Niqqud

{| class="infobox wikitable floatright"

! colspan="2" style="text-align:center;" | Niqqud

| colspan="2" |

{| style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; border-style:none"

|style="border-style:none"| ||style="padding:1px; margin:0px; background:white;line-height:1em; font-size:325%; font-family:SBL Hebrew, David, Narkisim, 'Times New Roman'; border-width:0px"|

|style="border-style:none"| ||style="padding:1px; margin:0px; background:white;line-height:1em; font-size:325%; font-family:SBL Hebrew, David, Narkisim, 'Times New Roman'; border-width:0px;"|

|style="border-style:none"| ||style="padding:1px; margin:0px; background:white;line-height:1em; font-size:325%; font-family:SBL Hebrew, David, Narkisim, 'Times New Roman'; border-width:0px;"|

| Other diacritics

| style="background:white" |cantillation, geresh,<br />gershayim

| colspan="2" style="text-align:center;" |Example

| colspan="2" align="center" style="background:white;height:50px"|220px

| colspan="2" style="width:250px;background:white; text-align:center;" | Gen. 1:9, "And God said,<br />Let the waters be collected".<br />Letters in black, <span style= "color:#CC0000;">niqqud in red</span>, <span style="color:#0000CC;"><br />cantillation in blue</span>

| colspan="2" style="text-align:center;" |Niqqud articles

| colspan="2" style="width:250px;background:white; text-align:center;"| ShvaHiriqZeireSegolPatachKamatzHolamDageshMappiqShurukKubutzRafeSin/Shin dot

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 developed before the introduction of niqqud. This was formally standardised in the Rules for Spelling without Niqqud () enacted by the Academy of the Hebrew Language in 1996, and updated in 2017. Nevertheless, niqqud is still used occasionally in texts to prevent ambiguity and mispronunciation of specific words.

One reason for the lesser use of niqqud is that it no longer reflects the current pronunciation. In modern Hebrew, tzere is pronounced the same as segol, although they were distinct in Tiberian Hebrew, and pataḥ the same as qamatz. To the younger generation of native Hebrew speakers, these distinctions seem arbitrary and meaningless; on the other hand, Hebrew language purists have rejected out of hand the idea of changing the basics of niqqud and fitting them to the current pronunciation – with the result that in practice niqqud is increasingly going out of use.

According to Ghil'ad Zuckermann, the lack of niqqud in what he calls "Israeli" (Modern Hebrew) often results in "mispronunciations". For example, the Israeli lexical item is often pronounced as mitabním (literally "becoming fossilized (masculine plural)") instead of metaavním "appetizers", the latter deriving from teavón "appetite", the former deriving from éven "stone". is acoustically and phonologically nonexistent in Modern Hebrew (except occasionally in dramatic or comical recitations, in some loanwords—such as a few Arabic profanities—and pronunciations exaggerated for the sake of disambiguation).

For most letters the dagesh is written within the glyph, near the middle if possible, but the exact position varies from letter to letter (some letters do not have an open area in the middle, and in these cases it is written usually beside the letter, as with yod).The guttural consonants () and resh () are not marked with a dagesh, although the letter he () (and rarely ) may appear with a mappiq (which is written the same way as dagesh) at the end of a word to indicate that the letter does not signify a vowel but is consonantal.To the resulting form, there can still be added a niqqud diacritic designating a vowel.

| Tiberian

| dāḡēš

! scope="row" rowspan="2" style="font-size: 180%; line-height: 110%;" |

| rowspan="2" | Rafe

| rowspan="2" | rafe

| Israeli

| rafe

| rowspan="2" |

| Ø

| a˺, e˺, i˺, o˺, or u˺

| No longer used in Hebrew. Still seen in Yiddish (especially following the YIVO standard) to distinguish various letter pairs. Some ancient manuscripts have a dagesh or a rafe on nearly every letter. It is also used to indicate that a letter like or is silent. In the particularly strange case of the Ten Commandments, which have two different traditions for their cantillations which many texts write together, there are cases of a single letter with both a dagesh and a rafe, if it is hard in one reading and soft in the other.

| Tiberian

| rāfa

| <nowiki>[</nowiki>◌̆<nowiki>]</nowiki>

| ă, ĕ, ĭ, or ŭ

| Niqqud, but not a vowel. Used as an "anti-dagesh", to show that a letter is soft and not hard, or (sometimes) that a consonant is single and not double, or that a letter like or is completely silent.

! scope="row" style="font-size: 180%; line-height: 110%;" |

| Shin dot

| shin dot

| Israeli and Tiberian

| šin dot

| , , "right Shin"

| š/sh

| Niqqud, but not a vowel (except when inadequate typefaces merge the holam of a letter before the shin with the shin dot). The dot for shin is written over the right (first) branch of the letter. It is usually transcribed "sh".

! scope="row" rowspan="2" style="font-size: 180%; line-height: 110%;" |

| rowspan="2" | Sin dot

| rowspan="2" | sin dot

| Israeli

| rowspan="2" | śin dot

| rowspan="2" | , , "left Shin"

| rowspan="2" |

| rowspan="2" | ś/s

| Niqqud, but not a vowel (except when inadequate typefaces merge the holam of the sin with the sin dot). The dot for sin is written over the left (third) branch of the letter.

| Tiberian

| Some linguistic evidence indicates that it was originally IPA .

