Shva or, in
Biblical Hebrew
Biblical Hebrew (, or , ), also called Classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of the Hebrew language, a language in the Canaanite branch of Semitic languages spoken by the Israelites in the area known as the Land of Israel, roughly west of ...
, shĕwa ( he,
שְׁוָא) is a
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
niqqud
In Hebrew orthography, niqqud or nikud ( or ) is a system of diacritical signs used to represent vowels or distinguish between alternative pronunciations of letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Several such diacritical systems were developed in the ...
vowel
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...
sign written as two vertical dots () beneath a letter. It indicates either the
phoneme
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west o ...
(shva na', mobile shva) or the complete absence of a vowel (/
Ø/) (shva nach, resting shva).
It is transliterated as , , , (
apostrophe
The apostrophe ( or ) is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritical mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet and some other alphabets. In English, the apostrophe is used for two basic purposes:
* The marking of the omission of one o ...
), or nothing. Note that use of for shva is questionable: transliterating
Modern Hebrew
Modern Hebrew ( he, עברית חדשה, ''ʿivrít ḥadašá ', , '' lit.'' "Modern Hebrew" or "New Hebrew"), also known as Israeli Hebrew or Israeli, and generally referred to by speakers simply as Hebrew ( ), is the standard form of the He ...
shva nach with is misleading, since it is never actually pronounced –
the vowel does not exist in Modern Hebrew. Moreover, the vowel is probably not characteristic of earlier pronunciations such as
Tiberian vocalization
The Tiberian vocalization, Tiberian pointing, or Tiberian niqqud (Hebrew: ''haNīqqūḏ haṬəḇērīyānī'') is a system of diacritics (''niqqud'') devised by the Masoretes of Tiberias to add to the consonantal text of the Hebrew Bible to p ...
.
A shva sign in combination with the
vowel diacritics patáẖ,
segól and
kamáts katán produces a : a diacritic for a (a 'reduced vowel' – lit. 'abducted').
Pronunciation in Modern Hebrew
In
Modern Hebrew
Modern Hebrew ( he, עברית חדשה, ''ʿivrít ḥadašá ', , '' lit.'' "Modern Hebrew" or "New Hebrew"), also known as Israeli Hebrew or Israeli, and generally referred to by speakers simply as Hebrew ( ), is the standard form of the He ...
, shva is either pronounced or is mute (
Ø), regardless of its traditional classification as ''shva nach'' () or ''shva na'' (), see following table for examples. The Israeli standard for its transliteration
[ is only for a pronounced shva na (i.e., one which is pronounced ), and no representation in transliteration if the shva is mute.
In Modern Hebrew, a shva is pronounced under the following conditions:
]
Counterexamples
One exception to rule 2 seems to be 'inventory'; the absence of a vowel after the () might be attributable to the high sonority of the subsequent liquid
A liquid is a nearly incompressible fluid that conforms to the shape of its container but retains a (nearly) constant volume independent of pressure. As such, it is one of the four fundamental states of matter (the others being solid, gas, a ...
(), however compare with (, not ) 'filling' (in cuisine). According to the ''New User-Friendly Hebrew-English Dictionary'' (Arie Comey, Naomi Tsur; Achiasaf, 2006), the word ('stock') is pronounced with an : e'lai
Exceptions to rule 6 include (, not – 'pianist'), (, not – 'English'), (, not – 'we will sprinkle'), several inflection
In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and defin ...
s of quinqueliteral roots – e.g.: (, not – 'he synchronized'); (, not – 'he did stupid things'); (, not – 'he had a flirt') – as well as other, more recent loanword
A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because th ...
s, e.g. (, not – 'mantra').
