The mappiq (, also ''mapiq'', ''mapik'', ''mappik'', lit. "causing to go out") 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 ''diacrit ...

used in the

Hebrew alphabet The Hebrew alphabet ( he, אָלֶף־בֵּית עִבְרִי, ), known variously by scholars as the Ktav Ashuri, Jewish script, square script and block script, is an abjad script used in the writing of the Hebrew language and other Jewi ...

. It is part of the

Masoretes The Masoretes ( he, בַּעֲלֵי הַמָּסוֹרָה, Baʿălēy Hammāsōrā, lit. 'Masters of the Tradition') were groups of Jewish scribe- scholars who worked from around the end of the 5th through 10th centuries CE, based primarily i ...

' system of

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 ...

(vowel points), and was added to

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 ...

orthography An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and ...

at the same time. It takes the form of a dot in the middle of a letter (usually , '' he''). An identical point with a different phonetic function (marking different consonants) is called a

dagesh The dagesh () is a diacritic used in the Hebrew alphabet. It was added to the Hebrew orthography at the same time as the Masoretic system of niqqud (vowel points). It takes the form of a dot placed inside a Hebrew letter and has the effect of modi ...

. The ''mappiq'' is used to mark the letter ('' he'') (and rarely ''

aleph Aleph (or alef or alif, transliterated ʾ) is the first letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician , Hebrew , Aramaic , Syriac , Arabic ʾ and North Arabian 𐪑. It also appears as South Arabian 𐩱 and Ge'ez . These lett ...

''), indicating that it is to be pronounced as a consonant, although in a position where the letter usually indicates a vowel. Before the vowel points were invented, some consonants were used to indicate vowel sounds. These consonants are called ''

matres lectionis ''Matres lectionis'' (from Latin "mothers of reading", singular form: ''mater lectionis'', from he, אֵם קְרִיאָה ) are consonants that are used to indicate a vowel, primarily in the writing down of Semitic languages such as Arabic, ...

''. The letter ''he'' (transliterated ''H'') at the end of a word (Hebrew is written from right to left) can indicate the vowel sound ''a'' or ''e''. When it does, it is not acting as a consonant, and therefore in pure phonetic logic the Biblical name Zechariah (among others) should be spelled "Zekharya" without the final "h". However, silent final h being also a feature of English, it is usually retained in Hebrew transliterations to distinguish final ''he'' from final ''aleph''. The divine name

Yah Yah may refer to: * Jah, shortened form of Yahweh, the Hebrew name for God * YAH, The IATA code for La Grande-4 Airport in northern Quebec, Canada * Yazgulyam language, by ISO 639 code * "Yah" (song), by Kendrick Lamar from his album ''Damn'' * a ...

has a mappiq (a dot inside the last letter), so the last letter shall not be read as a vowel ''a'', but as the consonant ''H'' - and therefore Yah (and not Ya). The most common occurrence of ''mappiq'' is in the suffix "-ah", meaning "her". A ''he'' with ''mappiq'' is meant to be pronounced as a full consonant "h". In Mizrahi and Yemenite Hebrew it is pronounced more strongly than a normal ''he'', sometimes with a slight following '' shwa'' sound (this rule is also followed by Dutch Sephardim), and in Ashkenazi Hebrew, it is pronounced . In modern Hebrew, however, it is normally silent; although it is still pronounced in religious contexts by careful readers of the prayers and scriptures.

Rafe

In Masoretic manuscripts the opposite of a ''mappiq'' would be indicated by a '' rafe'', a small line on top of the letter. This is no longer found in Hebrew.

Rafe

See also