Kamatz
Kamatz or qamatz is a Hebrew niqqud sign represented by two perpendicular lines 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. For this reason, the equivalent phoneme in Yiddish is spelled with an aleph marked with a kamatz, in Yiddish orthography.
Etymology
The kamatz name comes from the verb קָמַץ 'to clench, to tighten', because the vowel's original pronunciation in the Tiberian system, between the "" and "" sounds, requires the lips to be tightened.Overview
Qamatz Qaṭan vs. Qamatz Gadol
| Biblical Hebrew | Tiberian phoneme | Tiberian vowel | Babylonian phoneme | Modern Hebrew |
| Patach | Patach | |||
| Kamatz | Kamatz Gadol | |||
| Kamatz | Kamatz Katan | |||
| Holam | Holam |
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 ; long became ; while and both merged into an in-between sound , 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 qamatz sound of, known as ' occurs in a "closed syllable", i.e. one which ends in a consonant marked with a shwa nakh or with a Dagesh#Dagesh Ḥazak| ;
- The qamatz sound of, known as ' 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.
An example of the qamatz qatan is the Modern Hebrew word .
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 spelling is common in newspapers and is even used in several dictionaries, for example Rav Milim. Words which in their base form have a holam| that changes to in declension retain the vav in vowel-less spelling: the noun is spelled in vowel-less texts; the adjective 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 , but occasionally also on other letters, for example ; and .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 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 the vowel is made very short.