Modern Hebrew phonology

Main article: Hebrew language

For assistance in making IPA transcriptions of Hebrew for Wikipedia articles, see WP:IPA for Hebrew.

This article is about the phonology of the Hebrew language based on the Israeli dialect. It deals with current phonology and phonetics as well as with historical developments thereof, including geographical variants.

Hebrew has been used primarily for liturgical, literary, and scholarly purposes for most of the past two millennia. As a consequence, its pronunciation has been strongly influenced by the vernacular of each individual Jewish community. In contrast to the varied development of these pronunciations is the relatively rapid development of modern Israeli Hebrew.

Consonants

Below are the consonants of modern General Israeli Hebrew. Some historically distinctive Hebrew phonemes have merged in modern Hebrew, such as historically distinctive /t/, /θ/, /tˤ/ (now all pronounced [t]), written respectively by the letters Tav (תּ), Ṯav (ת) and Ṭet (ט). The exact nature of the emphatic feature for emphatic consonants is a matter of debate; the most commonly suggested possibilities are pharyngealization (as in Arabic) and glottalized (as in the Ethiopian Semitic languages). For these cases, the Academy of the Hebrew Language suggests two transliteration sets, a generic one, reflecting modern phonology, and a strict one, reflecting the orthographic distinctions, which are still in use, and the historical phonology.

Phonemic Consonants of Modern Hebrew

	Bilabial	Labio- dental	Alveolar	Post- alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Pharyngeal	Glottal
Nasal	m		n
Plosive	p   b		t   d			k   ɡ			ʔ
Affricate			ts	tʃ   dʒ
Fricative		f   v	s   z	ʃ   ʒ			χ	(ħ   ʕ)	h
Approximant			l		j	w	ʁ̞

Historical notes

1. In old Hebrew the /ts/ was emphatic. (Currently, the only community of Hebrew-speakers that expresses this in speech are Yemenite Jews, whose Hebrew preserves many distinctions lost by other communities under the influence of Yiddish and other European languages). However, the emphasis led to several types of phonetic change that still exist.
2. /ʁ̞/ is the rhotic consonant for most speakers. This was originally an alveolar trill /r/ but has changed due to the influence of European languages.
3. The pharyngeal consonants (/ħ/ and /ʕ/) are only articulated by a portion of the population of Israel, mainly some Mizrahi Jews and Yemenite Jews. Common Modern Hebrew does not treat them as separate phonemes from /χ/ and /ʔ/ respectively, and these latter two predominate in articulation.

The pairs /b v/, /k χ/, and /p f/, written respectively by the letters bet (ב), kaf (כ) and pe (פ) have historically been allophonic. In Modern Hebrew, however, all six sounds are phonemic, due to mergers involving formerly distinct sounds: (/v/ merging with /w/, /k/ merging with /q/, /x/ merging with /ħ/ (which both have become /χ/), loss of consonant gemination (which formerly distinguished the stop members of the pairs from the fricatives when intervocalic), and the introduction of syllable-initial /f/ through foreign borrowings.

Consonant clusters

In obstruent clusters, a voicing assimilation usually occurs as native Hebrew speakers tend to voice or devoice the first obstruent according to the second one.

Examples:

1. לסגור /lisˈɡor/ [lizˈɡoʁ̞] ('to close'), /s/ → [z]
2. זכות /zχut/ [sχut] ('a right'), /z/ → [s]
3. חשבון /χeʃˈbon/ [χeʒˈbon] ('a bill'), /ʃ/ → [ʒ]
4. מדפסת /madˈpeset/ [matˈpeset] ('a printer'), /d/ → /t/
5. אבטחה /avtaˈχa/ [aftaˈχa] ('security'), /v/ → [f]

Dropped consonants

In normal speech, /ʔ/ is dropped when occurring between vowels, and /j/ is dropped when occurring between vowels where the first is a front vowel (/e/ or /i/) or the second is /i/. /h/ between vowels may also be dropped, especially in fast speech. Hence, /ma ha-ʃaˈʔa/ "what's the time?" becomes [mahaʃaˈa] or [maaʃaˈa].

