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Sh'va
Shva or, in Biblical Hebrew, shĕwa () is a Hebrew niqqud vowel sign written as two vertical dots () beneath a letter. It indicates either the phoneme (shva na', mobile shva) or the complete absence of a vowel (/ Ø/) (shva naḥ, resting shva). It is transliterated as , , , (apostrophe), or nothing. Note that use of for shva is questionable: transliterating Modern Hebrew shva naḥ with is misleading, since it is never actually pronounced – a mid central vowel (IPA ) does not exist in Modern Hebrew. The vowel was pronounced as a full vowel in earlier Hebrew varieties such as Tiberian vocalization, where it was phonetically usually identical to short in Palestinian vocalization appears as short or and in Babylonian vocalization as In early Greek and Latin transliterations of Hebrew such as the Hexapla, it appears as �and respectively. A shva sign in combination with the vowel diacritics patáḥ, segól, and qamatz produces a : a diacritic for a (a 'reduc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hebrew Alphabet
The Hebrew alphabet (, ), known variously by scholars as the Ktav Ashuri, Jewish script, square script and block script, is a unicase, unicameral abjad script used in the writing of the Hebrew language and other Jewish languages, most notably Yiddish, Judaeo-Spanish, Ladino, Judeo-Arabic languages, Judeo-Arabic, and Judeo-Persian. In modern Hebrew, vowels are increasingly introduced. It is also used informally in Israel to write Levantine Arabic, especially among Druze in Israel, Druze. It is an offshoot of the Aramaic alphabet, Imperial Aramaic alphabet, which flourished during the Achaemenid Empire and which itself derives from the Phoenician alphabet. Historically, a different abjad script was used to write Hebrew: the original, old Hebrew script, now known as the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet, has been largely preserved in a variant form as the Samaritan script, Samaritan alphabet, and is still used by the Samaritans. The present ''Jewish script'' or ''square script'', on the cont ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mappiq
The mappiq ( ''mapík''; also ''mapiq'', ''mapik'', ''mappik'', lit. "causing to go out") is a diacritic used in the Hebrew alphabet. It is part of the Masoretes' system of niqqud (vowel points), and was added to Hebrew orthography 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 ''mappiq'' is used to indicate that the corresponding letter is to be pronounced as a consonant, although in a position where the letter usually indicates a vowel. Typically, the mappiq is used in the middle of ('' he''), though it historically and biblically has been used with ( yodh), ( vav), and (aleph). Before the vowel points were invented, some consonants were used to indicate vowel sounds. These consonants are called '' matres lectionis'' ( New Latin: sg. ''māter lēctiōnis'' "mother of reading", pl. ''mātrēs lēctiōnis'' "mothers of r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Babylonian Vocalization
The Babylonian vocalization, also known as Babylonian supralinear punctuation, or Babylonian pointing or Babylonian niqqud Hebrew: ) is a system of diacritics (niqqud) and vowel symbols assigned above the text and devised by the Masoretes of Babylon to add to the consonantal text of the Hebrew Bible to indicate the proper pronunciation of words (vowel quality), reflecting the Hebrew of Babylon. The Babylonian notation is no longer in use in any Jewish community, having been supplanted by the sublinear Tiberian vocalization. However, the Babylonian pronunciation as reflected in that notation appears to be the ancestor of that used by Yemenite Jews. History The simple Babylonian vocalization system was created between the 6th and 7th centuries, while the complex system developed later. There is evidence that Babylonian Hebrew had emerged as a distinct dialect by the end of the 9th century. Babylonian Hebrew reached its peak in the 8th to 9th centuries, being used from Persia to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Palestinian Vocalization
The Palestinian vocalization, Palestinian pointing, Palestinian niqqud or Vocalization of the Land of Israel () is an extinct system of niqqud (diacritics) devised by scholars to add to the Hebrew Bible to indicate vowel quality. The Palestinian system is no longer used, long supplanted by the Tiberian vocalization. History The Palestinian vocalization reflects a Hebrew dialect of Palestine (region), Palestine from the sixth to the eighth century, long after it had become extinct as a first language before the third century. After it was no longer used as a vernacular, religious scholars preserved the previously distinct dialects; scholars of the era noted that Hebrew was still used it to communicate () as late as the 10th century in Tiberias. Palestinian Hebrew was a distinct dialect to Samaritan Hebrew, the Hebrew recorded in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and to Babylonian and Tiberian Hebrew. Palestinian Hebrew is the antecedent to all modern pronunciations traditions of Hebrew e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vowel Length
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived or actual length (phonetics), duration of a vowel sound when pronounced. Vowels perceived as shorter are often called short vowels and those perceived as longer called long vowels. On one hand, many languages do not distinguish vowel length phoneme, phonemically, meaning that vowel length alone does not change the meanings of words. However, the amount of time a vowel is uttered can change based on factors such as the phonetic characteristics of the sounds around it: the phonetic environment. An example is that vowels tend to be pronounced longer before a voiced consonant and shorter before a voiceless consonant in the standard accents of General American English, American and Received Pronunciation, British English. On the other hand, vowel length is indeed an important phonemic factor in certain languages, meaning vowel length can change word-meanings, for example in Arabic phonology#Vowels, Arabic, Czech phonology, Czech, Dravidia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tiberian Vocalization
