operating system. Therefore, Unicode web pages are not recommended at this time, unless you create alternative sites (e.g., with GIF files representing the Yiddish text) - double work for the web page author." [End of quote from Shoshke-Rayzl's website] (Or unless, I might add, you just leave out the nikud entirely.)

As mentioned above, Yiddish /Hebrew characters with nikud often do not display properly on the user's monitor.

The obvious way to avoid this problem is to simply create websites entirely without nikud. And, frankly, I am tending to lean more and more in this direction. Perhaps this is indeed the best approach to use -- at least for the time being.

Nevertheless, I will try to present you below with a thorough analysis of the difficulties of creating website (HTML) documents with nikud, and the best possible advice on how to actually go about producing just such website documents.

Problems in Displaying Yiddish Characters That Have Nikud (Diacritics)

When does one encounter the problem of nikud not displaying properly? This depends not only on which operating system is used (as Shoshke-Rayzl writes), but also on which browser is used. And it also depends on which type of Unicode UTF-8 characters are used to represent the character that has the nikud (diacritics) -- i.e., whether Unicode precombined or NON-precombined characters are used, as will be explained below. Meanwhile, let's take a look at some examples of the actual problem.

Illustration of Problems in Displaying Yiddish Characters That Have Nikud (Diacritics)

Table 1 contains all of the Yiddish characters and character-combinations that have diacritics (Nikud/Niqud). Because these characters contain nikud, they may not display properly (on your monitor) under all Operating Systems.

Table 1. GIF Images of Yiddish Characters That Contain Nikud
Single Characters with nikud
pasekh alef	komets alef	veyz	melupm vov	khirek yud


kof	pey	fey	sin	tof


A Character Combination with nikud (pasekh tsvey-yudn)

Table 2. GIF Images of Yiddish Character-Combinations That Do NOT Contain Nikud
tsvey vovn	zayen-shin	daled-zayen-shin	tes-shin	vov-yud	tsvey-yudn
v as in victor	zh as in Zhitomir	j as in Jewish	tch as in Tchekhov	oy as in toy	ey as in they

Because they contain no nikud, the characters in Table 2 above do display properly under all Operating Systems.

NOTE: The characters in the two Tables above are from YIVO's Transliteration Chart.

Definition of Diacritics and Character-Combinations (Ligatures)

Diacritics (a/k/a nekudes / n'kudot / n'qudot / nikud / niqud) are Hebrew "non-spacing marks." Table 1 above contains GIF images of the Yiddish characters (and a character combination) that contain diacritics. Examples of diacritics include the pasekh or komets under the alefs in Table 1 above. Other diacritics there are the pasekh under the tsvey-yudn, the horizontal line above the pey (that transforms it into a fey); the dot (dagesh or pintl) in the tof; etc.

The word diacritics does NOT include whole Yiddish character combinations (ligatures), such as the pasekh-alef or komets-alef or pasekh tsvey-yudn in Table 1 above.

Yiddish Character-Combinations are Hebrew letters combined with other Hebrew Letters, as illustrated in Table 2 above, as well as the pasekh tsvey-yudn that is illustrated in Table 1 above.

Illustration of Display Problems That Occur When Running Windows ME and Lower

Here is an example of some real searchable UTF-8 Yiddish text. It is from the Yiddish Dictionary Online :

If you are running Windows XP or 2000, and if your browser's character encoding (on the View menu) is set to Unicode (UTF-8), then the Yiddish text above should display correctly no matter which browser you use.

But if you are running Windows 95/98/ME, and using the Netscape 7.2 or Firefox 1.0 Browser, then the text above does not display properly. Rather it displays as shown in Table 4.

In this case, you must use Microsoft's Internet Explorer Browser (version 5 or higher) for the text to display properly (as shown in the GIF image in Table 5, below).

Note: If you use Netscape 4.8 or earlier -- or another outdated browser, the Hebrew letters will appear backwards (left-to-right rather than right-to-left). To view Yiddish real-text web pages, you must use an up-to-date browser!

Table 4 graphically illustrates the problem of displaying Yiddish letters with nikud. Reading the text in the above GIF image, you will observe that the Hebrew text (from right-to-left) is Yud -Yud - Khirek, where the Khirek is under a blank space to the left of the Yud. But the Khirek (Chiriq) should NOT be under a blank space. Rather it should be under the second Yud (Yod) itself!

Reading further from right-to-left in the above Hebrew, you will see an Alef followed by a Pasekh which is also under a blank space. But, again -- the Pasekh should be under the Alef, NOT under the blank space to the left of the Alef.

