Ktiv male
Encyclopedia
Ktiv hasar niqqud (colloquially known as ktiv male (ktiv maˈlɛ; ), literally "full spelling") are the rules for writing Hebrew without vowel pointers (niqqud), often replacing them with matres lectionis
(ו and י). To avoid confusion, consonantal ו (v) and י (j) are doubled in the middle of words. In general use, niqqud are seldom used, except in specialized texts such as dictionaries, poetry, or texts for children or for new immigrants.
A typical example of a Hebrew text written in ktiv haser is the Torah
, read in synagogue
s (simply called the Torah reading
). For assistance readers often use a Tikkun
, a book in which the text of the Torah appears in two side-by-side versions, one identical to the text which appears in the Torah, and one with niqqud and cantillation
.
, which continued to revise them, and they were mostly accepted by the public, mainly for official writing.
Ktiv haser became obsolete, and ktiv male has already been dominant for decades in unvowelled texts: all of the newspapers and books published in Hebrew are written in ktiv male – this is the norm. Additionally, it is common for children's books or texts for those with special needs to contain niqqud, but ktiv haser without niqqud is rare.
Despite the Academy's standardization of the rules for ktiv male, there is a substantial lack of unity in writing, partly because of a lack of grammatical knowledge, partly because of the historical layers of the language, and partly because of a number of linguistic categories in which the Academy's decisions are not popular. As a result, every book publisher and newspaper editor makes their own judgement.
These are the most basic rules. For every one of them there are exceptions, described in the handbook "כללי הכתיב חסר הניקוד" that the Academy publishes in Hebrew.
Mater lectionis
In the spelling of Hebrew and some other Semitic languages, matres lectionis , refers to the use of certain consonants to indicate a vowel. The letters that do this in Hebrew are aleph, he, waw and yod...
(ו and י). To avoid confusion, consonantal ו (v) and י (j) are doubled in the middle of words. In general use, niqqud are seldom used, except in specialized texts such as dictionaries, poetry, or texts for children or for new immigrants.
Comparison example
From a Hebrew translation of "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe (translated by Eliyahu Tsifer)| Ktiv male | With niqqud |
|---|---|
| Added letters highlighted and respective phonemes | |
|---|---|
| viˈlon ʃel ˈmeʃi ʔarɡaˈman, saˈfek riʃˈruʃ, maˈsaχ muχˈman | וילון של משי ארגמן, ספק רשרוש, מסך מוכמן, |
| hifħiˈduni, biʕaˈtuni, ħaʃaˈʃot ʔejˈma ʔuˈslod | הפחידוני, ביעתוני, חששות אימה וסלוד, |
| paʕaˈmej liˈbi maˈkevet, bimˈʔots veˈɡam beˈʃevet, | פעמי לבי מקבת, במאוץ וגם בשבת, |
| haʔuʃˈpiz beˈʃot vaˈʃevet, ʔet dalˈti heˈziz bimˈnod, | האושפיז בשוט ושבט, את דלתי הזיז במנוד, |
| ʔet dalˈti heˈziz heˈniaʕ, ˈketev liʃkaˈti jaˈʃod, | את דלתי הזיז הניע, קטב לשכתי ישוד, |
| ʔalmoˈni hu haʔoˈreaħ, ʔalmoˈni hu velo ʕod | אלמוני הוא האורח, אלמוני הוא ולא עוד! |
| ʃalvaˈti parˈsa knaˈfajim, hisuˈsaj ʔafˈsu ʔaˈpajim, | שלוותי פרשה כנפיים, היסוסי אפסו אפיים, |
| ʔaˈdon uɡˈveret, beχeˈnut ʔafˈtsir ʔesˈɡod, | אדון וגברת, בכנות אפציר אסגוד, |
| ken ʕuvˈda hi, ʃʕat ɡloʃ, uveˈroχ jadˈχa taˈkoʃ, | כן עובדה היא, שעת גלוש, וברוך ידך תקוש, |
| medoˈri aˈzaj naˈloʃ, ʕet heˈnadeta ˈʃadod, | מדורי אזי נלוש, עת הנדת שדוד, |
| lirvaˈħa dalˈti paˈrasti, ki noˈʕadeti lisˈrod, | לרווחה דלתי פרשתי, כי נועדתי לשרוד, |
| veˈʃur, haˈbet, rak ʃħor, lo ʕod | ושור! הבט! רק שחור, לא עוד! |
