Aleph-umlaut

[Mark E. Shoulson via Unicode]

On 11/9/18 7:02 PM, Tex via Unicode wrote:
> My notes on Hebrew numbers on http://www.i18nguy.com/unicode/hebrew-numbers.html  include:
>
> "Using letters for numbers, there is the possibility of confusion as to whether a string of letters is a word or a numerical value. Therefore, when numbers are used with text, punctuation marks are added to distinguish their numerical meaning. Single character numbers (numbers less than 10) add the punctuation character geresh after the numeric character. Larger numbers insert the punctuation character gershayim before the last character in the number."
>
> So perhaps Alef with diaeresis is a collapsed form of Alef followed by Gershayim when it is used as a numeric value. I wonder if that may also occur for other values.

I don't know that it's a "collapsed" form.  I think the double-dotted 
form is just an alternate one, and one that was more popular in older 
times.  Standardized Hebrew numerical usage would be to use a GERESH 
(not a GERSHAYIM) after an ALEF to indicate a thousand; GERSHAYIM is 
used before the last letter in a number that is "large" generally in the 
sense of the number of letters (i.e. more than one or two).  Since 
GERESH is also used for single-letter numbers, this means that א׳ could 
mean "one" (much more common) or "one thousand".  The GERESH-after 
becomes useful in something like the full number of the year, ה׳תשע״ט 
where it sets off the initial 5, making it 5000 (this notation is not 
place-value, but there is a usual ordering, so technically it would 
(usually) be understandable even without the punctuation marks, due to 
the out-of-order placement of the initial HE).

Again, what interested me about this usage was that it really *was* an 
umlaut.  But yes, there are other situations where such a thing could 
happen.

~mark