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23 July 2022 index-topical-hb
Nequdot are small markings, mostly above and below the vowels in some Hebrew texts, which indicate how the vowels are to be read. In just about all cases, the reader will encounter nequdot of the Tiberian system.
It is always worth keeping in the back of one's mind that the nequdot were added to the text long after it was first written -- in the second half of the first millennium CE. And so it is not always possible to tell whether this medieval system of vocalization accurately reflects whatever the original authors may have intended.
The vowel signs are as follows:[1]
Originally, Hebrew was written without vowels. Later, matres lectionis came into use, where some consonants began to do "double duty" as vowels.
As an example, take the English phrase "Go home". If English were like the oldest forms of Hebrew, the phrase would be written as g hm. Later, with matres, say we use "w" as a mater for a long "o" sound. Now the phrase would be written gw hwm. This helps a bit, but still sometimes leaves some ambiguity: maybe we're also using w for "u", and of course we're still using "w" as "w", too. But mostly we can get by.
Around 800 CE, a real system of vowels was added to Hebrew, with various little dots and marks that go above or below, or even within, letters, to make pronunciations clear. So maybe we'd put a little dot on top of "w" to make a long "o", a little dot next to w for "u", and no dot at all for "w".
Because the vowel-points aren't letters themselves, a real advantage of this system is that you can take an unvowelled text and add vowels without re-copying it.
So the Hebrew והמבול, whmbwl, becomes וְהַמַּבּוּל, vehammabul, "and the flood". Now, if you read much Hebrew, you'd already be able to read without vowels, mostly, because you know the words. The points don't just distinguish vowel sounds. In vehammabul', there's a dot that shows that the m is pronounced twice as long, and there's a dot that shows that the letter b is given it's "hard" pronunciation "b" instead of the modified pronunciation "v" it sometimes has.
Now, if you read a Hebrew Bible today, there will be vowel-points. But when you're interpreting, it's important to remember that those vowels were added by anonymous medieval scribes. They do not necessarily represent the original pronunciation of the words involved. Sometimes they're downright misleading.
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