Niqqud

In Hebrew orthography, niqqud or nikkud (Hebrew: נִקּוּד, Modern nikud Tiberian niqqûḏ ; "dotting, pointing" or Hebrew: נְקֻדּוֹת, Modern nekudot Tiberian nəquddôṯ ; "dots") 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 in the Land of Israel (see Masoretic Text, Tiberian Hebrew). Text written with niqqud is called ktiv menuqad.

Niqqud marks are small compared to consonants, so they can be added without retranscribing texts whose writers did not anticipate them.

In modern Israeli orthography niqqud is seldom used, except in specialised texts such as dictionaries, poetry, or texts for children or for new immigrants. For purposes of disambiguation, a system of spelling without niqqud, known in Hebrew as ktiv maleh (Hebrew: כתיב מלא‎), literally "full spelling", has developed. This was formally standardised in the Rules for Spelling without Niqqud (כללי הכתיב חסר הניקוד) enacted by the Academy of the Hebrew Language in 1996.^[2]

Among those who do not speak Hebrew, niqqud are the sometimes unnamed focus of controversy regarding the interpretation of those written with the Tetragrammaton—written as יְהֹוָה in Hebrew. The interpretation affects discussion of the authentic ancient pronunciation of the name whose other conventional English forms are "Jehovah" and "Yahweh".

Important: There is currently a serious bug affecting niqqud in all Wikimedia projects. See Wikipedia:Niqqud for a discussion of the problem in English, and click the language link in the sidebar for an extensive analysis of the problem in Hebrew.

Demonstration

This table uses the consonants ב ,ח or ש, where appropriate, to demonstrate where the niqqud is placed in relation to the consonant it is pronounced after. Any other consonants shown are actually part of the vowel. Note that there is some variation among different traditions in exactly how some vowel points are pronounced. The table below shows how most Israelis would pronounce them, but the classic Ashkenazi pronunciation, for example, differs in several respects.

This demonstration is known to work in Internet Explorer and Mozilla browsers in at least some circumstances, but in most other Windows browsers the niqqud do not properly combine with the consonants. It works very well when "dir=rtl" is added in the HTML source. This is because, currently, the Windows text display engine does not combine the niqqud automatically. Except as noted, the vowel pointings should appear directly beneath the consonants and the accompanying "vowel letter" consonants for the mālê (long) forms appear after.

Note concerning IPA: the transcription symbols are linked to the articles about the sounds they represent. The diacritic ˘ (breve) indicates a short vowel; the triangular colon symbol ː indicates that the vowel is long.

Keyboard

For the Hebrew letters there is a standardized Hebrew keyboard. But when it comes to niqqud, different computer systems and programs provide for adding the signs in different ways.

Using the Hebrew keyboard layout in Microsoft Windows the typist can enter niqqud by pressing CapsLock, putting the cursor after the consonant letter and then pressing Shift and one of the following keys. In GTK+ Linux systems niqqud can be entered by pressing ctrl+shift+u followed by the appropriate 4 digit Unicode.

Using the Hebrew keyboard layout in Mac OS X, the typist can enter niqqud by pressing the Option key together with a number on the top row of the keyboard. Other combinations like 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.^[4][5]

Notes:

• ^[1] The letter "O" represents whatever Hebrew letter is used.
• ^[2] For sin-dot and shin-dot, the letter "ש" (sin/shin) is used since they can only be used with that letter.
• ^[3] The dagesh, mappiq, and shuruk are different; however, they look the same and (hence) are input the same way (all 3 of them.)
• ^[4] For shuruk, the letter "ו" (vav) is used since it can only be used with that letter.

See also

• The Arabic equivalent, harakat.
• Hebrew diacritics
• Q're perpetuum
• Dagesh
• Hebrew spelling
• Tiberian Hebrew

Bibliography

• The Academy Grammar Committee; ed. Ronit Gadish, Einat Gonen, Barak Dan (2006) (in Hebrew). Leshonenu La′am. Academy Decisions: Grammar. Jerusalem: The Academy of the Hebrew Language. ISSN 0024-1091. 
•  Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar, especially §7, §8, §9
• Netzer, Nisan (1976) (in Hebrew). Haniqqud halakha lema′ase. Israel: Massada. 

References