Saturday, June 28, 2014

Today's Hebrew lesson; The Vowels

Welcome! Today's Hebrew lesson is a review of the most common vowels.

Vowels in Hebrew are called "Nikud" or "appointing" and are written as dots or dashes above, below, or next to a letter. Some of you may have heard of them before; these are proverbial "Jot nor Tittle".

There are eighteen vowels in total and are divided into Long, Short, Reduced, Silent and Vocal short, and that doesn't even cover the six diphthongs. You seem like nice people, so for now, let's just stick with the basics.
You will never see the nikud used in day-to-day situations (like newspapers) and will just have to learn how to properly pronounce words through lots of experience.

"Nikud" are known as "diacritics" in English, and appear in latin alphabets as accents like é or á.


ת "Tav" was yesterday's Hebrew letter.
אֱ אָ אֻ Today; the Hebrew vowels, or "Nikud".
ך ם ן ף ץ Tomorrow; the final forms, or "Sofeet"

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