Niqqud in the context of "Schwa"

The Hebrew language uses the Hebrew alphabet with optional vowel diacritics. The Romanization of Hebrew refers specifically to the use of the Latin alphabet to represent Hebrew words.For example, the Hebrew name יִשְׂרָאֵל ('Israel') can be Romanized as Yisrael or Yiśrāʼēl in addition to Israel.

Particularly in contexts where the Latin alphabet is the dominant writing system, Romanization and transliteration are often used interchangeably. The actual relationship between the two terms is dependent on the discipline and/or context. However, generally speaking, one can safely define transliteration as the representation of words from one script in a different script. Romanization is a subset of transliteration, specifically referring to the representation of non-Latin or vernacular scripts in the Latin writing system. Transliteration and Romanization can—but do not necessarily—account for vowels even for abjads as Hebrew.

The Masoretic Text (MT or 𝕸; Hebrew: נֻסָּח הַמָּסוֹרָה, romanized: Nussāḥ ham-Māsorā, 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 Masoretic Text defines the Jewish canon and its precise letter-text, with its vocalization and accentuation known as the masora. Referring to the Masoretic Text, masora specifically means the diacritic markings of the text of the Jewish scriptures and the concise marginal notes in manuscripts (and later printings) of the Tanakh which note textual details, usually about the precise spelling of words. It was primarily copied, edited, and distributed by a group of Jews known as the Masoretes between the 7th and 10th centuries of the Common Era (CE). The oldest known complete copy, the Leningrad Codex, dates to 1009 CE and is recognized as the most complete source of biblical books in the Ben Asher tradition. It has served as the base text for critical editions such as Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia and Adi.

The differences attested to in the Dead Sea Scrolls indicate that multiple versions of the Hebrew scriptures already existed by the end of the Second Temple period. Which is closest to a theoretical Urtext is disputed, as is whether such a singular text ever existed. The Dead Sea Scrolls, dating to as early as the 3rd century BCE, contain versions of the text which have some differences with today's Hebrew Bible. The Septuagint (a compilation of Koine Greek translations made in the third and second centuries BCE) and the Peshitta (a Syriac translation made in the second century CE) occasionally present notable differences from the Masoretic Text, as does the Samaritan Pentateuch, the text of the Torah preserved by the Samaritans in Samaritan Hebrew. Fragments of an ancient 2nd–3rd-century manuscript of the Book of Leviticus found near an ancient synagogue's Torah ark in Ein Gedi have identical wording to the Masoretic Text.

The Masoretes (Hebrew: בַּעֲלֵי הַמָּסוֹרָה, romanized: 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 AD, based primarily in the Jewish centers of the Levant (e.g., Tiberias and Jerusalem) and Mesopotamia (e.g., Sura and Nehardea). Each group compiled a system of pronunciation and grammatical guides in the form of diacritical notes (niqqud) on the external form of the biblical text in an attempt to standardize the pronunciation, paragraph and verse divisions, and cantillation of the Hebrew Bible (the Tanakh) for the worldwide Jewish community.

The ben Asher family of Masoretes was largely responsible for the preservation and production of the Masoretic Text, although there existed an alternative Masoretic text of the ben Naphtali Masoretes, which has around 875 differences from the ben Asher text. The halakhic authority Maimonides endorsed the ben Asher as superior, although the Egyptian Jewish scholar, the Saadya Gaon, had preferred the ben Naphtali system. It has been suggested that the ben Asher family and the majority of the Masoretes were Karaites. However, Geoffrey Khan believes that the ben Asher family was probably not Karaite, and Aron Dotan avers that there are "decisive proofs that M. Ben-Asher was not a Karaite."

The Tiberian vocalization, Tiberian pointing, or Tiberian niqqud (Hebrew: הַנִּקּוּד הַטְבֶרְיָנִי‎, romanized: hanniqquḏ haṭṭəḇeryāni) is a system of diacritics (niqqud) devised by the Masoretes of Tiberias to add to the consonantal text of the Hebrew Bible to produce the Masoretic Text. The system soon became used to vocalize other Hebrew texts as well.

