| '''''''''' |
| | |
| IPA | or |
| Transliteration | a |
| English approximation | f ar |
| Same sound | qamatz |
| Example |
| | |
| | Hebrew language]], ''gam''. The first and only vowel (under [[Gimel]], the horizontal line) is a pataḥ.
|
| Other [[Niqqud]]
|
| Shin dot]] |
Pataḥ (
, , Biblical Hebrew: ) is a
Hebrew alphabet 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
f ar and is transliterated as an
a.
In Modern Hebrew, a makes the same sound as a qamatz, as does the ( , "reduced "). The reduced (or ) niqqud exist for , , and which contain a next to it.
In Yiddish orthography, a pataḥ (called pasekh in Yiddish) has two uses. The combination of pasekh with the letter aleph, אַ, is used to represent the vowel a; the combination of pasekh with a digraph consisting of two yodh, ײַ, 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 s in reconstructed historical forms and
using the
International Phonetic Alphabet.
The letters Bet and Het used in this table are only for demonstration, any letter can be used.
A
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 ) 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
, or "stolen" (more formally, "furtive "), 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.
Unicode encoding
|
| U+05B7 | PATAH |
| U+05B2 | HATAF PATAH |
See also
