Biblical Hebrew Grammar 1: The Vowels

welcome to a series of grammar lectures on Biblical Hebrew today we will be looking at the vowels this is a snapshot of where we're headed there's quite a lot of information because the system of vowel pointings is quite complex but this is not information I require you to memorize I will never quiz you on the vowels and I will never require you to write using the vowels as far as learning to read I'll always give you a Hebrew text that has the vowel pointings included and as far as how to pronounce those words I'll always give you audio for how to pronounce and as you practice with this listening and imitating over weeks and months you'll be able to naturally imbibe this system and you'll be able to read quite intuitively alright let's begin by looking at what's called the full vowels this chart is the whole inventory of vowel sounds in Hebrew Hebrew like English has five types of vowels AE IO and you let's begin by looking at the eight I vowels there are two of these the long vowel comments the short vowel pot dock and both of these are pronounced ah as in father with modern pronunciation the long and short vowel distinction is from biblical times where all long and short vowel pairs were pronounced distinctly but it's no longer a distinction made in modern Hebrew so it's a far more simple system to learn here's the e type vowels ser hay and Sehgal and both say as in bed at least that's the default that ser hay in some contexts can lengthen to say a it can lengthen to say a before a guttural so an Aleph EIN hay or hut but the default for these vowels is to say there's one I type vowel lyric and it says E as in machine there's two o type vowels Cola and a commenced co2 and both say oh now each of these vowels is written underneath the letter that it corresponds to except for the Holum is written on top of the consonant and slightly to the left all other of all other vowels are written underneath the consonant another thing to say is this commits co2 is exactly the same symbol as this comments so if you see this symbol it can be the a type vowel ah it can be the O type vowel Oh how would you know yes you will hear how it's read and you should be a good imitator as far as what to expect expect the comets the comet Scott tooth is a pretty rare vowel to finish off the chart we have one u-type vowel pronounced ooh this is called kibbutz so whether the vowel is a long or short that distinction doesn't really matter whether it's an AE IO or you vow take note of that it matters for pronunciation it matters for what word this is and what it means but don't worry so much about whether it's long or short he'll have no payoff as far as what the word means or even how to pronounce it but something to take note of is whether one of those vowels has reduced so here is a chart of the reduced vowel the default form of the reduced vowel is a schwa two dots one on top of the other and it is a light a hurried pronunciation like as an excuse I say default because this is the form the reduced voltage if it's written under 19 out of 23 consonants but if it's written under a guttural he'll take one of three other forms and these forms are derived from which full vowel it's reduced from so if it's reduced from an a-type vowel it's called a hot Pato you got a pot dock and then the Shiva written on the right and we call that a hot F pot doc if it's reduced from an e-type vowel you have the Sehgal the chef on the right we call this hot death set goal that's reduced from an o-type vowel we have the comet Scott to that rare o type vowel with a chiffon the right and we call it hot death come that Scott - now you should think of this as one reduced vowel that can take one of four different forms and Nodine it can be important it can be important from distinguishing between a word that says he did it and a word that says you you do it so when you're reading it's important if you know if someone's making a statement or giving a command as far as how to identify those kinds of things that's a later lecture but just to note the vowel reduces that can be important all right the rest of the vowels these are called vowel letters so what are these these are three letters that were used sometimes not to indicate consonant sound but to indicate a vowel sound so one of these is the hay and the hay was used to be able to indicate one of three different sounds and a type sound an e-type sound here or an O type sound here you have the valve which could indicate one of two different sounds and otai pound and in you type sound something to say is that each of these vowel letters are named from the corresponding full vowel plus the vowel letter cell commits hey everything is named like that except for this one who's the one exception you have evolved a dot to the left and this is the vowel letter Sharik and then you have the Yoda could indicate an e-type letter or an I type letter now you should notice that these pronunciations are exactly the same as the full vowel pronunciation I am the only distinction here is the e type vowel letters always say a has in they the corresponding full vowel Sehgal and say array if it's just by itself default is a although as I said CRA can lengthen to a in some context but these vowel letters they always say a as in they now let's see how how did we get to the point