The Tiberian vocalization, Tiberian pointing, or Tiberian niqqud () is a system of diacritics (''niqqud'') devised by the Masoretes of Tiberias to add to the consonantal text of the Hebrew Bible to produce the Masoretic Text. The system soon became used to vocalize other Hebrew texts as well. Tiberian vocalization marks vowels and stress, distinguishes consonant quality and length, and serves as punctuation. While the Tiberian system was devised for Tiberian Hebrew, it has become the dominant system for vocalizing all forms of Hebrew. It has long since eclipsed the comparatively rudimentary Babylonian and Palestinian vocalization systems for writing Biblical Hebrew. Consonant diacritics The sin dot distinguishes between the two values of . A '' dagesh'' indicates a consonant is geminate or unspirantized, and a ''raphe'' indicates spirantization. The ''mappiq'' indicates that is consonantal, not silent, in syllable-coda position. Vowel diacritics The seven vowel qualities of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mid Central Vowel
The mid central vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. A reduced mid central vowel is known as a schwa. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents either sound is , a rotated lowercase letter e. While the ''Handbook of the International Phonetic Association'' does not define the roundedness of , a schwa is more often unrounded than rounded. The phonetician Jane Setter describes the pronunciation of the unrounded variant as follows: "a sound which can be produced by basically relaxing the articulators in the oral cavity and vocalising." To produce the rounded variant, all that needs to be done in addition to that is to round the lips. Afrikaans contrasts unrounded and rounded mid central vowels; the latter is usually transcribed with . The contrast is not very stable, and many speakers use an unrounded vowel in both cases. Danish and Luxembourgish have a mid central vowel that is variably rounded. In other languages, the chang ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phoneme
A phoneme () is any set of similar Phone (phonetics), speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible Phonetics, phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word from another. All languages contain phonemes (or the spatial-gestural equivalent in sign languages), and all spoken languages include both consonant and vowel phonemes; phonemes are primarily studied under the branch of linguistics known as phonology. Examples and notation The English words ''cell'' and ''set'' have the exact same sequence of sounds, except for being different in their final consonant sounds: thus, versus in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), a writing system that can be used to represent phonemes. Since and alone distinguish certain words from others, they are each examples of phonemes of the English language. Specifically they are consonant phonemes, along with , while is a vowel phoneme. The spelling of Engli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vowel
A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. 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 Vowel length, quantity (length). They are usually voice (phonetics), voiced and are closely involved in Prosody (linguistics), prosodic variation such as tone (linguistics), tone, intonation (linguistics), intonation and Stress (linguistics), stress. The word ''vowel'' comes from the Latin word , meaning "vocal" (i.e. relating to the voice). In English, the word ''vowel'' is commonly used to refer both to vowel sounds and to the written symbols that represent them (, , , , , and sometimes and ). Definition There are two complementary definitions of vowel, one Phonetics, phonetic and the other Phonology, phonological. *In the phonetic definition, a vowel is a sound, such as the English language, English "ah" or "oh" , produ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 Early Middle Ages. The most widespread system, and the only one still used to a significant degree today, was created by the Masoretes of Tiberias in the second half of the first millennium AD in the Land of Israel (see Masoretic Text, Tiberian Hebrew). Text written with niqqud is called '' ktiv menuqad''. Niqqud marks are small compared to the letters, so they can be added without retranscribing texts whose writers did not anticipate them. In modern Israeli orthography ''niqqud'' is mainly used in specialised texts such as dictionaries, poetry, or texts for children or new immigrants to Israel. For purposes of disambiguation, a system of spelling without niqqud, known in Hebrew as '' ktiv maleh'' (, literally "full spelling") had develope ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shin Dot
Shin (also spelled Šin (') or Sheen) is the twenty-first and penultimate letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician ''šīn'' 𐤔, Hebrew ''šīn'' , Aramaic ''šīn'' 𐡔, Syriac ''šīn'' ܫ, and Arabic ''sīn'' . The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek Sigma () (which in turn gave rise to the Latin , the German '' ẞ'' and the Cyrillic С), and the letter '' Sha'' in the Glagolitic and Cyrillic scripts (, ). The South Arabian and Ethiopian letter '' Śawt'' is also cognate. The letter ''šīn'' is the only letter of the Arabic alphabet with three dots with a letter corresponding to a letter in the Northwest Semitic abjad or the Phoenician alphabet. Origins The Proto-Sinaitic glyph, according to William Albright, was based on a "tooth" and with the phonemic value š "corresponds etymologically (in part, at least) to original Semitic ''ṯ'' (th), which was pronounced ''s'' in South Canaanite". However, the Proto-Semitic word for "tooth" has been re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