Finally, the horizontal line that is supposed to appear above the Pey (to transform it into a Fey) actually appears above the blank space that is to the left of the Pey!

As mentioned above, these display problems occur only when running Windows 95/98/Me, and when using browsers other than Internet Explorer. They do not occur when running Windows XP.

Table 5. GIF Image of How the Above Text Displays in Windows XP When Using ANY Browser, or in Windows 95/98/Me When Using Microsoft's Internet Explorer Browser

A very technical discussion of the above issue is presented on the Bugzilla-Mozilla website. There, the problem is described as follows: When Unicode web pages containing Hebrew/Yiddish Diacritic marks are displayed ....... they appear BESIDE the character that they should appear BENEATH.

On that website, they present an excellent GIF image that clearly illustrates this problem. At the left side of the illustration, you see how Yiddish text displays incorrectly in Mozilla (Mozilla is basically the same as Netscape and Firefox), and at the right, you see how Yiddish text does display correctly in Microsoft Internet Explorer. Click here to see this illustration.

Now that we've seen actual examples of the problem of displaying Yiddish characters that have nikud, let's focus our attention on measures that we can employ to solve (or at least mitigate) this problem.

As mentioned before, when this problem occurs depends not only on which operating-system is used, but also on which browser is used. And it also depends on which type of Unicode UTF-8 characters are used to represent the characters that have the nikud -- i.e., whether Unicode UTF-8 precombined or NON-precombined characters are used. We'll now discuss in detail the subject of Unicode UTF-8 precombined and NON-precombined characters.

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To facilitate the use of precombined (a/k/a precomposed) characters, I have compiled this Chart. You can simply copy characters from Column 2, below, and paste them into your document:

Problems Displaying Khirek-Yud and Pasekh Tsvey-Yudn Using Precombined Characters

On many computers (including mine), the precombined khirek-yud and the precombined pasekh tsvey-yudn in Column 2 above do NOT display properly. On my computer they display as question marks when I use Netscape or Firefox, and as rectangles when I use Internet Explorer.

This is because the Windows Core Fonts -- the fonts that always come preinstalled in Windows -- do NOT support the precombined khirek-yud nor the precombined pasekh tsvey-yudn (as noted in the Character Chart above). In order for these precombined characters to display, the user must install on his computer an additional font -- such as Arial Unicode MS (mentioned in the heading of Column 6 above), which does support these.

(Note that the Windows Core Fonts do support the other precombined character combinations needed by Yiddish. And, of course, they support all characters created using Method 2 (NON precombined characters). See the Jewish-languages.org website for a full discussion of this.)

To me, the fact that the khirek-yud displays improperly does not matter. I think that the khirek-yud is ugly, and I can get along without it quite well. I'll stick with Yudel Mark, and use the Shtumer Alef instead. (For example, I'll write העברעאיש and not העברעיש.) Note, though, that my Yiddish guru holds that for certain words -- such as tsiyen, fliyen, geshriyen, and diyalekt -- the khirek-yud is indispensable. While I agree that using the khirek-yud for these words DOES make them more legible, I feel that most people who read Yiddish will recognize that, for example, ציען is TSI-YN and not TS-YEN. So I don't quite agree that the the khirek-yud is indispensable. It's nice to have it, but we can get along without it.

But the pasekh tsvey-yudn is different. The fact that the pasekh tsvey-yudn displays improperly is most unfortunate. I guess that for the time being we'll just have to substitute a plain tsvey-yudn for the pasekh tsvey-yudn. Alternatively, we can right now use the pasekh tsvey-yudn, but the one that is created using method 2 -- because this method is supported by the aforesaid Windows Core fonts. That would mean that one lousy character combination, the pasekh tsvey-yudn, won't display quite perfectly under Windows Me using the Netscape or Firefox browser -- until newer improved versions of these browsers are released.

Professor Raphael Finkel seems to agree that for the time being, some of us might want to settle for using precombined characters, even though he would prefer to use method 2 (non-precombined characters).

In an email dated January 25, 2005, Professor Finkel writes (paraphrased):

I have also noticed that Firefox on Unix does not handle non-precombined characters correctly.

Although I think that in the long run, Unicode with non-precombined characters (Method 2 above) is the right way to represent text, we might choose in the meanwhile to use precombined characters.

I have added a facility to my shraybmashinke to let you generate UTF-8 with precombined characters. It seems to work fine, although my fonts (on the professor's computer) apparently don't include khirek-yud.

Conclusion: Recommendations for Displaying Yiddish Text on Websites

On http://www.jewish-languages.org/windows.html it states that "precomposed (precombined) Hebrew characters exist only for the sake of backward compatibility with legacy encodings, and it is therefore recommended to avoid them and use combinations of characters (i.e., NON-precombined characters) instead."

