Shva
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ְ | |
IPA | Modern Hebrew: /e/ ([e̞]), Ø |
Biblical Hebrew: /a/ | |
Transliteration | e, ' (apostrophe), nothing |
English example | men, menorah |
Example
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Other Niqqud
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Shva or, in Biblical Hebrew, shĕwa (Hebrew: שְׁוָא) is a Hebrew niqqud vowel sign written as two vertical dots ( ְ ) beneath a letter. It indicates either the phoneme /ə/ (shva na', mobile shva) or the complete absence of a vowel (/Ø/) (shva naḥ, resting shva).
It is transliterated as ⟨e⟩, ⟨ĕ⟩, ⟨ə⟩, ⟨'⟩ (apostrophe), or nothing. Note that use of ⟨ə⟩ for shva is questionable: transliterating Modern Hebrew shva naḥ with ⟨ə⟩ is misleading, since it is never actually pronounced [ə] – the vowel [ə] does not exist in Modern Standard Hebrew. Moreover, the vowel [ə] is probably not characteristic of earlier pronunciations such as Tiberian vocalization.[citation needed]
A shva sign in combination with the vowel diacritics patáẖ, segól and kamáts katán produces a ẖatáf: a diacritic for a tnuʿá ẖatufá (a 'reduced vowel' – lit. 'abducted vowel').
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