| Note: In Modern Hebrew the letter ח is commonly pronounced χ (not ħ), and the letter ע is [ʔ] (not [ʕ]) if at all; i.e., often neither א nor ע is pronounced. The consonants /ħ/ and /ʕ/ are pronounced daily only dialect Dialect The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,... ically; sometimes however they are also pronounced in festive or theatrical contexts, e.g. in poetry reading Poetry reading A poetry reading is a performance of poetry, normally given on a small stage in a café or bookstore, although poetry readings given by notable poets frequently are booked into larger venues to accommodate crowds... s, where also a more distinct articulation than usual of the א as /ʔ/ wouldn't be uncommon; thus the proposed transcription could be representative of a literary reading of this text, although not representative of everyday Israeli speech. Similarly, the consonantal י in the dual forms Dual (grammatical number) Dual is a grammatical number that some languages use in addition to singular and plural. When a noun or pronoun appears in dual form, it is interpreted as referring to precisely two of the entities identified by the noun or pronoun... כנפיים /knaˈfajim/ and אפיים /ʔaˈpajim/ is distinctly pronounced [j] only dialectically or in festive or theatrical contexts and is otherwise not pronounced, resulting in the hiatus Hiatus (linguistics) In phonology, hiatus or diaeresis refers to two vowel sounds occurring in adjacent syllables, with no intervening consonant. When two adjacent vowel sounds occur in the same syllable, the result is instead described as a diphthong.... /ˈa.i/. |
|
Ktiv haser
Ktiv haser (כתיב חסר) is writing whose consonants match those generally used in voweled text, but without the actual niqqud. For example, the words 'שֻׁלְחָן'and 'דִּבֵּר' written in ktiv haser are 'שלחן'and 'דבר'. In vowelled text, the niqqud indicate the correct vowels, but when the niqqud is missing, the text is difficult to read, and the reader must make use of the context of each word to know the correct reading.A typical example of a Hebrew text written in ktiv haser is the Torah
Torah
Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five books of the bible—Genesis , Exodus , Leviticus , Numbers and Deuteronomy Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five...
, read in synagogue
Synagogue
A synagogue is a Jewish house of prayer. This use of the Greek term synagogue originates in the Septuagint where it sometimes translates the Hebrew word for assembly, kahal...
s (simply called the Torah reading
Torah reading
Torah reading is a Jewish religious ritual that involves the public reading of a set of passages from a Torah scroll. The term often refers to the entire ceremony of removing the Torah scroll from the ark, chanting the appropriate excerpt with special cantillation, and returning the scroll to...
). For assistance readers often use a Tikkun
Tikkun (book)
A tikkun or tiqqun is a book used by Jews to prepare for reading or writing a Torah scroll. There are two types of tikkun, a tikkun kor'im and a tikkun soferim.-Tikkun kor'im:...
, a book in which the text of the Torah appears in two side-by-side versions, one identical to the text which appears in the Torah, and one with niqqud and cantillation
Cantillation
Cantillation is the ritual chanting of 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 Hebrew Bible to complement the letters and vowel points...
.
Ktiv male
Because of the difficulty of reading unvowelled text, the Vaad HaLashon introduced the Rules for the Spelling-Without-Niqqud (כללי הכתיב חסר הניקוד), which in reality dictates ktiv male. This system mostly involved the addition of ו and י to mark the different vowels. Later on, these rules were adopted by the Academy of the Hebrew LanguageAcademy of the Hebrew Language
The Academy of the Hebrew Language was established by the Israeli government in 1953 as the "supreme institution for scholarship on the Hebrew language."-History:...
