Talk:Niqqud

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I've just tried to make some improvements with Unicode. I don't speak Hebrew though and the English is not very clear in this article so I think I've made some mistakes which will need correcting, especially in the specific examples of one consonant plus one vowel.

I think the word "constat" used here should probably be "consonant" but "constant" seems to also be written. I didn't try to fix this. — Hippietrail 02:55, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

It would be nice if there were some notes on how and why kamatz gadol and kamatz katan look the same but sound different, and maybe how to tell them apart. — Hippietrail 03:50, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

They can't be told apart because they look the same. However, there are some rules for knowing with is which; for example, if the letter following a kamatz has a sh'va nach under it, then it is always a kamatz katan. Jayjg 04:06, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I thought about trying to explain the difference, but to be honest sometimes I don't know myself. I know that the general rule of thumb is that an open qames is always a qames gadhol, and a shut qames is always a qames qatan. But without additional nequddoth, it's sometimes hard to tell which is open and which is shut, outside of context. - Gilgamesh 09:48, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
According to Pratico and Van Pelt, the qamets hatuf occurs only in closed, unaccented syllables; whereas, the qamets gathol "prefers" open, pretonic or closed accented syllables. This does leave quite a bit of ambiguity, except where clarified with metheg. --Jonadab
From a purely phonological point of view, it should generally be impossible for a qamets to occur in a closed syllable, although the exception in Hebrew is with stressed syllables. This should apply to all long vowels. For this reason we are able to distinguish the qamets hatuf in positions where the syllable is closed and unstressed. Nonetheless, just as we may find a patah in an open syllable, it is impossible to distinguish but phonologically possible that qamets hatuf may exist in an open syllable (or stressed, I guess). I can't think of any examples for the moment, but I'm sure there are some. Thus the rule is only one way. Really if someone wants to know these sorts of details, Wikipedia shouldn't be their only source =). -- jnothman 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I keep thinking of more things (-:

  • The similarity and difference between the dagesh, mapiq, and the dot used with vav to form shureq.
  • How the sin dot and shin dot can coincide with a preceding or follow holem dot (or something similar - I may be wrong).
  • The fact that dagesh has two uses (forte and lene I think) but no need for detail here since it's covered in the dagesh article.
  • Why have the Unicode names been removed? For many involved with computers and internationalization but not Hebrew specifically, these will be the only names they are likely to see.
  • The fact that hateph segol/patah/qamesh are all varieties of sheva.
  • Literal translations of the names of each symbol.
  • How the vowel points from one word are combined with the consonants of another in holy books.

— Hippietrail 12:35, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Also:

  • Maqqef is probably worth discussing. --Jonadab
Removing the Unicode names was my oversight, as I more or less rewrote most of the article from scratch. Go ahead and add them if you think they're important. - Gilgamesh 04:30, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Maybe the page should be structured so that there is first a table of vowel-length against vowel quality -- jnothman 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Greetings, I was wondering about the issue of transliteration vs. transcription. I am familiar with the IPA and was wondering if there is a system of Latin letters with diacritics that corresponds exactly with the IPA (eg. the letter "Sin" -in this article it is given a romanized version of "s" with a háček diacritic on top -like above the "a" in háček-. It then gives an IPA equivalent of unvoiced alveolar lateral fricative). Strictly speaking transliteration matches one to one to the original letter while transcription matches one to one with the pronunciation. While I understand in Biblical/Yemenite Hebrew there would be no difference because it is a phonetic alphabet; my question is concerning the romanization system itself. What is it and is it a system for transcription? I am also curious as to the source of information on the sound of "Sin" in Biblical Hebrew. I am searching for data on Yemenite Hebrew pronunciation, specifically the Sharabi "dialect". I have had a hard time getting data on Gimel with no dagesh, and very poor data on "Sin" (dot on left). WRITTEN BY: amatuer Hebrew student and creator of http://e.domaindlx.com/hebrewtalk/hebrewtalk.htm

I am unable to verify that most of the markings are shown in the correct positions with Mozilla or IE. I've checked with Firefox under Gnome (Mandrake 9.2) as well as Moz 1.5 and IE 5.5 (under WinMe), and in all cases most of the marking appear in the next space over to the left, after the consonant they should be under. Konqueror does somewhat better, but how many people use that? I've added notes to the article indicating position, but I'm wondering if we should consider adding an image showing some text with the markings positioned correctly (a scan of the first few verses of Genesis perhaps), for clarification.

I don't have a problem in Opera (7.50 and later have BiDi support). Maybe this paragraph is just nonsense and too vague and should be scrapped. jnothman 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Firefox 1.5 seems to work, if the cholam is supposed to be on top? (I don't know Hebrew at all although I've tried to learn the alphabet) But in my opinion the dots are really difficult to see in native fonts, so perhaps pictures with the dots bolder and a bit bigger might be used. Also, I don't understand the table - the dots are vowels and the alphabet letters are consonants, right, so why does the transliteration not have the consonant? 219.77.98.222


According to the book "Phonetic Symbol Guide" by Geoffrey K. Pullum, and William A. Ladusaw, the IPA symbol for ś is probably not ɬ but ç (in the context of a Semetic language) i.e. a voiceless palatal fricative, not an unvoiced alveolar lateral fricative. But again, I would like to know the source for your information, as I am trying to learn. This particular letter is very hard to get data on (has been so far by me).

