Patach

Patach, pathah, or pathaḥ (Israeli Hebrew: פַּתַּח, /pataχ/; Classical Hebrew: פַּתָח, paṯāḥ) is a Hebrew niqqud vowel sign represented by a horizontal lineunderneath a letter. In modern Hebrew, it indicates the phoneme /a/ which is close to the [a] sound in the English word far and is transliterated as an a. In Modern Hebrew, a patach makes the same sound as a qamatz, as does the hataf patach (Hebrew: חֲטַף פַּתַּח, romanized: hăṭap̄ pattaḥ, lit. 'reduced patach'). The reduced (or hataf) niqqud exist for patach, qamatz, and segol which contain a shva next to it. In Yiddish orthography, a patach (called pasekh in Yiddish) has two uses. The combination of pasekh with the letter alef, אַ, is used to represent the vowel [a]; the combination of pasekh with a digraph consisting of two yods, ײַ, is used to represent the diphthong [aj].