In earlier forms of Hebrew, shva na and nach were phonologically and phonetically distinguishable, but the two variants resulting from Modern Hebrew phonology no longer conform to the traditional classification, e.g. while the (first) ''shva nach'' in the phrase ('books of the Law') is correctly pronounced in Modern Hebrew with the (or /f/ sound) being mute, the ''shva na'' in ('time') in Modern Hebrew is often pronounced as a mute ''Shva'' (). In religious contexts, however, scrupulous readers of the prayers
Prayer is an invocation or act that seeks to activate a rapport with an object of worship through deliberate communication. In the narrow sense, the term refers to an act of supplication or intercession directed towards a deity or a deified ...
and scriptures do still differentiate properly between ''Shva Nach'' and ''Shva Na'' (e.g. ).
Traditional classification
In traditional Hebrew grammar, a shva is categorized according to several attributes of its grammatical context. The three categories of shva relevant to standard Standard may refer to:
Symbols
* Colours, standards and guidons, kinds of military signs
* Standard (emblem), a type of a large symbol or emblem used for identification
Norms, conventions or requirements
* Standard (metrology), an object th ...
grammar of Modern Hebrew are ''shva na'' (), ''shva naḥ'' () and the less common ''shva meraḥef'' (). When discussing Tiberian pronunciation (ca. from the 8th until the 15th century) some shvas are classified as ''shva ga'ya'' (). The following table summarizes four distinguishing attributes which determine these categories:
* Does the shva supersede a vowel or no vowel in the word's non inflected form?
* Is the preceding letter pointed with a "short" or a "long" niqqud-variant?
* Is the following letter, when , pointed with a dagesh qal or not?
* Is the letter which is pointed with shva assigned to the preceding or to the following syllable?
To help illustrate the first criterion (existence or non-existence of a vowel in the word's non inflected
In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and defi ...
form), the location of the shva (i.e., the place within the word where the lack of vowel is indicated by it) is marked within the phonemic transcription
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west ...
with an orange linguistic zero: Ø; if existing, the corresponding vowel in the basic (non inflected) form of the example is also marked in orange.
Shva Na
In most cases, traditional Hebrew grammar considers ''shva na'', or the mobile shva, to be an entity that supersedes a vowel that exists in the basic form of a word but not after this word underwent inflection
In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and defin ...
or declension
In linguistics, declension (verb: ''to decline'') is the changing of the form of a word, generally to express its syntactic function in the sentence, by way of some inflection. Declensions may apply to nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and ar ...
. Additionally, any shva marked under an initial letter is classified shva na.
Merely identifying a given shva as being a shva na offers no indication as to its pronunciation in Modern Hebrew; it is however relevant to the application of standard niqqud
In Hebrew orthography, niqqud or nikud ( or ) is a system of diacritical signs used to represent vowels or distinguish between alternative pronunciations of letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Several such diacritical systems were developed in the ...
, e.g.: a letter following a letter marked with a shva na may not be marked with a dagesh qal (Modern Hebrew phonology
Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...
sometimes disagrees with this linguistic prescription
Linguistic prescription, or prescriptive grammar, is the establishment of rules defining preferred usage of language. These rules may address such linguistic aspects as spelling, pronunciation, vocabulary, syntax, and semantics. Sometimes infor ...
, as in – 'they zapped' – in which the second pe is pointed with a dagesh qal although preceded by a shva na), or: the vowel preceding a letter marked with a shva na must be represented by the "long" niqqud-variant for that vowel: qamats and not pataḥ
Pataḥ ( he, פַּתָּח ', , Biblical Hebrew: ') is a Hebrew niqqud vowel sign represented by a horizontal line underneath a letter. In modern Hebrew, it indicates the phoneme which is close to the " sound in the English word ''far'' an ...
