Talk:Niqqud

message: 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)
thread_title: Unicode

message: 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
: Different people use different systems of transcription.  In Biblical Hebrew, the system used in Gesenius' Grammar is probably fairly influential.  He kindly doesn't document it for us, but examples can be seen at http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Gesenius%27_Hebrew_Grammar/8.  I know my teaching grammar (Pratico and Van Pelt) has documentation on the system it uses, even if it doesn't always agree with itself :).  
: -- TimNelson (talk) 00:04, 17 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: You'll find the Israeli standard here. Less relevant for extinct forms of Hebrew, though. Dan ☺ 00:11, 17 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Transliteration vs. transcription

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)

text: Clsn is exactly right.  Anyone who edits here should remember that nequddot is plural and niqqud is singular: The nequddot are helpful..., the niqqud is helpful....  Neither one is older than the other; both are ancient words, both completely alive in modern Hebrew.  You could translate them 'dots' and 'dotting', respectively.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.186.215.227 (talk) 00:56, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  standard singular v biblical plural 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Mappiq 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Alternate Historical Systems of Niqqud 

message: I did a serious table and organization redo Epson291 23:23, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edits 

message: Is consonant pointing, such as k-dot for [x], or p-dot for [f], considered part of niqqud, the way the difference between sin and shin is? kwami (talk) 19:53, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes it is, and it's called dagesh. It is referred to in the long table. Dan Pelleg (talk) 17:13, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  consonant niqqud? 

message: I didn't change these myself, because there must be a reason they were written that way.
Shva - makes the vowel very short? I disagree.. Even in the word "shva", the "sh" isn't short at all. It means no vowels. A yud or vav can have no niqqud on them when they function as niqqud themselves - for example, in the word צירה, the yud has no niqqud because it's part of the tsadi's niqqud. But other than these cases - all letters have niqqud, and if there's no vowel, they get a shva.
I'm not a scholar though, so this is only my intuitive reasoning here.
Regarding mapik and shuruk - they may look the same and share the same key in Windows keyboard layouts, but they're very different, and IMHO deserve two different rows in the table. ailaG (talk) 11:05, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Shva, Mapik 

message: #Under what circumstances is a consonant not pointed at all?
#Does lack of pointing always mean lack of a following vowel, or are there other possibilities?
--JWB (talk) 23:36, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Plus: also in texts fully marked with nikud, in the following cases letters aren't marked with nikud: silent alephs and hes, yuds which are part of a chirik male or a tsere male, and in most cases final letters which aren't folowed by a vowel, with the exception of words in which both the last and second last letter aren't followed by vowels (in this case both the last and second last letter are marked with two consecutive shva nach, plus the dagesh-kal in the last letter if needed). And there's one case in which the nikud-mark signifies a vowel before the letter under which it's written: a patach under a final chet, ayin or non silent he. Dan Pelleg (talk) 23:25, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Meaning of unpointed consonant 

message: :::::Can you give an example of a vowel sign niqqud that is neither a diacritic nor a letter? I'm not following. 
:::::We should have a 'Hebrew diacritics' article, if only to make searching the topic easier. The question is whether to move this article, or part of it, to that name (if this is too much detail, we could leave those details here under the name niqqud), or whether to create an entirely new article. The main article per WP naming conventions should have an English name, with the Hebrew only used where English won't do, such as the geresh article. kwami (talk) 20:42, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay, moved from niqqud to Hebrew diacritics, in keeping with coverage of other scripts. The content of the article hasn't been changed, except for a few minor changes of wording mostly in keeping with the new title. kwami (talk) 10:49, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

text: As to your request ("Can you give an example of a vowel sign niqqud that is neither a diacritic nor a letter "): Most Nikud signs are not diacritics: as mentioned above, segol ֶ is a grapheme for /e/, similarly tseyre ֵ the grapheme for /e/ or /ej/, kamats ָ, patach ַ and chataf-patach ֲ for /a/, kubuts ֻ for /u/, chirik chaser ִ for /i/, cholam chaser ֹ for /o/, all are not letters. Dan Pelleg (talk) 15:13, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  I don't believe you had consensus to move the page, so I reverted it. I agree with Dan Pelleg, I don't think diacritics and niqqud are synomonous. Epson291 (talk) 20:32, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry for the quick move, but it looks like it was correct. All the examples Dan gave are diacritics. In the Latin script, diacritics do not represent phonemes. However, in abjads and abugidas they do. Richard Goerwitz (Northwest Semitic historical linguist, U. Chicago) calls the niqqud "diacritics". The vowel marks of Hindi, Divehi, etc. are also called "diacritics" in the literature. No, niqqud and 'diacritic' are not synonymous—there are also cantillation marks etc.—but niqqud are a subset of diacritics. Per Wiki naming conventions, we should go with the English name as used in academic literature. (Of course, we'd need to restore something like my edit, to at least mention the non-niqqud diacritics, which could remain at their current locations if they'd be too much to merge. Or we could split this article, with the long table remaining at niqqud, and the short table forming the core of a Hebrew diacritics article.) kwami (talk) 20:44, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

