Saturday, January 17, 2009

New Simanim Siddur


I purchased a copy of the new Simanim siddur. The siddur includes ta'amim for most pesukim. This is something that most siddurim do not include but is very valuable for someone who would like to pronounce all the words correctly. In addition, it differentiates shva na from shva nach, kametz katan from gadol. It also includes the sign for the rafeh which existed in most old seforim up to about four hundred years ago. It is not included for every rafeh but for words where readers tend to mistakenly read it with a dagesh. It also differentiates between the dagesh chazak and the dagesh kal. It also includes the makaf (hyphen) for words that need to be read together.

The letter heh, when included in a shva nach, is read as a mapik heh. Like the eiyin, the heh tends to be swallowed when readers are not careful. So simanim stretches them out to remind the reader not to swallow them. The patach genuvah under a heh, eiyin, and ches are placed slightly to the right of the the letter beneath the letter.
I used my iphone to capture an image of this page. The print is much better than what is presented here. I just wanted to capture some of the siddur's features.

1 comment:

  1. Would you be willing to sell me your copy of this siddur?

    ReplyDelete