There I was, sitting at my desk in the late afternoon, chewing over the results of my last case. The case had gone well, but I needed more cases to keep the cash flowing. As I mulled over the possibilities, suddenly, I heard a scuffling noise, and saw a note shoved under my door. I ran over, threw the door open, and looked down the hall, but saw only the stairwell door closing. Too late. I picked up the note.
I am using the Hebrew keyboard with Keyman 9, but the furtive patach (as in ruach) seems to be missing. Is there a way to place the furtive patach under the right leg of the cheth, rather than just under the cheth (in between both legs)?
Who was the cheth?
This was intriguing, but immediately I had questions. Who was the cheth? And what was he doing with the furtive patach? Why did the cheth prefers to stand with its right leg on the patach. Is the cheth also looking furtive? I couldn’t wait to find out how this exciting story ended.
Thus motivated, I dived eagerly into the nearby library (Wikipedia) and discovered that the patach is looking furtive because it “stole an imaginary epenthetic consonant” (verbatim). I also discovered that the patach was stolen. Is it because the cheth has stolen the patach from the ruach? Or is the cheth actually innocent? Or harbouring a fugitive? And who owned the imaginary epenthetic consonant in the first place so that it could be stolen? Where was the imaginary epenthetic consonant now?
More questions than answers so far.
As I continued my furtive patach investigations, I received another note:
I am using Galaxie Hebrew (Mnemonic) and usually typing in Times New Roman, but others (Calibri, Arial) as well. Thank you for investigating.
This was a solid lead. I immediately set out for the Galaxie and my investigations there revealed that the furtive patach was last seen in the Galaxie wearing a hat (^). The Greek consonant (Mr Epenthesis) was a false trail but it took some time to eliminate him from my enquiries: was there a European connection?
The European connection.
The following morning, as I was reading the Times (New Roman edition), I discovered an advertisement placed by a Mr Calibri which shed further light on the conundrum. I finally knew why the cheth kept the furtive patach between both legs. From the sound of his name, Mr Calibri was another European forcing his way into in this ancient Middle Eastern mystery with little understanding or subtlety.
This called for a visit to the Old City to consult Mr Ezra (SIL), an expert in ancient Biblical languages, who assured me that he would usually keep the patach, stolen or not, under his right leg.
This still seemed strange to me. But who was I to argue with this font of knowledge? I handed in my final case report, which I have reproduced below:
You should be able to type patach with the ^ key (Shift+6 on a US English keyboard). If you have the SIL Ezra font, the patach will be shown under the right hand leg of the cheth. The fonts you are currently using are not optimised for Biblical Hebrew but rather modern Hebrew, so I would recommend using SIL Ezra (which can be downloaded from https://software.sil.org/ezra/ if you don’t already have it).
But sometimes, perhaps due to a stiff neck, that furtive patach wants to change leg and so has to reach over some other poor unsuspecting diacritics to get there, But it it were simply to barge the poor diacritic out of the way and swap places with it, it would be put firmly back in its place normally. So much for being furtive. The only solution is to find some patsie to take with him. This poor patsie of a Combining Word Joiner is merely there to put the normality off the scent and let the patach change legs. Who would be a Hebrew diacritic eh?