Vowels

The vowel phonemes of Modern Israeli Hebrew

The Hebrew word for vowels is tnu'ot (תְּנוּעוֹת). The orthographic representations for these vowels are called Niqqud. Israeli Hebrew has 5 vowel phonemes.

Phoneme	Example
/a/	[ʔav]	אב	'father'
/e/	[ʔe̞m]	אם	'mother'
/i/	[ʔiʃ]	איש	'man'
/o/	[ʔo̞ʁ]	אור	'light'
/u/	[ʔaduma]	אדומה	'red' (f)

Shva

The Hebrew Niqqud sign "Shva" represents four grammatical entities: resting (nakh / נָח), moving (na' / נָע), floating (merahef / מְרַחֵף) and "bleating" or "bellowing" ('ga'ya' / גַּעְיָה). In earlier forms of Hebrew, these entities were phonologically and phonetically distinguishable. However, the phonology of Modern Hebrew has produced two phonetic variants of Shva, either [e] or mute, which no longer conform to the traditional classification, e.g. the (first) Shva Nach in the word קִמַּטְתְ (fem. you crumpled) is pronounced [e] ([kiˈmatet]) instead of being mute, whereas the Shva Na in זְמַן (time) is mute ([zman]). In general, in Modern Hebrew, some shvas are always pronounced as [e] (particularly, in prefixes like [be-] "in" or when following another shva in grammatical patterns, e.g. [tilmedi] "you (f. sg.) will learn"), while the remaining shvas are pronounced only when not pronouncing them would violate a phonological constraint (for example, between two sounds that are identical or differ only in voicing, e.g. [lamadeti] "I learned" not *[lamadti]; or when an impermissible initial cluster would result, e.g. *[rC-] or *[Cʔ-], where C stands for any consonant).

Stress

Hebrew has two main kinds of stress: on the last syllable (milra‘) and on the penultimate syllable (the one preceding the last, mil‘el). The former is more frequent. The stress has phonemic value, e.g. "ילד", when pronounced [ˈjeled], means "boy", whereas when pronounced [jeˈled] it means "will give birth to". Specific rules connect the location of the stress with the length of the vowels in the last syllable. However, because Israeli Hebrew does not distinguish phonetically between long and short vowels, these rules are not evident in everyday speech. They usually cannot be inferred from written text either, since usually vowels are not marked. The rules that specify the vowel length are different for verbs and nouns, which influences the stress; thus the mil‘el-stressed ókhel ('food') and milra‘-stressed okhèl ('eats' masculine) differ only in the length of the vowels (and are written identically if vowels are not marked). Little ambiguity exists, however, due to nouns and verbs having incompatible roles in normal sentences. This is, however, also true in English, in, for example, the English word "conduct," in its nominal and verbal forms.

Biblical Hebrew had only these two stress patterns. Modern Hebrew, however, has a moderate number of words which are neither milra nor mil‘el, but are stressed on the antepenult or even further back. These are mostly borrowings, e.g. ótobus 'bus', though some result from pronounced shvas (see above), e.g. lamádeti 'I learned' (lamád 'learn' plus the ending -ti plus [e] to break up the similar sounds [d] and [t]), and a handful are native Hebrew words with an added clitic, e.g. míshehu 'someone' (mi 'who' plus shehu '-ever, any').

Regional and historical variation

Further information: [[:Phonology of Biblical Hebrew]]

The following table contains the pronunciation of the Hebrew letters in reconstructed historical forms and dialects using the International Phonetic Alphabet. The apostrophe-looking symbol after some letters is not a yud but a geresh. It is used for loanwords with non-native Hebrew sounds and only in Israeli Hebrew. The dot in the middle of some of the letters, called a "dagesh kal", also modifies the sounds of the letters ב, כ and פ in modern Hebrew (in earlier forms of Hebrew it used to modify also the sounds of the letters ג, ד and ת; the "dagesh chazak" – orthographically indistinguishable from the "dagesh kal" – designates gemination, which today is realized only rarely – e.g. in biblical recitations or when using Arabic loanwords).

