Segolates are words in the

Hebrew language Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and remained in regular use as a first language unti ...

whose end is of the form CVCVC, where the

penult ''Penult'' is a linguistics term for the second-to-last syllable of a word. It is an abbreviation of ''penultimate'', which describes the next-to-last item in a series. The penult follows the antepenult and precedes the ultima. For example, the ...

imate vowel receives syllable stress. Such words are called "segolates" because the final unstressed vowel is typically (but not always) ''

segol Segol (modern , ; 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 because sign) underneat ...

''. These words evolved from older Semitic words that ended in a complex coda; indeed, when a suffix (other than an absolute plural) is added to a segolate, the original form (or something similar) reappears (cf. ''kéleḇ'' "dog" vs. ''kalbī'' "my dog"). Examples: The ancient forms like ''*CawC'' (such as ''šawr'' "bull") almost universally evolved to non-segolate ''CôC'' ( šôr), though there are exceptions, such as ''mā́weṯ'' "death". Some segolate words' final syllable ends with a

patach Pataḥ ( ', , 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'' and is transliterated ...

rather than a segol, due to the influence of guttural consonants (, , , ) in the final syllable.

Classical Arabic Classical Arabic or Quranic Arabic () is the standardized literary form of Arabic used from the 7th century and throughout the Middle Ages, most notably in Umayyad Caliphate, Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphate, Abbasid literary texts such as poetry, e ...

still preserves forms similar to the reconstructed Ancient Hebrew forms, although significantly simplified. Examples include ''ʼarḍ'' "earth", ''kalb'' "dog", ''ʻayn'' "eye", ''ṣidq'' "sincerity". Some modern dialects insert an

epenthetic In phonology, epenthesis (; Greek ) means the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially in the first syllable ('' prothesis''), the last syllable ('' paragoge''), or between two syllabic sounds in a word. The opposite process in whi ...

vowel between the final two consonants, similar to what happened in Hebrew.

References

Hebrew language {{Hebrew-lang-stub