Tonight we had a great dinner on the 11th floor of the newly renovated Ohio State University library. As you enter you walk over a very cool metal “sculpture” of the English alphabet mounted in the floor. While waiting for the elevator I noticed that they had the paleo-Hebrew alphabet! Very cool! No, wait…
You see the problem? The letters are correct, but they are “reading” from left to right instead of right to left. No, wait…not quite.
It is fine until you get to tet and then it’s silly. I am not sure who the two letters are after the yod, samech and tsade are missing and what are the last two letters?
This one at least had most of the letters in mostly the right order, if left to right. When I got to the 11th floor and looked at the elevator door, well, see for yourself.
The Greek alphabet was also confused. I saw at least a dozen other languages, presumably all just as mangled. A nice idea, poorly executed.
6 thoughts on “Hebrew Alphabet Soup – OSU Library”
They just typed ABCDE… and changed the font to Hebrew.
Sometimes the simple answers are the best. Well done Aaron! I am sure you are correct! (Any idea what those last two “paleo Hebrew” letters are supposed to be?)
Two variations on vav, I think.
Okay…let me give this Paleo-Hebrew a run:
1. Aleph – Waw doesn’t seem to have any issues.
2. Then we get a gimmel again, het and yod.
3. I have no idea what the next letter is…it’s something like a backward mem…you get it when you hit a “t” key with my Phoenician/Moabite font.
4. The kaph is Phoenician and lamed, mem, nun are normal.
5. They skip samekh, and move to ayin, pe
6. They skip tsade and move to qoph, resh, shin, taw.
7. You can get the first of the last two characters by hitting the “w” key on my Phoenician/Moabite font.
Oh! I found it. If you open up the Eshmoon Phoenician font and type ABCD…W you get exactly what you see on the “Paleo-Hebrew” abecediary above.
Thanks for confirming Aaron’s suspicions!