text:  If niqqud is a subset of diacritics then how about creating a new page at "Hebrew diacritics" and this way avoid losing the individual articles? Epson291 (talk) 21:31, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay. I think foreign words as titles are fine, as long as someone looking up the English is supported too. How about I take the short table out of this article, so as not to be redundant? kwami (talk) 21:56, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

text: I moved the short table & vowel comparison chart. Much of the intro repeats itself, but this can be cleaned up later. kwami (talk) 22:51, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

text: English dictionaries take the Latin alphabet as their starting point, so their definitions won't necessarily work very well for something like Hebrew. I've always seen the vowel marks of both abjads and Brahmic abugidas described as "diacritics" in the lit. Comrie, for example, in The World Atlas of Language Structures, p. 568, states that "In many consonantal scripts, it is possible to add diacritics to indicate vowels," and uses Hebrew po 'here' vs pe 'mouth' as the example. kwami (talk) 11:42, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

text: Actually, now that I think about it, the AH def works pretty well: Diacritics "distinguish words that are otherwise graphically identical". That's just what niqqud do: po and pe are both written פה; it's the diacritics that disambiguate. And they "indicate a special phonetic value": That's also not far off. There's long been a tradition that Hebrew isn't an alphabet, but a syllabary. (Granted, that has been partially motivated by antisemitism, and partially by a desire to credit the alphabet to the Greeks, but even people without such motivation see some validity in this.) You could argue (though I personally don't find it very convincing) that פ does not represent the consonant /p/, but the syllable /pV/, where /V/ is undefined and perhaps zero. A diacritic can therefore be used to indicate the phonetic value of /V/, much the same way that a diacritic differentiates sin vs. shin, or French é vs. è, etc. But regardless of whether you buy that, the point is that the niqqud are an auxiliary system of glyphs, supplementary to the letters which form the core of the script. That's pretty much the definition of a diacritic. kwami (talk) 11:58, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

text: Except that I'm not aware of any such distinction being made in the lit. It's not true, pace the AHD, that diacritics modify the pronunciation of words: that's just one of the uses to which they're put. In many languages using the Latin alphabet, diacritics are used to distinguish homonyms, such as French la "the" vs là "there", which are both pronounced [la]. The basic definition of 'diacritic' is an ancillary glyph added to a character (basic glyph). Some change pronunciations, some add pronunciations, some remove pronunciations (killer strokes), some make letters silent (i.e. Irish), and some are purely visual, as French là. The different uses to which diacritics are put have more to do with the kind of script than subcategories of the diacritics themselves. kwami (talk) 20:17, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, you've convinced me, your definition seems perfectly adequate. Could you site a source that also defines diacritic that way (i.e., not primarily as a "pronunciation changer", but also a "pronunciation adder, remover" etc.)? If so, then also the Wikipedia definition should be corrected. (By the way, please don't misunderstand me, I suggested that "wherever relevant, the functional distinction should be made clear between the different ways "diacritic" is used". All I'm saying is that whenever such a clarification might prevent confusion, it should appear. It is after all perceivable that readers of this Wikipedia, if not informed otherwise, may assume that "diacritic" applies to Hebrew exactly as it applies to French, for example.) Dan Pelleg (talk) 22:23, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: All the lit I know just takes it for granted. Sometimes I see "diacritics and accents", but that seems to just be a way of covering all bases, as the two words are frequently synonymous. Just looked it up in the OED and found "diacritical accents" to describe French. The etymological meaning is a mark that distinguishes characters. Distinguishing pronunciation is not assumed when dealing with non-Latin scripts. For example (skimming The World's Writing Systems), when describing Linear B, where two characters are transcribed ra and ra2, Emmett Bennett calls the subscript <2> a 'diacritic'. He has no idea what its actual value is. When Greek letters are used as numerals, they take a mark to indicate this; that mark is also called a diacritic. William Bright, discussing the Kannada and Telugu scripts, calls both the vowel marks and the virama (killer stroke) 'diacritics'. Richard Goerwitz on Jewish scripts: "Three main Hebrew diacritic vowel/cantillation systems are known to scholars today [Tiberian, Babylonian, & Palestinian]." Ghair & Cain on Dhivehi: "Like other South Asian languages, Taana writes vowels as diacritics on consonants." kwami (talk) 23:53, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

text: Of course. Don't need to ask me. Though in The World's Writing Systems I only see the Greek numeral diacritic described as an "acute accent". kwami (talk) 00:32, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Made the change, maybe you'd like to take a look, Dan Pelleg (talk) 16:39, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: move

message: Vowel points redirects here. However, all languages which have no written vowels now use a vowel point system: most notably Arabic. Why does the term redirect here? --IronMaidenRocks (talk) 14:26, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vowel Points 

message: This seems ... I don't know what. Tendentious?  Full of mystery?  A source would be nice, otherwise it sounds like original research.  "Among those who do not speak Hebrew, niqqud are the sometimes unnamed focus of controversy regarding the interpretation of the name written with the Tetragrammaton"--Richardson mcphillips (talk) 02:16, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, and it looks to me like provocation. I am removing this sentence. Nobody seems to have had anything to say for it in the past 5 years... 238-Gdn (talk) 17:45, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Among those who do not speak Hebrew..." 