Keyboard

Both consonants and niqqud can be typed from virtual graphical keyboards available on the World Wide Web, or by methods integrated into particular operating systems.

Microsoft Windows

In Windows 8 or later, niqqud can be entered using the right alt (or left alt + ctrl) + the first Hebrew letter of the name of the value, when using the default (Hebrew Standard) keyboard layout:

{| class="wikitable"

!<big>Niqqud</big>

!Right Alt (=AltGr) + Hebrew-keyboard key:

!Explanation<br/><small>(usually the first Hebrew letter of the niqqud's name)</small>

|<big></big>

| for (kamatz)

|first Hebrew letter of the niqqud's name

|<big></big>

| for (patach)

|<big></big>

| for (sheva)

|<big></big>

| for (dagesh)

|<big></big>

| for (hiriq)

|<big></big>

| for (segol)

|<big></big>

| for (tsere)

|<big></big>

| for (holam)

|the key (like the 'o' vowel), since the key is already used for hiriq

|<big></big>

| for (kubuts)

|because the line \ visually resembles ֻ

|<big></big>

| for reduced patach

|the key to the right of

|<big></big>

| for reduced kamats

|the key to the right of

|<big></big>

| for reduced segol

|the key to the right of

|<big></big>

| for the Shin dot

|the key above , right-side, since the dot is placed above , right-side

|<big></big>

| for the Sin dot

|the key above , left-side, since the dot is placed above , left-side

|<big></big>

| for (rafe)

In Windows 7 or earlier, niqqud can be entered by enabling Caps Lock and then, with the cursor positioned after a letter, pressing Shift and one of the keys in the Windows column below.
The user can configure the registry to allow use of the Alt key with the numeric plus key to type the hexadecimal Unicode value.
The user can use the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator to produce a custom keyboard layout, or can download a layout produced by another party.

Linux

In GTK+ Linux systems, niqqud can be entered by holding down AltGR and pressing the same keys as for Windows, above, or by pressing ctrl+shift+u followed by the appropriate 4 digit Unicode.

macOS

Using the Hebrew keyboard layout in macOS, the typist can enter niqqud by pressing the Option key together with a number on the top row of the keyboard. Other combinations such as sofit and hataf can also be entered by pressing either the Shift key and a number, or by pressing the Shift key, Option key, and a number at the same time.

{|border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" style="background:transparent"

|valign="top"|

{|class="wikitable"

!colspan="6"| Niqqud input

!colspan="1"| Input<br/>(Windows)

!colspan="1"| Key<br/>(Windows)

!colspan="1"| Input <br /> (macOS)

!colspan="1"| Unicode

!colspan="1"| Type

!colspan="1"| Result

|align="center"| ~

| 35px

| 0

| 05B0

| Sh'va

| 35px <sup>[1]</sup>

|align="center"| 1

| 3

| 05B1

| Reduced Segol

| 35px <sup>[1]</sup>

|align="center"| 2

| 1

| 05B2

| Reduced Patach

| 35px <sup>[1]</sup>

|align="center"| 3

| 2

| 05B3

| Reduced Kamatz

| 35px <sup>[1]</sup>

|align="center"| 4

| 4

| 05B4

| Hiriq

| 35px <sup>[1]</sup>

|align="center"| 5

| 5

| 05B5

| Zeire

| 35px <sup>[1]</sup>

|align="center"| 6

| 9

| 05B6

| Segol

| 35px <sup>[1]</sup>

|align="center"| 7

| 6

| 05B7

| Patach

| 35px <sup>[]</sup>

|align="center"|8

|05B8

|Kamatz

|35px <sup>1</sup>

|align="center"|9

|05C2

|Sin dot (left)

|35px <sup>2</sup>

|align="center"|0

|05C1

|Shin dot (right)

|35px <sup>2</sup>

|align="center"| –

|05B9

|Holam

|23px <sup>1</sup>

| rowspan="2" align="center"|= <sup>3</sup>

| rowspan="2" |

|05BC

|Dagesh or Mappiq

|35px <sup>1</sup>

|05BC

|Shuruk

|35px <sup>4</sup>

|align="center"|\

|05BB

|Kubutz

|35px <sup>1</sup>

Notes:

<sup>1</sup> The letter "" represents any Hebrew consonant.
<sup>2</sup> For sin-dot and shin-dot, the letter "" (sin/shin) is used.
<sup>3</sup> The dagesh, mappiq, and shuruk have different uses, but the same graphical representation, and hence are input in the same manner.
<sup>4</sup> For shuruk, the letter "" (vav) is used since it can only be used with that letter.
A rafe can be input by inserting the corresponding Unicode character, either explicitly or via a customized keyboard layout.

SIL Global have developed another standard, which is based on Tiro, but adds the Niqqud along the home keys. Linux comes with "Israel — Biblical Hebrew (Tiro)" as a standard layout. With this layout, niqqud can be typed without pressing the Caps Lock key.

Keyboard

Microsoft Windows

Linux

macOS

See also

Notes

Bibliography

References

External links