page_title: Tiberian Hebrew
section_title: Vowels
hierarchical_section_title: Tiberian Hebrew / Phonology / Vowels
caption_attribution_description: English: Picture of artwork not far from the shore at Tiberias. The inscription reads: דוד פיין ניקוד טברייני תבליט, שתי אבני גיר 2008 הניקוד הטברייני נתבסס על מסורת הקריאה של השיטה הטבריינית. הניקוד הטברייני נתקבל כניקוד המוסמך של המקרא ומאז בטלו כל השיטות האחרות. David Fine Tiberias vowel system Limestone and basalt 2008 The Tiberias vocalisation of Hebrew was based on the traditional Tiberias vowel system. After this system became the authoritative pronunciation for reading the Bible, all other methods were abolished.
context_page_description: Tiberian Hebrew is the canonical pronunciation of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh committed to writing by Masoretic scholars living in the Jewish community of Tiberias in ancient Galilee c. 750–950 CE under the Abbasid Caliphate. They wrote in the form of Tiberian vocalization, which employed diacritics added to the Hebrew letters: vowel signs and consonant diacritics and the so-called accents. These together with the marginal notes masora magna and masora parva make up the Tiberian apparatus.
  Though the written vowels and accents came into use in around 750 CE, the oral tradition that they reflect is many centuries older, with ancient roots.
context_section_description: marginal
  The vowel qualities /a e i ɔ o u/ have phonemic status: אָשָׁם הוּא אָשֹׁם אָשַׁם (Lev. 5:19) and אָשֵׁם 'guilty', אִם 'when' and אֵם 'mother'. /ɛ/ has phonemic value in final stressed position רְעֶה רְעִי רָעָה, מִקְנֶה מְקַנֵּה, קָנֶה קָנָה קָנֹה, but in other positions, it may reflect loss of the opposition /a/: /i/. By the Tiberian period, all short vowels in stressed syllables had lengthened, making vowel length allophonic. Vowels in open or stressed syllables had allophonic length (such as /a/ in יְרַחֵם, which was previously short).
  The Tiberian tradition possesses three reduced (ultrashort, hatuf) vowels /ă ɔ̆ ɛ̆/ of which /ɛ̆/ has questionable phonemicity. /ă/, under a non-guttural letter, was pronounced as an ultrashort copy of the following vowel before a guttural (וּבָקְעָה [uvɔqɔ̆ˈʕɔ]) and as [ĭ] preceding /j/, (תְדַמְּיוּנִי [θăðammĭˈjuni]). However, it was always pronounced as [ă] under gutturals: חֲיִי [ħăˈji].
caption: Figurines holding Tiberian vowel diacritics. Limestone and basalt artwork at the shore in Tiberias.
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