Kamatz
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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| ָ | |
| IPA | a |
| Transliteration | a |
| English example | far |
| Same sound | patach |
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| דָּג | |
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Kamatz (Hebrew: קָמַץ) is a Hebrew niqqud vowel sign represented by two perpendicular lines (looking like an uppercase T) "ָ" underneath a letter. In modern Hebrew, it indicates the phoneme /a/ which is the same as the "a" sound in far and is transliterated as a "a".
In modern Hebrew, a kamatz makes the same sound as a patach.
A Kamatz Katan (Hebrew: קָמַץ קָטָן, "Small Kamatz"), while identical in appearance to the standard kamatz (and also much rarer), makes an o sound. It is usually promoted to Holam Male in Israeli writing for the sake of disambiguation. Also, it is not to be confused with Hataf Kamatz (Hebrew: חֲטַף קָמָץ "Reduced Kamatz"). The reduced (or hataf) niqqud exist for kamatz, patach, and segol which contain a shva next to it.
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[edit] Pronounciation and transliteration
The following table contains the pronunciation and transliteration of the different kamatzes in reconstructed historical forms and dialects using the International Phonetic Alphabet. The pronunciation in IPA is above and the transliteration is below.
The letters Bet "ב" and Het "ח" used in this table are only for demonstration. Any letter can be used.
| Symbol | Name | English | Pronunciation | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Israeli | Ashkenazi | Sephardi | Yemenite | Tiberian | Reconstructed | ||||
| Mishnaic | Biblical | ||||||||
| בָ | Kamatz Gadol | Big Kamatz | [a] | ? | [?] | ? | [ɔː] | ? | ? |
| a | ? | ? | ? | ā | ? | ? | |||
| בָה, בָא | Kamatz Male | Full Kamatz | [a] | ? | [?] | ? | [ɔː] | ? | ? |
| a | ? | ? | ? | â | ? | ? | |||
| בָ | Kamatz Katan | Small Kamatz | [ɔ] | ? | [?] | ? | [ɔ] | ? | ? |
| o | ? | ? | ? | o | ? | ? | |||
| חֳ | Hataf Kamatz | Reduced Kamatz | [ɔ] | ? | ? | ? | [ɔ] | ? | ? |
| o | ? | ? | ? | ŏ | ? | ? | |||
In addition, a letter with a kamatz or patach with a succeeding yud makes the "ai" sound such as in fine or why.
[edit] Vowel Length comparison
These vowels lengths are not manifested in Modern Hebrew. The short o (Kamatz Katan) and long a (Kamatz) have the same niqqud. Because of this, the short o (Kamatz Katan) is usually promoted to a long o (Holam) in Israeli writing for the sake of disambiguation.
By adding two vertical dots (sh'va) the vowel is made very short.
| Vowel comparison table | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vowel Length | IPA | Transliteration | English example |
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| Long | Short | Very Short | |||
| ָ | ַ | ֲ | [a] | a | spa |
| Kamatz | Patach | Reduced Patach | |||
| וֹ | ָ | ֳ | [ɔ] | o | cone |
| Holam | Kamatz Katan | Reduced Kamatz | |||
[edit] Unicode encoding
| Glyph | Unicode | Name |
|---|---|---|
| ָ | U+05B8 | QAMATS |
| ֳ | U+05B3 | HATEF QAMATS |
[edit] See also
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