Tiberian vocalization marks vowels and stress, distinguishes consonant quality and length, and serves as punctuation. While the Tiberian system was devised for Tiberian Hebrew, it has become the dominant system for vocalizing all forms of Hebrew. It has long since eclipsed the comparatively rudimentary Babylonian and Palestinian vocalization systems for writing Biblical Hebrew.

The Tetragrammaton is the four-letter Hebrew-language theonym יהוה‎ (transliterated as YHWH), the name of God in the Hebrew Bible. The four Hebrew letters, written and read from right to left, are yod, he, vav, and he. The name may be derived from a verb that means 'to be', 'to exist', 'to cause to become', or 'to come to pass'.

While there is no consensus about the structure and etymology of the name, the form Yahweh (with niqqud: יַהוֶה) is now almost universally accepted among Biblical and Semitic linguistics scholars, though the vocalization Jehovah continues to have wide usage, especially in Christian traditions. In modernity, Christianity is the only Abrahamic religion in which the Tetragrammaton is freely and openly pronounced.

A Hebrew school is a Jewish educational institution that focuses on Jewish history, learning the Hebrew language, and finally learning one's Torah portion in preparation for the coming-of-age ceremony in Judaism. Classes are usually taught in dedicated rooms at a synagogue under the instruction of a Hebrew teacher (who may or may not be fluent in Hebrew), often receiving support from a hazzan for learning the ancient chanting of a student's Torah portion and from a rabbi during the ceremony, owing to the fact that a Torah scroll is typically very challenging for a student to read because it lacks Hebrew vowel markings while also having very condensed text with minimal line spacing.

Hebrew schooling can be either an educational regimen separate from secular education, in a similar fashion to Sunday school among Christians; education focusing on topics of Jewish history and learning the Hebrew language; or a primary-, secondary-, or college-level educational institution in which some or all of the classes are taught in Hebrew. The first usage is more common in the United States, while the second is used elsewhere bar Israel—for example, in reference to the Colegio Hebreo Unión in Barranquilla, Colombia, or the Associated Hebrew Schools in Toronto, Canada.

Hebrew cantillation, trope, trop, or te'amim is the manner of chanting ritual readings from the Hebrew Bible in synagogue services. The chants are written and notated in accordance with the special signs or marks printed in the Masoretic Text of the Bible, to complement the letters and vowel points.

These marks are known in English as 'accents' (diacritics), 'notes' or trope symbols, and in Hebrew as taʿamei ha-mikra (טעמי המקרא) or just teʿamim (טעמים). Some of these signs were also sometimes used in medieval manuscripts of the Mishnah. The musical motifs associated with the signs are known in Hebrew as niggun or neginot (not to be confused with Hasidic nigun) and in Yiddish as trop (טראָפּ): the word trope is sometimes used in Jewish English with the same meaning.

Hebrew orthography includes three types of diacritics:

• Niqqud in Hebrew is the way to indicate vowels, which are omitted in modern orthography, using a set of ancillary glyphs. Since the vowels can be understood from surrounding letters, context can help readers read the correct pronunciations of several letters of the Hebrew alphabet (the rafe sign and other rare glyphs are also listed as part of the niqqud system but are not in common use);
• geresh and gershayim, two diacritics that are not considered a part of niqqud, each of which has several functions (e.g. to denote Hebrew numerals);
• and cantillation, "accents" which are used exclusively to indicate how Biblical passages should be chanted and may possess a punctuating function.

Several diacritical systems were developed in the Early Middle Ages. The most widespread system, and the only one still used to a significant degree today, was created by the Masoretes of Tiberias in the second half of the first millennium in the Land of Israel (see Masoretic Text, Tiberian Hebrew).The Niqqud signs and cantillation marks developed by the Masoretes are small in size compared to consonants, so they could be added to the consonantal texts without retranscribing them.

