From Surf Wiki (app.surf) — the open knowledge base

Patach

Hebrew niqqud vowel sign

Summary

Hebrew niqqud vowel sign

ShwaHiriqTzereSegolPataḥKamatzHolamDageshMappiqShurukKubutzRafeSin/Shin Dot

Pataḥ ( he, , Biblical Hebrew: he) is a Hebrew niqqud vowel sign represented by a horizontal line underneath a letter. In modern Hebrew, it indicates the phoneme which is close to the "[a]" sound in the English word far and is transliterated as an a.

In Modern Hebrew, a he makes the same sound as a qamatz, as does the he ( , "reduced he"). The reduced (or he) niqqud exist for he, he, and he which contain a he next to it.

In Yiddish orthography, a pataḥ (called pasekh in Yiddish) has two uses. The combination of pasekh with the letter aleph, , is used to represent the vowel [a]; the combination of pasekh with a digraph consisting of two yods, , is used to represent the diphthong [aj].

Etymology

The pataḥ name comes from the verb פָּתַח (pataḥ) 'to open', because the vowel's pronunciation, the "[a]" sound, requires the mouth to be opened wide.

Pronunciation

The following table contains the pronunciation and transliteration of the different hes in reconstructed historical forms and dialects using the International Phonetic Alphabet.

The letters Bet and Het used in this table are only for demonstration, any letter can be used.

Symbol	Name	Pronunciation	Israeli	Ashkenazi	Sephardi	Yemenite	Tiberian	Reconstructed	Mishnaic	Biblical
	he
,	he
	he

A he on a letter , , or (that is, with a dot (mappiq) in it) at the end of a word is sounded before the letter, and not after. Thus, נֹחַ (Noah; properly transliterated as he) is pronounced in Modern Hebrew and or in Biblical Hebrew. This only occurs at the ends of words, only with pataḥ and only with these three letters. This is sometimes called a he, or "stolen" he (more formally, "furtive he"), since the sound "steals" an imaginary epenthetic consonant to make the extra syllable.

Vowel length comparison

By adding two vertical dots (shva) the vowel is made very short. However, these vowels lengths are not manifested in Modern Hebrew.

Vowel comparison table	Vowel Length	IPA	Transliteration	English
approximation	Long	Short	Very short
				a	spa
he	he	Reduced he

Unicode encoding

Glyph	Unicode	Name
	U+05B7	PATAH
	U+05B2	HATAF PATAH

References

(2019-03-24). "שמות סימני הניקוד - האקדמיה ללשון העברית".

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

niqqud

Want to explore this topic further?

Ask Mako anything about Patach — get instant answers, deeper analysis, and related topics.

Research with Mako

Free with your Surf account

Content sourced from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

This content may have been generated or modified by AI. CloudSurf Software LLC is not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of AI-generated content. Always verify important information from primary sources.

Report