Symbol	Pronunciation
	Israeli	Ashkenazi	Sephardi	Yemenite	Tiberian	Reconstructed
						Mishnaic	Biblical
א	[ʔ, -]	[ - ]	[ʔ, -]	[ʔ, -]	[ʔ, -]	[ʔ, -]	[ʔ]
בּ	[b]	[b]	[b]	[b]	[b]	[b]	[b]
ב	[v]	[v~v̥]	[b~β~v]	[β]	[v]	[β]
גּ	[ɡ]	[ɡ~ɡ̊]	[ɡ]	[dʒ]	[ɡ]	[ɡ]	[ɡ]
ג			[ɡ~ɣ]	[ɣ]	[ɣ]	[ɣ]
ג׳	[dʒ]	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
דּ	[d]	[d~d̥]	[d̪~ð]	[d̪]	[d̪]	[d̪]	[d̪]
ד			[d̪~ð]	[ð]	[ð]	[ð]
ה	[h~ʔ, -]	[h, -]	[h, -]	[h, -]	[h, -]	[h, -]	[h]
ו	[v]	[v~v̥]	[v]	[w]	[w]	[w]	[w]
וּ	[u]	[uː, iː]	[uː]	[ɘw]	?	?	?
וֹ	[o]	[əʊ, ɔj, ɛj, ɐʊ]	[o]	[œ]	?	?	?
וו) , ו׳)	[w](non-standard)	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
ז	[z]	[z~z̥]	[z]	[z]	[z]	[z]	[d͡z]
ז׳	[ʒ]	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
ח	[χ~ħ]	[x]	[ħ]	[ħ]	[ħ]	[ħ, x]	[ħ, x]
ט	[t]	[t]	[t̪]	[t̴̪] (1)	[t̴̪]	[t̪ˁ] (2)	[t̪ʼ] (3)
י	[j]	[j]	[j]	[j]	[j]	[j]	[j]
יִ	[i]	[i]	[i]	?	?	?	?
כּ ךּ	[k]	[k]	[k]	[k]	[k]	[k]	[k]
כ ך	[χ]	[x]	[x]	[x]	[x]	[x]
ל	[l]	[l~ɫ]	[l]	[l]	[l]	[l]	[l]
מ ם	[m]	[m]	[m]	[m]	[m]	[m]	[m]
נ ן	[n]	[n]	[n̪]	[n̪]	[n̪]	[n̪]	[n̪]
ס	[s]	[s]	[s]	[s]	[s]	[s]	[s]
ע	[ʔ~ʕ, - ]	[ - ]	[ʕ, ŋ, - ]	[ʕ]	[ʕ]	[ʕ, ɣ]	[ʕ, ɣ]
פּ	[p]	[p]	[p]	[p]	[p]	[p]	[p]
פ ף	[f]	[f]	[f]	[f]	[f]	[ɸ]
צ ץ	[ts]	[ts]	[ts]	[s̴] (1)	[s̴]	[sˁ] (2)	[tsʼ, tʃʼ, tɬʼ] (3)
צ׳ ץ׳	[tʃ]	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
ק	[k]	[k]	[k]	[ɡ], [ɢ], [q]	[q]	[q]	[kʼ] (3)
ר	[ʁ]	[ɹ]~[ʀ]	[r~ɾ]	[r~ɾ]	[ɾ]	[ɾ]	[ɾ]
שׁ	[ʃ]	[ʃ]	[ʃ]	[ʃ]	[ʃ]	[ʃ]	[tʃ], [tɬ], [s]
שׂ	[s]	[s]	[s]	[s]	[s]	[s]
תּ	[t]	[t]	[t̪]	[t̪]	[t̪]	[t̪]	[t̪]
ת		[s]	[θ]	[θ]	[θ]	[θ]
ת׳	[θ]	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

1. velarized or pharyngealized
2. pharyngealized
3. sometimes said to be ejective but more likely glottalized.

References

• History of the Ancient and Modern Hebrew Language, David Steinberg

See also

• Biblical Hebrew language
• Hebrew alphabet
• WP:IPA for Hebrew
• Niqqud
• Tiberian vocalization