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A mater lectionis ( , ; , matres lectionis ; original ) is any consonant letter that is used to indicate a vowel, primarily in the writing of Semitic languages such as Arabic, Hebrew language and Syriac language. The letters that do this in Hebrew are aleph א, he ה, vav ו and yodh י, with the latter two in particular being more often vowels than they are consonants. In Arabic, the matres lectionis (though they are much less often referred to thus) are ʾalif ا, wāw و and yāʾ ي.
The original value of the matres lectionis corresponds closely to what are called in modern linguistics glides or semivowels. Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, Brill, 2006, 2.238, 308-9.
In general terms, it is observable that early Phoenician texts have very few matres lectionis, and that during most of the 1st millennium BCE, Hebrew and Aramaic were quicker to develop matres lectionis than Phoenician. However, in its latest period of development in North Africa (referred to as "Punic language"), Phoenician developed a very full use of matres lectionis, including the use of the letter ayin , also used for this purpose much later in Yiddish orthography.
In pre-exilic Hebrew, there was a significant development of the use of the letter he ה to indicate word final vowels other than ī and ū. This was probably inspired by the phonological change of the third-person singular possessive suffix from > > in most environments. However, in later periods of Hebrew, the orthography was changed so word-final ō was no longer written with ה, except in a few archaically-spelled proper names, such as Solomon שלמה and Shiloh שלה. The difference between the spelling of the third-person singular possessive suffix (as attached to singular nouns) with ה in early Hebrew versus with ו in later Hebrew has become an issue in the authentication of the Jehoash Inscription.
According to Sass (5), already in the Middle Kingdom there were some cases of matres lectionis, i.e. consonant graphemes which were used to transcribe vowels in foreign words, namely in Punic (Jensen 290, Naveh 62), Aramaic, and Hebrew (ה, ו, י; sometimes even aleph א; Naveh 62). Naveh (ibid.) notes that the earliest Aramaic and Hebrew documents already used matres lectionis. Some scholars argue that the Greeks must therefore have borrowed their alphabet from the Arameans. However, the practice has older roots, as the Semitic cuneiform alphabet of Ugarit (13th century BC) already had matres lectionis (Naveh 138).
If words can be written with or without matres lectionis, spellings that include the letters are called malē (Hebrew) or plene (Latin), meaning "full", and spellings without them are called ḥaser or defective. In some verb forms, matres lectionis are almost always used. Around the 9th century CE it was decided that the system of matres lectionis did not suffice to indicate the vowels precisely enough for purposes of liturgical recitation of Biblical texts so a supplemental Niqqud ( niqqud, diacritic symbols indicating vowel pronunciation and other important phonological features not written by the traditional basic consonantal orthography) joined matres lectionis as part of the Hebrew writing system.
In some words in Hebrew, there is a choice of whether to use a mater lectionis or not, and in modern printed texts matres lectionis are sometimes used even for short vowels, which is considered to be grammatically incorrect according to traditional norms, though instances are found as far back as times. Such texts from Judaea and Galilee were noticeably more inclined to malē spellings than texts from Babylonia. Similarly, in the Middle Ages, Ashkenazi Jews tended to use malē spellings under the influence of European languages, but Sephardi Jews tended to use ḥaser spellings under the influence of Arabic.
Most commonly, yod י indicates i or e, while waw ו indicates o or u. Aleph א was not systematically developed as a mater lectionis in Hebrew (unlike in Aramaic and Arabic), but it is occasionally used to indicate an a vowel. (However, a silent א, indicating an original glottal stop consonant sound that has become silent in some contexts in Hebrew pronunciation, can occur after almost any vowel.) At the end of a word, he ה can also be used to indicate that the vowel a or e should be pronounced.
Examples:
| י | Yodh | î, ê, ệ | ī, ē or ǣ | אמיר | Amir |
| א | Aleph | ê, ệ, ậ, â, ô | mostly ā | פארן | Paran |
| ו | Waw | ô, û | ō or ū | יואל | Yo'el |
| ברוך | Baruch | ||||
| ה | He | ê, ệ, ậ, â, ô | mostly ā or e | לאה | Leah |
| משה | Moshe |
The name given to the three matres lectionis by traditional Arabic grammar is (حروف اللين والمدّ, 'consonants of softness and lengthening'), or (حروف العلّة, 'causal consonants' or 'consonants of infirmity', because as in Greek grammar, words with 'accidents' were deemed to be afflicted, ill, in opposition to 'healthy' words without accidents). Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, Brill, 2006, 2.308ff.
Informal orthographies of spoken varieties of Arabic also use hāʾ ه to indicate a shorter version of alif ا in final position, a usage augmented by the ambiguity of the use of ه and tāʾ marbūṭah ة in formal Arabic orthography. It is a formal orthography in other languages that use Arabic script, such as Kurdish alphabets.
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