Yiddish orthography is the writing system used for the Yiddish language. It includes Yiddish spelling rules and the Hebrew script, which is used as the basis of a full vocalic alphabet. Letters that are silent or represent glottal stops in the Hebrew language are used as vowels in Yiddish. Other letters that can serve as both vowels and consonants are either read as appropriate to the context in which they appear, or are differentiated by diacritical marks derived from Hebrew nikkud, commonly referred to as "nekudot" or "pintalach" (literally "points" as those marks are mostly point-like signs). Additional phonetic distinctions between letters that share the same base character are also indicated by either pointing or adjacent placement of otherwise silent base characters. Several Yiddish points are not commonly used in any latter-day Hebrew context; others are used in a manner that is specific to Yiddish orthography. There is significant variation in the way this is applied in literary practice. There are also several differing approaches to the disambiguation of characters that can be used as either vowels or consonants.

Words of Aramaic and Hebrew origin are normally written in the traditional orthography of the source language—i.e., the orthography of these words, which is consonant-based, is generally preserved (Niborski 2012). All other Yiddish words are represented with phonemic orthography. Both forms can appear in a single word—for example, where a Yiddish affix is applied to a Hebrew stem. Yiddish diacritics may also be applied to words that are otherwise written entirely with traditional orthography.

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 c. 750–950 CE under the Abbasid Caliphate. They wrote in the form of Tiberian vocalization, which employed diacritics added to the Hebrew letters: vowel signs and consonant diacritics (nequdot) and the so-called accents (two related systems of cantillation signs or te'amim). These together with the marginal notes masora magna and masora parva make up the Tiberian apparatus.

Although the written vowels and accents came into use in around 750 CE, the oral tradition that they reflect is many centuries older, with ancient roots.

A Mikraot Gedolot (Hebrew: מקראות גדולות, lit. 'Great Scriptures'), often called a "Rabbinic Bible" in English, is an edition of the Hebrew Bible that generally includes three distinct elements:

• The Masoretic Text in its letters, niqqud (vocalisation marks), and cantillation marks
• A Targum or Aramaic translation
• Jewish commentaries on the Bible; most common and prominent are medieval commentaries in the peshat tradition

Numerous editions of the Mikraot Gedolot have been and continue to be published.

"I Am that I Am" is a common English translation of the Hebrew phrase אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה (’ehye ’ăšer ’ehye; pronounced [ʔehˈje ʔaˈʃer ʔehˈje]), which appears in the Bible (Exodus 3:14). The phrase is also rendered as "I am who (I) am", "I will become what I choose to become", "I am what I am", "I will be what I will be", "I create what(ever) I create", or "I am the Existing One".

Waw (wāw "hook") is the sixth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician wāw 𐤅, Aramaic waw 𐡅,Hebrew vav ו‎, Syriac waw ܘ and Arabic wāw و‎ (sixth in abjadi order; 27th in modern Arabic order). It is also related to the Ancient North Arabian 𐪅‎‎‎, South Arabian 𐩥, and Ge'ez ወ.

It represents the consonant [w] in classical Hebrew, and [v] in modern Hebrew, as well as the vowels [u] and [o]. In text with niqqud, a dot is added to the left or on top of the letter to indicate, respectively, the two vowel pronunciations.

The Babylonian vocalization, also known as Babylonian supralinear punctuation, or Babylonian pointing or Babylonian niqqud Hebrew: נִקּוּד בָּבְלִי‎) is a system of diacritics (niqqud) and vowel symbols assigned above the text and devised by the Masoretes of Babylon to add to the consonantal text of the Hebrew Bible to indicate the proper pronunciation of words (vowel quality), reflecting the Hebrew of Babylon. The Babylonian notation is no longer in use in any Jewish community, having been supplanted by the sublinear Tiberian vocalization. However, the Babylonian pronunciation as reflected in that notation appears to be the ancestor of that used by Yemenite Jews.

The Palestinian vocalization, Palestinian pointing, Palestinian niqqud or Vocalization of the Land of Israel (Hebrew: נִקּוּד אֶרֶץ־יִשְׂרְאֵלִי, romanized: niqqūḏ ʾereṣ-Yiśrəʾēli) is an extinct system of niqqud (diacritics) devised by scholars to add to the Hebrew Bible to indicate vowel quality. The Palestinian system is no longer used, long supplanted by the Tiberian vocalization.