User:Erutuon/Hebrew transliteration

Biblical Hebrew
Transcriptions that use seven vowels avoid the somewhat difficult distinction between qamats qatan (o) and qamats gadol (ā) by writing both as ɔ: in Sartma's transcription 1, and. This reflects the Tiberian pronunciation that is transcribed by the vowel points. On the other hand, five-vowel systems that write them as o and ā are easier to relate to modern Israeli Hebrew pronunciation, which pronounces qamats qatan as like holam, and qamats gadol as  like patah.

Consonantal describes a letter that is pronounced as a consonant. Non-consonantal describes letters that are not pronounced as consonants, mainly alef, he, waw, yod that are not pronounced as /ʔ h w y/ or /ʔ h v y/ (or substitute brackets for slashes if you consider unpronounced aleph to be phonemically a consonant): that is, that are matres lectionis or quiescent. (The second ש in is another non-consonantal letter in this sense.) Hebrew pronunciations differ to some extent on which alef, he, waw, yod are pronounced, particularly alef, which is not pronounced in more positions in Israeli Hebrew than in Tiberian Hebrew. But this page uses the definition of consonantal and non-consonantal that is typical of Biblical Hebrew textbooks and grammars, which hopefully agree with the more commonly used Hebrew reading traditions today.

Traditional Wiktionary transcription: omits non-consonantal letters
Writes non-consonantal alef, he, waw, yod differently from consonantal alef, he, waw, yod (ʾ, h, w, y), generally omitting it entirely:,. Thus doesn't distinguish between a vowel point with mater lectionis and vowel point without, except for the vowel qualities i and u: hiriq yod and shuruq are represented with ī, ū and a plain hiriq and a qubuts with i and u.

Uses a traditional five-vowel system and thus distinguishes qamats qatan and qamats gadol wherever possible: and.

All transcribed alef, he, waw, yod are actually pronounced as consonants, so more helpful for people who don't know the rules. Contrariwise, people cannot distinguish from the transcription words that are only distinguished by the presence or type of matres lectionis or silent letters. (We already have this in Arabic transcriptions.) And they may be confused by all the Hebrew letters in some words that do not have counterparts in the transcription. (We probably already have this in some other language with a transcription that differs greatly from the native script, like maybe Thai or Lao?)

Provides a readable way to transcribe modern full spellings with doubled waw or yod, like, , but we do not plan to transcribe such spellings with a Biblical Hebrew transcription.

On the other hand, hides a non-consonantal letter in a lemma form that is consonantal in some of the inflected forms, so that it is less clear how to inflect a word when looking at the transliteration of the lemma, as in and  versus  and, and  versus. Compare the same forms of a lemma with a similar transliteration but with a different inflectional class,, , ,. In other transcription systems, the lemmas and  would have distinct transliterations, giving the reader a clue that their inflected forms are different.

This transcription is meant to more closely reflect the history of the vowels' length, but ī and ū (hiriq yod and shuruq) do not always originate from long vowels and i and u (hiriq and qubuts) do not necessarily originate from short vowels, and there is no way to completely accurately distinguish the historical length of the vowels based on the Hebrew orthography.

Superscript transcription
Represents all non-consonantal alef, he, waw, yod with superscripts:,. Writes consonantal alef and ayin with IPA symbols:,. This allows non-consonantal alef to be written with a superscript:,.

Uses a seven-vowel system for the seven vowel qualities of Tiberian Hebrew: i, u, e, o, ɛ, ɔ, a. Thus doesn't distinguish qamats qatan and qamats gadol except when a schwa follows: and.

Superscripts allow readers to see which letter is in the spelling, but make it clear which ones are pronounced. In my opinion, superscripts and the seven vowel symbols make this a good transcription to straightforwardly represent the Hebrew spelling and the pronunciation of alef, he, waw, yod, but that isn't an important goal on Wiktionary where the Hebrew writing is usually readily available.

Avoids giving the unintentional impression (through using macrons or circumflexes) that vowels written with matres lectionis are long and that vowels written without them are short, which is not consistently true for any pronunciation of Hebrew, even for mostly historical or prehistorical ones that had a vowel length distinction.

Shows alternation between silent and pronounced alef in and  versus  and, and  versus.

Traditional circumflex
Represents he, waw, yod with circumflexes when they are matres lectionis. Does not necessarily indicate unpronounced alef; does not distinguish non-consonantal he, waw, yod in unusual positions from their consonantal versions, as in.

Uses a traditional five-vowel system and thus distinguishes qamats qatan and qamats gadol, as in the first syllables of and.

Doesn't provide a readable way to transcribe modern full spellings with doubled waw or yod, like, , but we do not plan to transcribe such spellings with a Biblical Hebrew transcription.

The circumflex can be confusing to newbies because there is no consistent difference in pronunciation between î, û (hiriq yod, shuruq) and i, u (hiriq, qubuts), and between ê, ô, â (tsere yod, holam male, qamats he) and ē, ō, ā (tsere, holam, qamats gadol) in the Tiberian pronunciation or modern Hebrew reading traditions. that do not change to schwa in inflected forms are often written with matres lectionis and thus indicated with circumflexes, however:, plural , not.

Sometimes the rare combination segol yod is written like tsere yod, as ê, and sometimes they are distinguished as ệ (Lambdin) or ey (Student's Vocabulary) and ê: and.

Some version of this transcription is used by Lambdin, Introduction to Biblical Hebrew, or A Student's Vocabulary for Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic.

Sartma's transcription 1
Uses a seven-vowel system for the seven vowel qualities of Tiberian Hebrew: i, u, e, o, ɛ, ɔ, a. Thus doesn't distinguish qamats qatan and qamats gadol except when a schwa follows: and. Writes vowel points accompanied by mater lectionis yod or waw with a macron, vowel points followed by mater lectionis he with a circumflex. Doesn't distinguish unpronounced alef, as in, from pronounced alef, as in.

Several considerations about the traditional circumflex transcription apply to this transcription as well.

Sartma's transcription 2
Like Sartma's transcription 1, but writes final vowels followed by he with the basic vowel letter: and. This is because final vowels always have a mater lectionis, except in the second person singular pronominal ending and the third person singular masculine past form, and word-internal mater lectionis he is only in one compound, and yod and waw already have a representation. Obviates putting an acute on top of a circumflex if we mark final stress: ấ, ế, etc.

Modern Hebrew
Cases that cannot be automatically handled by a module:
 * Consonant clusters of three or more: ; by the rules for native words this would be asterónom. We could, however, add some special cases for particular morphemes like.
 * Single-consonant prefixes with schwa:, , , . These are pronounced with , but single morphemes with schwa after the first consonant can have a silent schwa. A minimal pair from Shva is with pronounced schwa, and  with silent schwa. The rule for pronunciation of initial schwa in single morphemes is that if the consonant before the schwa is not a sonorant ( []) and the consonant after the schwa is not glottal ( [] or  []), the schwa is not pronounced. But a schwa in a prefix is pronounced.