Despite this, it is MY recommendation that for the present time and for Yiddish (but NOT Hebrew) web pages, we should ignore the above advice, and instead use davke precombined characters.

Or else, we should create Yiddish web pages using no nikud at all.

(See also below the section entitled Displaying Hebrew With Nikud vs Displaying Yiddish With Nikud.)

By "for the present time" I mean -- until browsers (other than Internet Explorer) have been upgraded so that they permit Yiddish characters with nikud to display properly (i.e., without "misprints in display") when operating on all platforms (Windows 95/98/Me included, as opposed to the more advanced Windows 2000 or XP).

Note also that if following the recommendations herein results in not using the so-called "YIVO standard Yiddish orthography" -- then so be it. As is obvious from my Notes on YIVO's Yiddish Spelling Conventions, below, I am no great fan of the YIVO standard anyway.

Before proceeding with the discussion of how to enter Yiddish text WITH nikud into your HTML (website) document using UTF-8 precombined characters, please read the following comments on how to go about creating HTML (website) documents WITHOUT nikud:

An Alternative - Creating Yiddish Web Pages Without Any Nikud At All

Even though I personally prefer to show as much nikud as possible, still -- there is a compelling reason to consider just leaving out the nikud entirely.

The advantage of leaving out the nikud is two-fold:

1. You can enter Hebrew / Yiddish text into your HTML document by just using the keyboard support that comes built into Windows. (How to activate Windows' built-in Hebrew keyboard support is explained below.) You do not need to download and install any special Yiddish keyboard layouts. Windows' built-in Hebrew keyboard layout does not, of course, support any of the Yiddish character combinations mentioned above -- but these are not needed when you leave out the nikud.)

2. If your website contains no nikud, then search engines will much more readily succeed in finding strings of text (words and phrases) on it.

This is best illustrated by the following real-life example:

My Yiddish Glossary contains the title אידישער ווערטערשאַץ --with a precombined alef (אַ).

Accordingly, I did a Google Search for אידישער ווערטערשאַץ -- with the precombined alef (אַ).

And guess what -- the only hit was my above Yiddish Glossary.

Sounds good, right?

Wrong.

Because I THEN did a Google Search for אידישער ווערטערשאץ -- with just a PLAIN alef (א).

I got no results.

The unfortunate situation is, that someone searching for the phrase "אידישער ווערטערשאץ" will have to search for it by using three different spellings: 1) with a plain alef, 2) with a precombined patekh-alef, and 3) with a non-precombined patekh-alef -- in order to be sure to find it.

Likewise, Professor Finkel, in a posting to UYIP on 07 Feb. 2005 wrote:

"I can confirm Jason's (Yosl's) observation that Google (and most likely other search engines) store and match text exactly, making no allowances for combining-characters (= non-precombined characters) and precombined characters. It's all just sequences of bits. The result is that manana, mañana (precombined), and mañana (combining tilde) are three separate words as far as search engines are concerned."

Perhaps the above situation is the main reason that most of the Yiddish websites in Israel, and some here in America, too, use real Hebrew text that is totally WITHOUT any nikud whatsoever -- or in some cases, with a minimum of nikud.

Update - December 2008: Yiddish Searches Now Done Right at Google.com

In an email to fellow members of UYIP on 19 Dec. 2008, UYIP moderator Mark H David wrote:

"I'm very pleased to report that Googling is great in Yiddish. This is because the searching now folds in all variants in nekudes and use of special Yiddish digraph characters (tsvey vovn, tsvey yudn, and vov-yud) -- such that you get the same (or nearly the same) results.

For example, the yiddish word "vayb" is commonly spelled a couple of ways, e.g.,

tsvey-vovn tsvey-yudn beys	װײב
tsvey-vovn pasekh-tsvey-yudn beys	װײַב

Unicode provides a multitude of possible ways encode these two variants:

vov vov yud yud beys	ווייב
tsvey-vovn tsvey-yudn beys	װײב
tsvey-vovn yud yud beys	װייב
vov vov tsvey-yudn beys	ווײב
vov vov pasekh-tsvey-yudn beys	ווײַב
tsvey-vovn pasekh-tsvey-yudn beys	װײַב

What should happen? Spelling the word "vayb" any of the two ways, using any of the possible encodings, should match all occurances of any of the spellings or encodings. This is analogous to case folding with Latin-script
languages. E.g., searching for "WiFe" will find "wife", "WIFE", "wifE", etc.

I have tried Yahoo! search, and they don't do this right. Kuddos to Google for doing this!"