where the Hebrew text looks the way it does now so if you see the word horses it look like this sue seem but that's not how it was originally written originally Hebrew was written down as a strictly continental text so you would just have the consonants sonic sonic mem so feet and those who knew Hebrew really well knew how to say sue seemed but along the way scribes as they were copying texts and writing new texts there came this new practice of using those vowel letters to indicate vowel sounds and so beginning about 800 BC they start to introduce these vowel letters more and more until about 200 ad and the Hebrew Bible by that time had received all the vowel letters that it currently has and so what they would do for the word sue seem as they would split the 2 sonics and put this valve here to indicate the vowel sound they would take a note here and split the stomach and mem so feet to indicate an e sound but this yote and this volve people would know well this isn't the valve isn't the sound the Yoda isn't the yeah sound so the valve is the e sound the Yoda is the e sound and they knew how to pronounce that sue seemed and that worked as long as Hebrew was a spoken language but shortly after 200 AD when cannon was closed the text could no longer be altered because this is a holy text soon after that Hebrew died as a spoken language and by about 800 ad the Masoretic scribes those in charge of preserving this oral the reading tradition of this holy text they were concerned that the people no longer knew how to read their own language and so it was then that they developed the system of vowel pointings and so they put a dot in the vow they put a cleric before the yo to indicate these as vowel letters and they made the vowels they also made accent marks and other things to tell people exactly how to read these words now knowing that those vowel pointings were added after the vowel letters which were added into the continental text that explains a discrepancy in how words were written so in your Hebrew Bible that you have you'll have these words that are usually written with these vowel letters a clear coat a Coulomb Vava Sharik but you can see these forms so this is how they're usually written but sometimes they'll be written with just the corresponding full vowel so this word Hashmi who is a command saying you all throw something and it's usually written with a clear icky ode but here can be written sometimes with just a cleric what does that tell you well all the forms here that were written that have the yode this was the vowel letter Yoda that was added before that critical cutoff at about 200 AD but for any forms without that Yoda when the mazarites came along and vocalized adding the PATA here this dot the schwa the lyric and this dot here to vocalize it they could no longer add the Yoda and so they vocalize it the same so it's pronounced the same but it just looks slightly different and this is why the mazarites this is why they came up with the system of vowel pointings because they could not alter the text anymore so they wrote the vowels under or above the text not inside the text in between the letters alright so for swords it's usually Cara vote with a hole involved but sometimes you'll see it with just a Coulomb su seem with a Sharik sometimes it'll be written just with the kibitz so it can this this can trick your eye because the words look slightly differently but as long as you're pronouncing it out loud it shouldn't trick your ear so another reason why to read the text out loud because sometimes your ear can catch something that your I might miss all right let's look at how do you take a Hebrew word and split it into syllables there's two rules one is every syllable begins with one consonant the other is every syllable has one vowel so let's pretend that this is a syllable a cope with a commence and it's pronounced kha not auch because the syllable must begin with a consonant so you pronounce that consonant and the vowel that's usually written underneath it is pronounced after it now when we talk about syllables there's a couple terms that keep coming up one is we call a syllable open if it ends in a vowel we call it closed if it ends with a consonant as an example very common Hebrew word that pretty much everybody knows even if they don't know Hebrew is Shalom here it is written Shalom has two consonants or two two syllables the first syllable sha is open it ends in a vowel the second syllable lomé is closed because it ends with a consonant let's look at another feature of what the mazarites did when they pointed the text is they use the same symbol schwa to mark two distinct things so you've seen the vocal schwa which is that reduced vowel fun fact it can only occur in an open syllable they also use that same symbol not to indicate a vowel at all we call this a silent schwa and it marks the end of a closed syllable so it's written underneath a consonant that closes a syllable well how do you know whether or not to pronounce this symbol schwa good question this is a little bit simplified but this will do for now and quite sometime in the course a schwa is vocal if it is at the beginning of a word so this is word for sheep keV seemed this initial Shiva we pronounce or if it is the second of two choise so this is a form that says they will keep something not a word that will encounter