Lesson 2 – VOWELS

Basics of Biblical Hebrew Grammar: Second Edition by Gary D. Pratico and Miles V. Van Pelt (Hardcover – Aug 1, 2007)

FULL VOWELS

Ancient Hebrew had no written system of vowels. The language was read and spoken according to an oral tradition handed down from generation to generation.

Here is the A, I, U, E, and O vowels:

http://www.hebrew4christians.com/Grammar/Unit_Two/unit_two.html

1. The vowels listed above are “full vowels” in order to distinguish them from the “half vowels”, which will be discussed later

2. For grammatical purposes these vowels are divided into “long vowels” and short vowels”. This distinction will be especially important for our understanding of the formation of nouns and verbs.

3. Qames and Qames-hatuf have the same form, although one represents a long “a” class vowel and the other a short “o” class vowel. The rules for distinguishing between the 2 will be studied later.

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HALF VOWELS

1. sheva

sheva has a lot of rules to dicide when the sheva is vocal or silent (in the pronounciation). These rules will be studied in lesson 3.

2. hatef-patah

3. hatef-segol

4. hatef-qames

Additional “hatef” makes some full vowels become half (patah, segol, and qames-hatuf). These additional didn’t have any complicated rules like in shevas.

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Excercse:

http://www.hebrew4christians.com/Grammar/Unit_Two/Unit_Two_Exercises/unit_two_exercises.html