Kametz

Kamatz or qamatz (, ; alternatively ) is a Hebrew niqqud (vowel) sign represented by two perpendicular lines (looking like an uppercase T) underneath a letter. In modern Hebrew, it usually indicates the phoneme which is the " a" sound in the word ''spa'' and is transliterated as ''a''. In these cases, its sound is identical to the sound of ' in modern Hebrew. In a minority of cases it indicates the phoneme , equal to the sound of '. In traditional Ashkenazi Hebrew pronunciation, qamatz is pronounced as the phoneme , which becomes in some contexts in southern Ashkenazi dialects.

Qamatz Qaṭan, Qamatz Gadol, Ḥataf Qamatz

Qamatz Qaṭan vs. Qamatz Gadol

The Hebrew of the late centuries BCE and early centuries of the Common Era had a system with five phonemic long vowels and five short vowels .

In the later dialects of the 1st millennium CE, phonemic vowel length disappeared, and instead was automatically determined by the context, with vowels pronounced long in open syllables and short in closed ones. However, the previous vowel phonemes merged in various ways that differed from dialect to dialect:
* In Tiberian Hebrew, which underlies the written system of vowels, short became (indicated by '); long became (indicated by '); while and both merged into an in-between sound (similar to the vowel in English "caught" without the cot-caught merger), which was indicated by qamatz.
* In the Babylonian vocalization, however, short and long variants simply merged, with and becoming while and became and this system underlies the pronunciation of Modern Hebrew.

The result is that in Modern Hebrew, the vowel written with qamatz might be pronounced as either or depending on historical origin. It is often said that the two sounds can be distinguished by context:
*The qamatz sound of , known as (, , "little qamatz") occurs in a "closed syllable", i.e. one which ends in a consonant marked with a shwa nakh (zero vowel) or with a (which indicates that the consonant was pronounced geminated, i.e. doubled);
*The qamatz sound of , known as ( , "big qamatz") occurs in an "open syllable", i.e. any other circumstance: one which ends in a consonant followed by a normal vowel, a consonant at the end of a word and with no vowel marking, or a consonant marked with a shwa na (originally pronounced ).

Unfortunately, the two varieties of shwa are written identically, and pronounced identically in Modern Hebrew; as a result, there is no reliable way to distinguish the two varieties of qamatz when followed by a vowel marked with a shwa. (In some cases, Biblical texts are marked with a ''metheg'' or other cantillation mark that helps to indicate which pronunciation is intended, but this usage is not consistent, and in any case such marks are absent in non-Biblical texts.) It should also be noted that there are examples of qamatz qaṭan appearing in open syllables, such as in the plural of (, "root"), ().

An example of the ''qamatz qatan'' is the Modern Hebrew word (, "program").

According to the standard Hebrew spelling rules as published by the Academy of the Hebrew Language, words which have a qamatz qatan in their base form must be written without a vav, hence the standard vowel-less spelling of is . In practice, however, Modern Hebrew words containing a qamatz qatan do add a ''vav'' to indicate the pronunciation; hence the nonstandard (also termed "excessive") spelling is common in newspapers and is even used in several dictionaries, for example Rav Milim. Words which in their base form have a that changes to in declension retain the ''vav'' in vowel-less spelling: the noun (, "freedom") is spelled in vowel-less texts; the adjective (, "free") is spelled in vowel-less text, despite the use of qamatz qatan, both according to the standard spelling and in common practice.

Some books print the differently, although the way in which they do is not consistent. For example, in siddur Rinat Yisrael the vertical line of qamatz qatan is longer. In Siddur Sim Shalom, the horizontal line is separated from the bottom. In a book of ''Psalms'' used by some Breslov hassidim the qamatz qatan is bolder. In the popular niqqud textbook ''Niqqud halakha le-maase'' by Nisan Netser, the qamatz qatan is printed as an encircled qamatz for didactic purposes.

Unicode defines the code point , although its usage is not required.

Ḥaṭaf Qamatz

(, ) is a "reduced qamatz". Like qamatz qatan, it is pronounced , but the rationale for its usage is different: it replaces the shva on letters which require a shva according to the grammar, but where the traditional pronunciation is . This mostly happens with gutturals, for example in (, "pines", the plural form of , ), but occasionally also on other letters, for example (, "roots", another plural of ); and (, "birds", the plural of ().

Pronunciation and transliteration

The following table contains the pronunciation and transliteration of the different qamatzes in reconstructed historical forms and dialects using the International Phonetic Alphabet. The transcription in IPA is above and the transliteration is below.

The letters Bet and Het used in this table are only for demonstration, any letter can be used.

Vowel length comparison

These vowel lengths are not manifested in Modern Hebrew. The short ''o'' () and long ''a'' (''qamatz'') have the same ''niqqud''. Because of this, the short ''o'' () is usually promoted to a long ''o'' () in Israeli writing, written as a ''vav'' , for the sake of disambiguation.

By adding two vertical dots (''shva'') the vowel is made very short.

Unicode encoding

Note: the glyph for QAMATS QATAN may appear empty or incorrect if one applies a font that cannot handle the glyph necessary to represent Unicode character U+05C7. Usually this Unicode character isn't used and is substituted with the similar looking QAMATS (U+05B8).

{{Hebrew language

Niqqud