Arquivos hebrew writing - Jonathan Frate

Hebrew vowels are represented by signs that are not part of the alphabet. In fact, vowels are not originally written in Hebrew language (they are pronounced, but not written).

However, at some point a solution was created to this barrier, that is, the absence of vowels, which could have jeopardized the preservation of the Hebrew language and the original biblical text. In this article you will understand how the Hebrew vowel signs work, what they are and how they came to be.

How is it to read a text without vowels

In the previous article we talked about the Hebrew alphabet. We saw that the Hebrew letters were created to represent sounds, but only consonants sounds (except in some special cases).

Making an analogy, if we take the verses of Genesis 1: 1 and 2, of the example of the previous article, and write them in English without vowels, as it is in Hebrew, it would look something like this:

“IN TH BGINNNG GD CRTD TH HVNS AND TH ERTH. NW TH ERTH WS FRMLSS AND EMPTY, DRKNSS WS OVR TH SURFC OF TH DP AND TH SPRT OF GD WS HVRNG OVR TH WTRS”.

It would be a little difficult to read, especially for someone who doesn’t speak English. This is exactly what happens in Hebrew. Words are written without vowels, and only those who can speak the language fluently can read it correctly.

For those beginning to learn to read Hebrew it would be very difficult – in fact quite impossible, to pronounce the words correctly.

There was a time when Hebrew was no longer a language spoken. Jews lived in many countries around the world, and hardly anyone spoke the language fluently.

Hebrew became a “liturgical” language; it was used only in prayers, songs and readings in the synagogue. It was already getting difficult for most people to be able to read the Torah in Hebrew, because nobody knew how to pronounce it properly, only the most educated people.

The Masoretes

Finally, a group of scribes, called Masoretes, who knew the Hebrew language and the biblical text very well, took action to preserve the pronunciation of the Hebrew and the correct understanding of the biblical scriptures. This occurred more or less around the sixth century.

They decided to create signs to represent the Hebrew vowels. They didn’t create new letters, so as not to alter the original writing of the words; they just added these signs, which were dots and dashes around the words. These signs are called “Nekudot” (dots), or Masoretic signs.

A sign was created for each vowel and they were placed on the existing letters. Thus, the pronunciation of the sacred texts, and consequently the Hebrew language, were preserved, and people who did not know how to speak fluently began to be able to read the texts with ease.

Imagine now how that English text used as an analogy would look like with added small symbols that represent vowels. Could look something like this:

“IN TH_e B_eGINN_iNG G_oD CR_eaT_eD TH_e H_eaV_eNS AND TH_e E_aRTH. N_oW TH_e E_aRTH W_aS F_oRML_eSS AND EMPTY, D_aRKN_eSS W_aS OV_eR TH_e SURF_aC_e OF TH_e D_eeP AND TH_e SP_iR_iT OF G_oD W_aS H_oV_eR_iNG OV_eR TH_e W_aT_eRS”.

Now it’s much easier to read. Anyone who is not a native English speaker could learn to read a text like this. All vowels are written – they look different, but they are there.

Finally the writing of the Hebrew vowels – the “Nekudot”

The signs of the Hebrew vowels created by Masoretes are as follows:

Note that each vowel has two different ways of representing: One is called a long vowel, and the other is a short vowel.

Very strict grammatical rules were created to make this notation. But in practical terms, nowadays there is no difference in pronunciation between these short and long vowels.

The two A’s have the same pronunciation, the two E’s have the same pronunciation, the two I’s have the same pronunciation, the two O’s have the same pronunciation and the two U’s have the same pronunciation.

In other words, to learn to read, you don’t have to worry about long and short vowels, just to learn the two different symbols that represent each vowel.

These signs have names, but there is absolutely no need to know these names for you to learn to read in Hebrew.

Just out of curiosity, or in case you want to know, these are the names of the Nekudot – the signs of the Hebrew vowels:

We have yet another sign, which is called “Sh’va”, which are two points, one bellow the other, which is placed under the letter. This sign represents that the consonant has no vowel, or sometimes, depending on the situation, it may have an E sound as well.

Three of the vowel signs can also appear with an addition of the two points on the side (the “sh’va”); forming what is called a “semivowel” – which, again, does not interfere with anything in the pronunciation – is just a grammatical detail.

ֲ a

ֱ e

ֳ o

In the Torah scrollsְ, which are scrolls still traditionally handwritten and used in synagogues, the vowels also do not appear. The text appears in the traditional way.

However, in printed Hebrew Bibles, vowels will always be there to help.

If you want to learn to read in Hebrew, you can start right now by watching the first lesson in the series of 11 lessons I prepared, where I teach step by step, in a very practical and simple way, to read each syllable. Watch the first lesson here, and start learning to read and write in Hebrew.