, tsere
Tzere (also spelled ''Tsere'', ''Tzeirei'', ''Zere'', ''Zeire'', ''Ṣērê''; modern he, צֵירֵי, , sometimes also written ; formerly ''ṣērê'') is a Hebrew niqqud vowel sign represented by two horizontally-aligned dots "◌ֵ" un ...
and not segol
Segol (modern he, סֶגּוֹל, ; formerly , ''səḡôl'') is a Hebrew niqqud vowel sign that is represented by three dots forming an upside down equilateral triangle "ֶ ". As such, it resembles an upside down therefore sign (a becau ...
etc.. Furthermore, in standard syllabification
Syllabification () or syllabication (), also known as hyphenation, is the separation of a word into syllables, whether spoken, written or signed.
Overview
The written separation into syllables is usually marked by a hyphen when using English or ...
, the letter under which a shva na is marked is grouped with the following syllable.
The Academy of the Hebrew Language
The Academy of the Hebrew Language ( he, הָאָקָדֶמְיָה לַלָּשׁוֹן הָעִבְרִית, ''ha-akademyah la-lashon ha-ivrit'') was established by the Israeli government in 1953 as the "supreme institution for scholarship on t ...
's transliteration guidelines[Transliteration guidelines from 2006 (p. 4)]
/ref> specify that shva na should be transliterated only if pronounced in Modern Hebrew, in which case be used for general purposes and for precise transliteration. Shva na is sometimes transliterated . Concerning Modern Hebrew pronunciation, however, this symbol is misleading, since it is commonly used in linguistics to denote the vowel schwa
In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa (, rarely or ; sometimes spelled shwa) is a vowel sound denoted by the IPA symbol , placed in the central position of the vowel chart. In English and some other languages, it rep ...
, which does not exist in Modern Hebrew.
A shva na can be identified as such by means of the following criteria:
# when marked under the first letter of a word, as in , , and ,
# when marked under the first of two identical letters,
# when it's the second of two shvas marked under two consecutive letters (except when marked under the last letter of a word), as in and ,
# when the letter before the one under which it is marked is marked with a "long" niqqud-variant,, such as the long vowel of either ''yod'' or ''ḥiríq'', as in (''yəḥīḏəḵa''), or the long vowel of ''waw'' or ''ḥolam'', as in the words , and (''hōləḵīm'', ''yōdəʻīm'' and ''mōḵərīm'') and , ''"šōfəṭīm wa-šōṭərīm."''
# when marked under a letter with a dagesh ḥazaq (historically an indicator of gemination
In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from ''gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from s ...
), as and .[''Maḥberet Kitrei Ha-Torah'' (ed. Yoav Pinhas Halevi), chapter 5, Benei Barak 1990 (Hebrew)]
For a more detailed account, see
Shva Naḥ
Traditional Hebrew grammar defines shva naḥ, or shva quiescens, as indicating the absence of a vowel. In Modern Hebrew, some shvas classified as shva naḥ are nonetheless pronounced (e.g. the shva under the second dalet
Dalet (, also spelled Daleth or Daled) is the fourth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Dālet 𐤃, Hebrew Dālet , Aramaic Dālath , Syriac Dālaṯ , and Arabic (in abjadi order; 8th in modern order). Its sound value ...
in the word – – "you (f.) robbed"; see table above).
In all but a small number of cases, a shva not conforming to the criteria listed above is classified shva naḥ. This offers no conclusive indication as to its pronunciation in Modern Hebrew; it is however relevant to the application of standard niqqud
In Hebrew orthography, niqqud or nikud ( or ) is a system of diacritical signs used to represent vowels or distinguish between alternative pronunciations of letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Several such diacritical systems were developed in the ...
, e.g.: a letter following a letter marked with a shva nacḥ must be marked with a dagesh qal (Modern Hebrew phonology
Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...
sometimes disagrees with this linguistic prescription
Linguistic prescription, or prescriptive grammar, is the establishment of rules defining preferred usage of language. These rules may address such linguistic aspects as spelling, pronunciation, vocabulary, syntax, and semantics. Sometimes infor ...
