Niqqud

In Hebrew orthography, niqqud or nikud (Hebrew: נִקּוּד, Modern: nikúd, Tiberian: niqqūḏ, 'dotting, pointing' or נְקֻדּוֹת, Modern: nekudót, Tiberian: nəquddōṯ, 'dots') is a system of diacritical signs used to represent vowels or distinguish between alternative pronunciations of letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Several such 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 AD in the Land of Israel (see Masoretic Text, Tiberian Hebrew). Text written with niqqud is called ktiv menuqad. Niqqud marks are small compared to the letters, so they can be added without retranscribing texts whose writers did not anticipate them. In modern Israeli orthography, niqqud is mainly used in specialised texts such as dictionaries, poetry, or texts for children or new immigrants to Israel. For purposes of disambiguation, a system of spelling without niqqud, known in Hebrew as ktiv maleh (כְּתִיב מָלֵא, literally "full spelling"). This was formally standardised in the Rules for Spelling without Niqqud (כְּלָלֵי הַכְּתִיב חֲסַר הַנִּקּוּד) enacted by the Academy of the Hebrew Language in 1996, and updated in 2017. Nevertheless, niqqud is still used occasionally in texts to prevent ambiguity and mispronunciation of specific words. One reason for the lesser use of niqqud is that it no longer reflects the current pronunciation. In modern Hebrew, tzere is pronounced the same as segol, although they were distinct in Tiberian Hebrew, and pataḥ the same as qamatz. To the younger generation of native Hebrew speakers, these distinctions seem arbitrary and meaningless; on the other hand, Hebrew language purists have rejected out of hand the idea of changing the basics of niqqud and fitting them to the current pronunciation – with the result that...