In Hebrew orthography the rafe or raphe ( he, רָפֶה, , meaning "weak, limp") is a

diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...

(), a subtle horizontal overbar placed above certain letters to indicate that they are to be

pronounced Pronunciation is the way in which a word or a language is spoken. This may refer to generally agreed-upon sequences of sounds used in speaking a given word or language in a specific dialect ("correct pronunciation") or simply the way a particular ...

as fricatives. It originated with the

Tiberian Tiberian may refer to: * Tiberian vocalization, an oral tradition within the Hebrew language * Tiberian Hebrew, the variety of Hebrew based on Tiberian vocalization * Tiberias, a city in Lower Galilee, Israel * Tiberius Tiberius Julius Caesa ...

Masoretes as part of the extended system of '' niqqud'' (vowel points), and has the opposite meaning of '' dagesh qal'', showing that one of the letters בגדכפת is to be pronounced as a fricative and not as a

plosive In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lips ...

, or (sometimes) that a consonant is single and not double; or, as the opposite to a '' mappiq'', to show that the letters ה or א are silent ('' mater lectionis''). The rafe generally fell out of use for Hebrew with the coming of printing, although according to

Gesenius Gesenius is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Justus Gesenius (1601–1673), German theologian *Heinrich Friedrich Wilhelm Gesenius Heinrich Friedrich Wilhelm Gesenius (3 February 178623 October 1842) was a German orientalist ...

(1813) at that time it could still be found in a few places in printed Hebrew Bibles, where the absence of a ''dagesh'' or a ''mappiq'' was noticeable. (e.g. Exodus 20:13,14,15; Deuteronomy 5:13,17,18,19; 2 Samuel 11:1; Isaiah 22:10; Jeremiah 20:17; Psalm 119:99; Zechariah 5:11) In some siddurs (e.g. those printed by

ArtScroll ArtScroll is an imprint of translations, books and commentaries from an Orthodox Jewish perspective published by Mesorah Publications, Ltd., a publishing company based in Rahway, New Jersey. Rabbi Nosson Scherman is the general editor. ArtScroll' ...

) a diacritical symbol, typographically the same as the rafe, but utterly unrelated, is used to mark instances of "moving sheva" (''Shva Na'').Rabbi Nosson Scherman, Rabbi Meir Zlotowitz, ''Siddur Kol Yaakov/The Complete ArtScroll Siddur—Nusach Ashkenaz'', 3rd Edition, Eighteenth Impression, Mesorah Publications Ltd., July 2003. . Preface, p. IX. The rafe is similar in function to the ''buailte'' (dot above, denoting lenition) in the old-style Irish alphabet.

Yiddish

It retained some currency in

Yiddish Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ver ...

and

Ladino Ladino, derived from Latin, may refer to: * The register of Judaeo-Spanish used in the translation of religious texts, such as the Ferrara Bible *Ladino people, a socio-ethnic category of Mestizo or Hispanicized people in Central America especi ...

. In

Yiddish orthography Yiddish orthography is the writing system used for the Yiddish language. It includes Yiddish spelling rules and the Hebrew alphabet, Hebrew script, which is used as the basis of a full vocalic alphabet. Letters that are silent or represent glott ...

, the rafe distinguishes from and in words of Semitic origin also from (, spelled as -- double 'vuv'-- in words of Germanic origin) and from (, spelled as in words of Germanic origin).

Ladino

In Ladino the rafe, called a ''varrica'' (“little crossbar”), looks more like a breve-shaped diacritic (ﬞ ) on top of the letter (◌ﬞ). When written in the square form, or when unable to apply the varrica rafe diacritic to a letter, it is replaced by a geresh (׳) immediately after the letter as a substitute to effect the same change in pronunciation. For example, גﬞ is equivalent to ג׳ in altering the sound from the voiced velar stop to the voiced postalveolar affricate ͡ʒ known in English as "

soft g In the Latin-based orthographies of many European languages, the letter is used in different contexts to represent two distinct phonemes that in English are called hard and soft . The sound of a hard (which often precedes the non-front vowel ...

". In Ladino, as in Tiberian Hebrew, the rafe changes ב into בﬞ ד into דﬞ � and פ into פﬞ Unlike in Hebrew, the rafe also changes ג into גﬞ ( ͡ʒor ͡ʃ, ז into זﬞ � and in words of Semitic origin also ש ( or � into שﬞ � In words of Romance origin, is spelled as ס, freeing up ש for the voiceless postalveolar fricative �without the need for a rafe to disambiguate. Note Ladino orthography is far less standardized than Yiddish; original Ladino works may be written in Rashi script (using rafe), Hebrew block print (using geresh), or in the Latin alphabet (e.g. the 1553 Ferrara Bible).

Unicode

"Hebrew Point Rafe" is encoded in the Unicode standard as U+05BF.

References

{{Hebrew language Niqqud

Yiddish

Ladino

Unicode

See also

References