message: This article needs updating to include instructions on how to include nikud with Windows 10. 238-Gdn (talk) 17:41, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: See WP:NOTHOWTO. Wikipedia is not a how-to guide. Largoplazo (talk) 14:06, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hebrew diacritics (nikud) with Windows 10 

message: The last paragraph of the lead begins "One reason for the lesser use of niqqud is that it no longer reflects the current pronunciation. In modern Hebrew, ...". Lesser than what? There's no indication in the article that niqqud was ever in day-to-day use. Conversely, as far as I know, it's still in use today for the same pedagogical and liturgical purposes and, possibly, in dictionaries, since pronunciation has to be supplied in some manner. If the sentence is accurate overall, we should supply some explanation of the manner in which it was used previously in which it's being used less today. Largoplazo (talk) 12:41, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lesser use 

message: The last paragraph of the lead reads, 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.
Though it had already been stated that niqqud is little used in modern Israeli orthography this paragraph provides one reason for the lesser use without having established previously that there is lesser use. Lesser than what? Before Israel, or before Eliezer ben Yehuda, was it common for Hebrew to be written (apart from pedagogical or liturgical publications) with niqqud? Or is it that, while niqqud has traditionally been used for pedagogical purposes, it isn't even being used for that any more—which seems to be the point that the cited source is making.
Either way, the paragraph should be edited to state explicitly what today's practice is being compared to. If the context is restricted to pedagogical use, then that should be stated explicitly. Largoplazo (talk) 14:03, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is a clarification needed? 

message: According to the Western_Neo-Aramaic article, the Aramaic villages in Syria use almost exactly the same alphabet and nikkud as modern Hebrew.  The reasoning that they use the same alphabet, is that they were so isolated that they continued to use the old Aramaic block alphabet before the Syriac-Aramaic script was developed.  So how and when did they get the same vowel points?  This should be addressed in one of the articles.Jimhoward72 (talk) 17:14, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Same alphabet and nikkud as the Western Neo-Aramaic script used in villages in Syria?

message: Tzere appears to be spelled unhelpfully. Zeire is neither the name of the letter, the Unicode character, the page that describes Tzere, nor does googling it produce a useful result. Admittedly Zeire redirects to Zeire, but aside from that it seems mostly unhelpful for it to be used.
If no-one objects, I'll replace it with Tzere. Coalsoffire (talk) 16:39, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. Tzere should be the correct transliteration/spelling for the mark, in my view. warshy (¥¥) 17:36, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

text: Actually is Tsere. מושא עקיף (talk) 16:42, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tzere vs Zeire 

message: As I do not want to enter an edit war I'll just say it here: 'Cholam' is clearly at the very least, pronounced as an Open-mid back rounded vowel [ɔ]. To provide some backup to my claim: here and [here]. I don't know what  is basing themselves on but they're free to defend themselves here if they want. Emdosis (talk) 16:29, 21 March 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah two YouTube videos are neither reliable sources, nor do they supersede the authority of the literal governing institution for the entire language. Sinclairian (talk) 16:45, 21 March 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Please point me to the part where the Hebrew language academy labels holam as being pronounced as /o̞/ or /oː/ Emdosis (talk) 18:25, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

text: Also, they weren't meant to be used as reliable sources, just as examples of clearly Israeli native/Hebrew speaking people pronouncing the word cholem. Unfortunately, I could not find an easily accessible online copy of 'Ha-'Ivrit' or 'Haniqqud halakha lema′ase', but at the very least, the wikisource does not mention phonetic symbols for holem. Just transliterations such as ô and ō, the first one of which isn't necessarily pronounced as /o̞/. The second one is also ambiguous as it's just a lengthened o which admittedly, is usually interpreted to mean /oː/, it can just as well be interpreted as /ɔː/. Emdosis (talk) 00:00, 22 March 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: This page isn't just about Israeli Hebrew, which is what the Akademia attempts to administrate. In many historical/Ashkenazic/American Jewish dialects, cholam is clearly /o/ or /o:/ or /o̞/. The overwhelming majority of native English speakers who read Hebrew (exception being some reconstructionist Biblical academic settings) pronounce cholam with /o:/. GordonGlottal (talk) 19:22, 21 March 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: I know that, but this is about a hebrew niqqud and the proper pronunciation. Not about the American or British accent-version of said Hebrew vowel. Emdosis (talk) 20:43, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

text: Also, imagine making this argument for any other language... Emdosis (talk) 00:00, 22 March 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Why does "proper" = Israeli? And it has nothing whatsoever to do with an American or British "accent." The political organs developing Israeli/Modern Hebrew adopted sephardic vowels in like 1910, but Ashkenazic speakers never pronounced cholam that way, and it isn't any more historically legitimate. Almost all American Jews are Ashkenazim, very few of whom have intentionally altered their accents as did the early Zionists, so they retain the /o:/ cholam, as do other non-Israeli speakers and the majority of all Hebrew readers around the world. Also true of many Ashkenazic Israeli speakers when in a religious context. GordonGlottal (talk) 21:56, 22 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cholam (+Kamatz Katan)