, which continued to revise them, and they were mostly accepted by the public, mainly for official writing.
Ktiv haser became obsolete, and ktiv male has already been dominant for decades in unvowelled texts: all of the newspapers and books published in Hebrew are written in ktiv male – this is the norm. Additionally, it is common for children's books or texts for those with special needs to contain niqqud, but ktiv haser without niqqud is rare.
Despite the Academy's standardization of the rules for ktiv male, there is a substantial lack of unity in writing, partly because of a lack of grammatical knowledge, partly because of the historical layers of the language, and partly because of a number of linguistic categories in which the Academy's decisions are not popular. As a result, every book publisher and newspaper editor makes their own judgement.
Rules for the spelling without niqqud (כללי הכתיב חסר הניקוד)
As is the norm for linguistic rules, the rules for spelling without niqqud are not entirely static. Changes occur from time to time, based on amassed experience. For example: originally the rules for spelling without niqqud dictated that "אשה" ("woman") should be written without a י (to distinguish it from "אישה" – "her husband"), but currently this exception has been removed, and now the Academy prefers "אישה". The last substantial change to the rules for the spelling without niqqud was made in 1993 updated in 1996. Thereafter this is the essence of the rules:- Every letter which appears in vowelled text also appears in unvowelled text.
- After a letter vowelled with a kubuts (the vowel /u/) the letter ו appears, for example: קופסה, הופל, כולם.
- After a letter vowelled with a holam haser (the vowel /o/) the letter ו appears, for example: בוקר, ישמור.
- After a letter vowelled with a hirik haser (the vowel /i/) the letter י appears, for example: דיבור, יישוב, תעשייה. The letter י does not appear in the following situations:
- Before a shva nah, for example: הרגיש, מנהג, דמיון (but "קילשון", because the lamed has a dagesh, and thus the shva under it is a shva na);
- Words whose base forms do not contain the vowel /i/, for example: לבי (לב), אתך (את), עתים (עת);
- After affixAffixAn affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivational, like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed. They are bound morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may be separable affixes...
letters, like in מביתו, מיד, הילד, and also in the words: עם, הנה (=הִנֵּה, and also inflected: עמי etc., הנו etc.), אם, מן; - Before יו (/ju/ or /jo/), e.g.: דיון, קיום, בריות, נטיות.
- After a letter vowelled with a tsere (the vowel /e/) the letter י generally does not appear, for example ממד (=מֵמַד), אזור (=אֵזוֹר), but there are situations when י does appear, for example תיבה, הישג, and in words in which tsere replaces hirik due to the presence of a guttural letter (אהחע"ר), for example: תיאבון (שיגעון), תיאבד (תימצא).
- Consonantal ו (the consonant /v/) is doubled in the middle of a word, for example תקווה, זווית. The letter is not doubled at the beginning or the end of a word, for example: ורוד, ותיק, צו. Initial ו is doubled when an affix letter is added, except for the affix ו- (meaning "and-"). Thus from the word "ורוד" is derived "הוורוד", but "וורוד" (that is, וּוֶרד).
- Consonantal י (the consonant /j/) is doubled in the middle of a word, for example: בניין, הייתה. The letter is not doubled at the beginning of a word or after affix letters, for example: ילד, יצא (=יֵצֵא), הילד.
- Despite this, consonantal י is not doubled in the middle of a word when it is before or after mater lectionisMater lectionisIn the spelling of Hebrew and some other Semitic languages, matres lectionis , refers to the use of certain consonants to indicate a vowel. The letters that do this in Hebrew are aleph, he, waw and yod...
, for example: פרויקט, מסוים, ראיה (=ראָיָה), הפניה, בעיה.
These are the most basic rules. For every one of them there are exceptions, described in the handbook "כללי הכתיב חסר הניקוד" that the Academy publishes in Hebrew.