for a time but it's exemplary yeesh meh whoo so this one we pronounce if it's not at the beginning of the word or the second of two choise its silent so this is a word for chairs and it's Keese oat it's not ki say oat this is not pronounced it's a closed syllable and he's out similarly with this one the first one it's not ye sure it's yeesh those are the two types of schwa this is the two types of desh now we've seen this symbol the dot in the middle of a letter and we've encountered it as what's called a dog ash call call means light and it marks that alternate pronunciation for b'god cough at letters it's called light because it can come or go in a b'gawd cough at letter it's all about where that b'god cough at letter occurs in a word whether or not it takes the - that - Kazakh means strong this marks a geminate a doubled consonant so if the dog - Kazakh is in a letter that letter stands for two instances of that letter two copies and it's called a Kazakh because usually if there's a - Kazakh in a letter in that word no matter what form the word takes that - Kazakh will usually stay usually how will you know whether the - is a call or Kazakh well this is a rule that works across the board very simple and it's nice that it doesn't have the exceptions the rule is it is a Kazakh if it is preceded by a vowel otherwise it is a call so as example here's word for chair key say this dog in the cough is it a call or Kazakh well we look to see if there's a previous vowel and there's not because the cough begins the word so it is a dog - call it marks the hard pronunciation for a b'god cough at letter here cut there's another dog - here in this sama and this is a - Kazakh we look there is a vowel previously and so it is that - Kazakh it marks - Sonic's now with gemination the first copy ends the first syllable so Keis and the second copy begins the second syllable say so he say now with gemination for modern hebrew no longer pronounces these as geminate sounds and this is actually much like English English has words that are written with two letters like butter or summer but we don't make those as geminate sounds people pronounce summer as saw and mer it's not summer summer similarly with Hebrew even though this is written as a gymnic with modern pronunciation we just pronounce it key say but it can be helpful to notice when a de guiche is a Kazakh later on that will be really helpful for identifying a class of verbs and some other things but we'll get to that when the time comes all right we have what's called a furtive Pato furtive if you want to add it to your English vocabulary kind of means sneaky or secretive all right so this is a pot talk remember a pot dock is this horizontal a type vowel letter that's written under the gutturals sign or cut if the guttural ends a word so you have this form this is a verbal form that requires this Oh Val pattern but this cut really wants a proceeding a type vowel because it was hard for them to pronounce okay so the a type vowel was kind of a transitionary vowel lochia so it's the ease of pronunciation thing and it's an added vowel so if you look at this here low K Ock my transliteration this is a syllable that has two vowel sounds and if you remember this is actually an exception to one of those two rules four syllables so a syllable begins with one consonant and a syllable has one vowel this is a syllable that has two vowels and this is the one exception it's an exception because it's added it's added in certain places before i nan cut notice that the PHA tok is written slightly off-center to the right and that it's the one exception where it's written under the consonant but it's pronounced before not after so it's low chaos it's not low K which is maybe what you would expect it's low K how would you ever remember you're right you'll always have audio for reading any word any text as long as you're a good listener in a good imitator this is just one of those things that will become intuitive let's end by giving some sample syllabification of your first vocabulary words to memorize so this is the singular form for sword this is how it's written this is how I have it broken up into syllables I'll read the syllables for each form three times okay Rev okay Creve okay the Rev the plural form has three syllables ha ha vote vote ha ha vote this is the singular form for horse and it's just one syllable Suess Suess Suess the plural is two syllables su seem su seem su seem here's a singular form chair this is how you would celebified according to the rules of ancient pronunciation but because modern does not pronounce geminate consonants let me slap a Phi it from here key say key say key say no this is the plural form again two syllables keys boat keys oat keys oat here's sheep the singular form K this K this K this here's the plural form kheh seem kava seem kaha seem and here is we call it the article corresponds to the English word the' and it's just one letter it's one syllable ha ha ha what a great way to end this lecture ha ha ha learning Hebrew is so much fun

Channel: Picture Hebrew

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Keywords: Picture Hebrew, Hebrew, Biblical Hebrew, Vowels, Pronunciation, Grammar

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Length: 22min 19sec (1339 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 04 2017