WRITTEN BY: amatuer Hebrew student and creator of http://e.domaindlx.com/hebrewtalk/hebrewtalk.htm

Nov. 14, 2004

Contents

[edit] standard singular v biblical plural

I'm just wondering why the introduction gives the singular form for Standard Hebrew (נִיקוּד) but the plural version for Biblical Hebrew (נְקֻדּוֹת). That would be pretty confusing for people who aren't familiary with Hebrew plurals. Or is it actually that the term was once plural but now only singular? — Hippietrail 02:27, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure why, as I study more Biblical Hebrew than Standard Hebrew, and I was more used to nəquddôṯ vs. niqqudot. I think the article name is niqqud precisely because it's singular, much like similar conventions for article names for Samaritan, Jew and Arab. - Gilgamesh 02:24, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)
It's a matter of part of speech. Nequddot means "dots," and thus is plural. It refers to the actual dots used. Niqqud is, as mentioned below, an abstract noun meaning "pointing" (in the sense of "furnishing with points") or "punctuation". Clsn 13:51, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Etymology

I don't suppose there's a point to stating that niqqud simply means "punctuation"? No pun intended. I'm not sure about the archaic roots, but in contemporary Hebrew, a נקודה is simply a "point" or "dot" or "period", and ניקוד is simply the... whatever you call that sorta noun that's like a gerund, but not in the present tense. Y'know, like "electrocution", as opposed to "electocuting", ניקוד as opposed to מנקד\ת. "Pointification". "Punctuation". Grok?

"Abstract noun". AnonMoos 04:07, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mappiq

It should be noted the the mappiq can only appear in a "ה" (and only in very specific cases). Coredumb 09:54, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Questions from an illiterate

Hi, I have never read or understood the Hebrew alfabet before, so consider me the perfect test case for making this article nitwit-proof. Reading the article, the following questions come to mind but are not answered by it. Let them help you to improve the article:

  • "This table uses the consonants ב ,ח or ש"
    • Is there a reason to use these consonants and not others? Isn't it possible to combine the niqqud with other consonants?
  • "Rafé ... to distinguish פּ /p/ from ֿפ /f/"
    • To me it would seem more logical that the rafe is written right above the pe to make it an f
  • The vowels below are written in several niqqud, and are seperately mentioned. This suggests that they are different from eachother. However, their differences are not explained (nor them not being different). Maybe giving a common word as example for every vowel is the best way of showing their differences:
    • IPA /a/ = חֲ / בַ / בַה / בַא / בָ / בָה / בָא
    • IPA /e/ = בֵ / בֵי / בֵה / בֵא
    • IPA /i/ = בִ / בִי /
    • IPA /o/ = חֳ / בָ / בֹ
    • IPA /u/ = בֻ / בוּ
  • What about many vowels immediately following eachother, like in the word farao: are the patach and cholam combinedly added to the resh? Or in the name or Golda Meir: are the tzeirei and chirik combinedly added to the mem? Probably there are also words with sequences of three vowels.
  • So niqqud indicate the vowel following the consonant. What if a word starts with a vowel? Are the niqqud located around an empty space?
  • chataf is used in several occasions but not explained

Thanks. ActiveSelective 23:46, 6 July 2006 (UTC)


  • about use of letters: ח is used with chataf vowels, because these only appear with a certain type of letters called gutturals (ח is one of them); sin and shin dots can only appear with letter ש. Points used with ב can be used with any other letter except for gutturals.
  • rafe is written above the letter. If you don't see it that way must be a browser rendering problem.
  • in Tiberian (classical) Hebrew all these vowels had different pronuntiations, but they don't anymore in modern Hembrew.
  • in words like farao etc. there is a consonant (א or ע) in between the two vowels that gets lost when transcribed to roman script (just a matter of convention, I think). The bottom line is (let's put it that way) Hebrew don't have diftongs (sequences of two vowels in the same syllable), so you'll never find tzeirei and chirik together.
  • Hebrew neither has words starting with a vowel (the only exception in the conjunction וּ). Hebrew syllabic structure is pretty fixed: it always starts with a consonant, has a single vowel, and may or may not end with a consonant ( which can be י or ו, acting as a second vowel, these being the only cases of diftongs).
  • chataf translates as something like "hurried", and is used to mean a "really short" patach, qamats or segol.
Hope that helps.--Xavier 22:37, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Hebrew alphabet
Vowels
long short very short sound transliteration
ָ ַ ֲ /a:/ /a/ /a'/ a / ay
ֵ ֶ ֱ /e:/ /e/ /e'/ e / ey
וֹ ָ ֳ /o:/ /o/ /o'/ o / oy
וּ ֻ   /u:/ /u/ u
יִ ִ   /i:/ /i/ i
By adding two vertical dots (shwa)
the vowel is made very short.
The short o and long a have the same niqqud.

Yes, it does! Thank you very much! Now improvement on the article... The table on the right is -I think- better systemized and helps readers to get grips on the niqqud. Not necessarily as a replacement of the long table, but as an addition. (the transliteration and "sound" should be looked at and corrected, I think) ActiveSelective 08:28, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] How to enter niqqud?

I couldn't found article from Wikipedia explaining how to enter niqqud from keyboard. Maybe you can help me by writing/linking good article in Wikipedia about niqqud and keyboard? --Thv 20:31, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

press capslock, then shift and one of the numbers,- or + above the letters. Amoruso 06:56, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
This is useful. I will add further details in the article. Dovi 08:37, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Alternate Historical Systems of Niqqud

A useful addition to this article would be a discussion of the extinct varieties of Niqqud, such as the Babylonian, Palestinian, and Samaritan, as well as the evolution of the Tiberian. Ratzd'mishukribo 03:08, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

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