, as in – "to miss" – in which the second pe lacks a dagesh qal although preceded by a shva naḥ), or: the vowel preceding a letter marked with a shva naḥ must be represented by the "short" niqqud-variant for that vowel: pataḥ and not qamats, segol
Segol (modern he, סֶגּוֹל, ; formerly , ''səḡôl'') is a Hebrew niqqud vowel sign that is represented by three dots forming an upside down equilateral triangle "ֶ ". As such, it resembles an upside down therefore sign (a becau ...
and not tsere
Tzere (also spelled ''Tsere'', ''Tzeirei'', ''Zere'', ''Zeire'', ''Ṣērê''; modern he, צֵירֵי, , sometimes also written ; formerly ''ṣērê'') is a Hebrew niqqud vowel sign represented by two horizontally-aligned dots "◌ֵ" un ...
etc.. Furthermore, in standard syllabification
Syllabification () or syllabication (), also known as hyphenation, is the separation of a word into syllables, whether spoken, written or signed.
Overview
The written separation into syllables is usually marked by a hyphen when using English or ...
, the letter under which a shva naḥ is marked is grouped with the preceding syllable.
The Academy of the Hebrew Language
The Academy of the Hebrew Language ( he, הָאָקָדֶמְיָה לַלָּשׁוֹן הָעִבְרִית, ''ha-akademyah la-lashon ha-ivrit'') was established by the Israeli government in 1953 as the "supreme institution for scholarship on t ...
's transliteration guidelines[ specify that shva naḥ should not be represented in transliteration.
]
Shva Meraḥef
"Shva meraḥef" is the grammatical designation of a shva which does not comply with all criteria characterizing a shva na (specifically, one marked under a letter following a letter marked with a "short", not a "long", niqqud-variant), but which does, like a shva na, supersede a vowel (or a shva na) that exists in the basic form of a word but not after this word underwent inflection
In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and defin ...
or declension
In linguistics, declension (verb: ''to decline'') is the changing of the form of a word, generally to express its syntactic function in the sentence, by way of some inflection. Declensions may apply to nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and ar ...
.
The classification of a shva as ''shva meraḥef'' is relevant to the application of standard niqqud
In Hebrew orthography, niqqud or nikud ( or ) is a system of diacritical signs used to represent vowels or distinguish between alternative pronunciations of letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Several such diacritical systems were developed in the ...
, e.g.: a letter following a letter marked with a shva meraḥef should not be marked with a dagesh qal, although the vowel preceding this letter could be represented by the ''short'' niqqud-variant for that vowel. This reflects sometimes, but not always, pronunciation in Modern Hebrew, e.g. ('kings of') is commonly pronounced in accordance with the standard form, (with no dagesh qal in the letter kaf), whereas ('dogs of'), whose standard pronunciation is , is commonly pronounced (as if there were a dagesh qal in the letter bet
Black Entertainment Television (acronym BET) is an American basic cable channel targeting African-American audiences. It is owned by the CBS Entertainment Group unit of Paramount Global via BET Networks and has offices in New York City, Los A ...
). In standard syllabification
Syllabification () or syllabication (), also known as hyphenation, is the separation of a word into syllables, whether spoken, written or signed.
Overview
The written separation into syllables is usually marked by a hyphen when using English or ...
, the letter under which a shva meraḥef is marked is grouped with the preceding syllable.
Shva Ga'ya
''Shva ga'ya'' designates a shva marked under a letter that is also marked with the cantillation
Cantillation is the ritual chanting of prayers and responses. It often specifically refers to Jewish Hebrew cantillation. Cantillation sometimes refers to diacritics used in texts that are to be chanted in liturgy.
Cantillation includes:
* Chant
...
mark ( lit. 'bleating' or 'bellowing'), or , e.g. the shva under the letter bet
Black Entertainment Television (acronym BET) is an American basic cable channel targeting African-American audiences. It is owned by the CBS Entertainment Group unit of Paramount Global via BET Networks and has offices in New York City, Los A ...
in the word ('toes') would normally be classified a shva na and be transliterated : (or according to the precise standard,[ : ), however, if marked with the ga'ya cantillation mark, ]
, this shva is classified as shva ga'ya, and the transliteration believed to reflect its historical pronunciation would be . This "strict application" is found in Yemenite Hebrew.
