The Tiberian vocalization, Tiberian pointing, or Tiberian niqqud (

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

: ''haNīqqūḏ haṬəḇērīyānī'') is a system of

diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...

s (''

niqqud In Hebrew orthography, niqqud or nikud ( or ) is a system of diacritical signs used to represent vowels or distinguish between alternative pronunciations of letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Several such diacritical systems were developed in the ...

'') devised by the

Masoretes The Masoretes ( he, בַּעֲלֵי הַמָּסוֹרָה, Baʿălēy Hammāsōrā, lit. 'Masters of the Tradition') were groups of Jewish scribe-scholars who worked from around the end of the 5th through 10th centuries CE, based primarily in ...

Tiberias Tiberias ( ; he, טְבֶרְיָה, ; ar, طبريا, Ṭabariyyā) is an Israeli city on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. A major Jewish center during Late Antiquity, it has been considered since the 16th century one of Judaism's F ...

to add to the consonantal text of the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
'' Masoretic Text The Masoretic Text (MT or 𝕸; he, נֻסָּח הַמָּסוֹרָה, Nūssāḥ Hammāsōrā, lit. 'Text of the Tradition') is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) in Rabbinic Judaism. ...

. The system soon became used to vocalize other Hebrew texts, as well. The Tiberian vocalization marks vowels and stress, makes fine distinctions of consonant quality and length, and serves as punctuation. While the Tiberian system was devised for

Tiberian Hebrew Tiberian Hebrew is the canonical pronunciation of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) committed to writing by Masoretic scholars living in the Jewish community of Tiberias in ancient Galilee under the Abbasid Caliphate. They wrote in the form of Tiberian ...

, it has become the dominant system for vocalizing all forms of Hebrew and has long since eclipsed the Babylonian and Palestinian vocalization systems.

Consonant diacritics

The

sin dot Shin (also spelled Šin (') or Sheen) is the twenty-first letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Shin , Hebrew Shin , Aramaic Shin , Syriac Shin ܫ, and Arabic Shin (in abjadi order, 13th in modern order). Its sound value is a voice ...

distinguishes between the two values of . A ''

dagesh The dagesh () is a diacritic used in the Hebrew alphabet. It was added to the Hebrew orthography at the same time as the Masoretic system of niqqud (vowel points). It takes the form of a dot placed inside a Hebrew letter and has the effect of modi ...

'' indicates a consonant is geminate or unspirantized, and a ''

raphe Raphe (; from Greek ῥαφή, "seam"Liddell, H.G. & Scott, R. (1940). ''A Greek-English Lexicon. revised and augmented throughout by Sir Henry Stuart Jones. with the assistance of. Roderick McKenzie.'' Oxford: Clarendon Press.) has several diffe ...

'' indicates

spirantization In linguistics, lenition is a sound change that alters consonants, making them more sonorous. The word ''lenition'' itself means "softening" or "weakening" (from Latin 'weak'). Lenition can happen both synchronically (within a language at a ...

. The ''

mappiq The mappiq (, also ''mapiq'', ''mapik'', ''mappik'', lit. "causing to go out") is a diacritic used in the Hebrew alphabet. It is part of the Masoretes' system of niqqud (vowel points), and was added to Hebrew orthography at the same time. It takes ...

'' indicates that is consonantal, not silent, in syllable-coda position.

Vowel diacritics

The seven vowel qualities of Tiberian Hebrew are indicated straightforwardly by distinct diacritics: The diacritics qubutz and shuruq both represent , but shuruq is used when the text uses full spelling (with waw as a

mater lectionis ''Matres lectionis'' (from Latin "mothers of reading", singular form: ''mater lectionis'', from he, אֵם קְרִיאָה ) are consonants that are used to indicate a vowel, primarily in the writing down of Semitic languages such as Arabic, ...

). Each of the vowel phonemes could be allophonically lengthened; occasionally, the length is marked with

metheg Meteg (or meseg or metheg, Hebrew: , lit. 'bridle', also , lit. 'bellowing', , or ) is a punctuation mark used in Biblical Hebrew for stress marking. It is a vertical bar placed under the affected syllable. Usage Meteg is primarily used ...

. (Then, metheg also can indirectly indicate when a following shva is vocal.) The ultrashort vowels are slightly more complicated. There were two graphemes corresponding to the vowel , attested by alternations in manuscripts like .‎. In addition, one of the graphemes could also be silent: Tiberian-vocalisation-david-fine

Shva was used both to indicate lack of a vowel (''quiescent šwa'', ''shva nah'') and as another symbol to represent the phoneme (''mobile šwa'', ''shva na''), the latter also represented by hataf patah. The phoneme had a number of allophones; had to be written with shva rather than hataf patah when it was not pronounced as . Before a laryngeal-pharyngeal, mobile šwa was pronounced as an ultrashort copy of the following vowel ( ) and as preceding , ( ). Using ḥataf vowels was mandatory under gutturals but optional under other letters, and there was considerable variation among manuscripts. That is referenced specifically by medieval grammarians: The names of the vowel diacritics are iconic and show some variation:

Cantillation

Cantillation Cantillation is the ritual chanting of prayers and responses. It often specifically refers to Jewish Hebrew cantillation. Cantillation sometimes refers to diacritics used in texts that are to be chanted in liturgy. Cantillation includes: * Chant ...

signs mark stress and punctuation. Metheg may mark secondary stress, and maqqaf conjoins words into one stress unit, which normally takes only one cantillation mark on the final word in the unit.

References

Sources

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Tiberian Vocalization Language of the Hebrew Bible Hebrew alphabet

Consonant diacritics

Vowel diacritics

Cantillation

See also

References

Sources