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The Hebrew language is written with an alphabet quite different from the one we use in English. The “alef-beit”, as the Hebrew alphabet is known, consists of the 22 letters that are used to write the Hebrew words.

The English language, as well as other Western languages, such as Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, etc., is written with the Latin alphabet, which was used by the Romans to write their language, Latin. The Latin alphabet was eventually adopted by all these modern languages, including English.

But before the Latin alphabet existed, there were already several other forms of writing systems, used in many languages around the world.

To better understand the origin of the Hebrew alphabet, let’s understand a little about the origin of writing, and the history of the alphabets.

A little about the history of writing

When writing was invented, people initially created symbols to represent ideas or words.

For example, ancient Egyptian script, or even Chinese script and parts of the Japanese script, which are still used today, were invented to work as follows:

Each symbol represents a word, or an idea. This means that for each word, you would need to learn a different symbol or combination.

To write “tree”, for example, you would learn a symbol that would represent a tree. To write dog, you would have a symbol for the dog. Love, happiness, justice, heaven, earth, man, woman… each word would possess a symbol.

It is like a child’s game, but this was more or less the idea used to create phonetic writing.

The first phonetic alphabets were invented by the Semitic peoples. They would have adapted the complicated Egyptian “drawings”, transforming them into simple phonetic writing. This Semitic phonetic writing is called “Proto-Sinaitic” script, because it was discovered in the Sinai region.

From this original Semitic alphabet, which looked more like Egyptian drawings, several alphabets came out.

As time went by, these letters were modified.

Let’s go back to our example of the alphabet you invented for English, and imagine again the “monkey” you drew.

Over the generations, people found your “monkey” somewhat picturesque, complicated, perhaps even too childish or naive. Nobody wanted to draw a monkey over and over in the middle of a text, or to read texts full of animal drawings. Then people started to modify the monkey design you had invented, until it became a totally different symbol, which would represent the “m” sound, but which would have nothing more to do with the original monkey design.

(The monkey is just an example; it has nothing to do with the origin of the letter “m” in any language).

From Proto-Sinaitic “drawings” to the present

From that “Proto-Sinaitic” alphabet, still with drawings similar to Egyptian script, several alphabets emerged, such as the famous Phoenician alphabet, the Aramaic alphabet and the Hebrew alphabet.

The Hebrew alphabet was formerly still written differently than what we know today. This older form of the Hebrew alphabet is called the “Paleo-Hebrew” alphabet, which is more like the Phoenician alphabet.

After the time of the Babylonian exile, the Jews began to write the letters most similar to the Aramaic alphabet, which are more similar to the current Hebrew alphabet.

The Dead Sea scrolls, which are the oldest known Hebrew Bible manuscripts, from the 2nd century BC, are written in letters much more similar to the ones we use today.

All of these Hebrew alphabets are actually composed of the same letters, with the same names and the same sounds, but “drawn” differently.

The way Hebrew is written today is called the “Square script”.

Anyway, this is the Hebrew alphabet as we know it today:

A “little” detail

But… going back to the phonetic alphabet invented by the Semites, it had some limitations: it only represented consonants (with few exceptions in some cases). The vowels you would have to deduce by the word. So is the Modern Hebrew alphabet.

Imagine that the English language was written like this:

“IN TH BGINNNG GD CRTD TH HVNS AND TH ERTH. NW TH ERTH WS FRMLSS AND EMPTY, DRKNSS WS OVR TH SURFC OF TH DP AND TH SPRT OF GD WS HVRNG OVR TH WTRS”.

The idea is more or less like this.

Can you read the text above?

Probably yes, because you know the English language well, and possibly also know this text. You can “guess” the vowels, because you know the words.

But someone who doesn’t know English would never have a clue how to pronounce these words.

This is how they created the Hebrew alphabet, and the other Semitic alphabets.

After all, their idea was that someone who is going to read a language necessarily knows how to speak that language.

Only later did other Peoples invent other alphabets with vowels, like the Greek alphabet and the Latin alphabet, which you know well.

But as for Hebrew, you would have to know the language to be able to read.

The solution

It turns out that there was a time when Hebrew was no longer spoken in everyday life. Most Jews no longer knew how to speak Hebrew, but used it in liturgy, prayers, and reading Torah.

Then the problem arises: How could someone who cannot speak Hebrew fluently read words whose vowels should be “guessed”?

How could you, today, who cannot speak Hebrew and intend to learn, learn to read?

For this reason, there came a time when the Jews created special signs, in addition to letters, to represent vowels. Someone had the idea of adding the vowels in the Hebrew texts, so that the pronunciation was not lost, and anyone could read.

In the next article, we will talk about exactly this, about the Hebrew vowels.

Another important detail: Hebrew is written from right to left, exactly the opposite of English and other Western languages.

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