T'nua hatufa
Within niqqud
In Hebrew orthography, niqqud or nikud ( or ) is a system of diacritical signs used to represent vowels or distinguish between alternative pronunciations of letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Several such diacritical systems were developed in the ...
, vowel diacritics
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 ''diacritic ...
are sorted into three groups: ''big'', ''small'' and ''fleeting'' or ''furtive'' ( , ), sometimes also referred to as ''long'', ''short'' and ''very short'' or ''ultrashort''. This grouping might have correlated to different vowel length
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, f ...
s in earlier forms of Hebrew (see Tiberian vocalization → Vowels; spoken Israeli Hebrew however does not distinguish between different vowel lengths, thus this orthographic differentiation is not manifest in speech).
The vowel diacritics classified as ('fleeting') all share the common feature of being a digraph of a ''small vowel'' diacritic (Patach
Pataḥ ( he, פַּתָּח ', , Biblical Hebrew: ') is a Hebrew niqqud vowel sign represented by a horizontal line underneath a letter. In modern Hebrew, it indicates the phoneme which is close to the " sound in the English word ''far'' an ...
, Segol
Segol (modern he, סֶגּוֹל, ; formerly , ''səḡôl'') is a Hebrew niqqud vowel sign that is represented by three dots forming an upside down equilateral triangle "ֶ ". As such, it resembles an upside down therefore sign (a becau ...
or Kamatz Katan
Kamatz or qamatz ( he, label=Modern Hebrew, קָמָץ, ; alternatively ) is a Hebrew niqqud (vowel) sign represented by two perpendicular lines (looking like an uppercase T) underneath a letter. In modern Hebrew, it usually indicates the pho ...
) plus a shva sign. Similarly, their names are derived from the respective ''small vowel'' diacritic's name plus the adjunct : , and .
As with a shva na, standard ( prescribed) syllabification
Syllabification () or syllabication (), also known as hyphenation, is the separation of a word into syllables, whether spoken, written or signed.
Overview
The written separation into syllables is usually marked by a hyphen when using English or ...
determines that letters pointed with a ''fleeting vowel'' diacritic be considered part of the subsequent syllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...
, even if in modern Hebrew pronunciation this diacritic represents a full-fledged syllable, thus e.g. the phonologically
Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...
trisyllabic word ('he placed upright'), pronounced , should standardly be syllabified into only two syllables, ().
Comparison table
Unicode encoding
As of 2016, a separate Unicode symbol for the sheva na has been proposed but not implemented.
See also
* Niqqud
In Hebrew orthography, niqqud or nikud ( or ) is a system of diacritical signs used to represent vowels or distinguish between alternative pronunciations of letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Several such diacritical systems were developed in the ...
* Schwa
In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa (, rarely or ; sometimes spelled shwa) is a vowel sound denoted by the IPA symbol , placed in the central position of the vowel chart. In English and some other languages, it rep ...
* Tiberian vocalization
The Tiberian vocalization, Tiberian pointing, or Tiberian niqqud (Hebrew: ''haNīqqūḏ haṬəḇērīyānī'') is a system of diacritics (''niqqud'') devised by the Masoretes of Tiberias to add to the consonantal text of the Hebrew Bible to p ...
* Arabic diacritic sukūn
The Arabic script has numerous diacritics, which include: consonant pointing known as (), and supplementary diacritics known as (). The latter include the vowel marks termed (; singular: , ').
The Arabic script is a modified abjad, where sh ...
Notes
Long and short niqqud-variants represent identical spoken vowels in Modern Hebrew; the orthographic distinction is, however, still observed in standard spelling.
Bibliography
*
References
{{Hebrew language
Niqqud