Here, for example, are some Israeli Yiddish Websites that leave out the nikud:

Website of the Israeli National Authority for Yiddish Culture

Website of “YiddishShpiel,” the Yiddish Theater in Israel

This EXCELLENT Australian Yiddish site leaves out the nikud (as well as the phony Weinreich neologisms!):

SBS Radio's Yiddish Language Program (Also: Listen to streaming Yiddish radio broadcasts on SBS Radio!)

This Russian website has Yiddish text without nikud:

Yiddish poetry by Yakov Glatstein (Яков Глатштейн)

And here are some American Yiddish Websites that follow suit (mostly on Algemeiner Journal.com ):

Article by Rabbi Dr Heshil Klepfish Entitled "Dos Gezang Fun Akdomes"

Obituary of Gershon Jacobson by Elie Wiesel

Obituary of Gershon Jacobson by Yehoshua Dubrowski

Chassidic website that discusses whether a pious Jew is allowed to go on the Internet while alone

Website for NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg's 2005 Campaign

The Best of Both Worlds

In my Yiddish Glossary I try to list Yiddish entries in two forms:

1) with nikud -- which is more legible for the visitor, and
2) without nikud -- so that search engines will more likely find words contained in the Yiddish Glossary.

And I recommend that if possible you should do likewise in your HTML (website) document.

That is, try to include on your web page duplicate copies of any Yiddish text that you want to be found by search-engines -- one copy with nikud, and the second copy without nikud.

Furthermore, (as stated above) the Yiddish text that is with nikud should use Unicode UTF-8 precombined characters -- NOT the NON-precombined characters.

If it is not practical for you to have duplicate copies, then just follow the example of the multitudinous Yiddish websites in Israel -- enter your Yiddish text totally WITHOUT using any nikud whatsoever.

This is still better (IMHO) than resorting to GIF images, as do the Yiddish Forward and Yugntruf, mentioned above. Those websites -- notwithstanding their rich content -- get ZERO hits (on their Yiddish text content) from search engines.

Now please read below the details about how to enter Yiddish text with nikud into your HTML (website) document.

I recommend using Unicode Precombined characters for the following character combinations:

אַ - pasekh Alef אָ - komets Alef בּ - beyz בֿ - veyz	וֹ - khoylem vov וּ - melupm vov כּ - kof פּ - pey	פֿ - fey שׁ - shin שׂ - sin תּ - tof
All of these are presented in the Character Chart above.

Recommendation for Khirek-Yud and Pasekh Tsvey-Yudn

However, for the Khirek-Yud and Pasekh Tsvey-Yudn, my recommendation is different.

Khirek-Yud: Even though there does indeed exist a Unicode precombined khirek yud, I still advocate either 1) not using the khirek yud at all [i.e., replace it with the original (pre-YIVO) shtumer alef followed by a regular plain yud, as in פייאיק] or 2) using the Unicode NON-precombined khirek yud (see chart below).

Pasekh Tsvey-Yudn: Similarly, even though there does indeed exist a Unicode precombined pasekh tsvey-yudn, I still advocate either 1) using the Unicode NON-precombined pasekh tsvey-yudn (see chart below), or 2) not using the pasekh tsvey-yudn at all [i.e., replace it with two regular plain yuds, יי].

To facilitate the use of NON-precombined characters for the Khirek-Yud and the Pasekh Tsvey-Yudn, I have compiled this Chart. You can simply copy characters from Column 2, below, and paste them into your document:
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Chart of Unicode NON-Precombined Khirek-Yud and Pasekh Tsvey-Yudn
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
GIF or PNG Image		Unicode Name	Unicode Hex	Windows Core / Hebrew Fonts	Arial Unicode MS / Guttman / Ezra SIL	HTML Entity (decimal)
	יִ	Hebrew Letter Yod + Hebrew Point Hiriq *(Khirek-Yud* in Yiddish)**	05D9 + 05B4	yes	yes	י + ִ
	ײַ	Hebrew Letter Yiddish Ligature Double Yod + Hebrew Point Patah (Pasekh Tsvey-Yudn in Yiddish)	05F2 + 05B7	yes	yes	ײ + ַ
This Chart has been adapted from a chart on the website www.jewish-languages.org. The Images in Column 1 above are from YIVO's website. Values for the .HTML Entity in Col. 7 were obtained from the website www.fileformat.info.

Why is my recommendation for the khirek yud and the pasekh tsvey-yudn DIFFERENT than for the other character combinations listed above? This has already been discussed in great detail hereinabove.

How to Install Hebrew Keyboard [and Hebrew Language] Support in Windows

Notes on YIVO's Yiddish Spelling Conventions