| Mappiq | - | ||||||
| IPA | h | ||||||
| Transliteration | h | ||||||
| Same appearance | dagesh, shuruk | ||||||
| Example | - | - | The word for height in Hebrew, govah. The centre dot in the leftmost letter (which is the letter He) is a mappiq. | ||||
| Other Niqqud | |||||||
The mappiq is used to indicate that the corresponding letter is to be pronounced as a consonant, although in a position where the letter usually indicates a vowel. Typically, the mappiq is used in the middle of (he), though it historically and biblically has been used with (yodh), (vav), and (aleph).[1]
Before the vowel points were invented, some consonants were used to indicate vowel sounds. These consonants are called matres lectionis (New Latin: sg. māter lēctiōnis "mother of reading", pl. mātrēs lēctiōnis "mothers of reading", calques of Hebrew: em kriá and imót kriá - with the same meaning). The letter he (transliterated H) at the end of a word (Hebrew is written from right to left) can indicate the vowel sound a or e. When it does, it is not acting as a consonant, and therefore in pure phonetic logic the Biblical name Zechariah (among others) should be spelled "Zekharya" without the final "h". However, silent final h being also a feature of English, it is usually retained in Hebrew transliterations to distinguish final he from final aleph.
The divine name Yah has a mappiq (a dot inside the last letter), so the last letter shall not be read as a vowel a, but as the consonant H - and therefore Yah (and not Ya).
The most common occurrence of mappiq is in the suffix "-ah", meaning "her".
A he with mappiq is meant to be pronounced as a full consonant "h". In Mizrahi and Yemenite Hebrew it is pronounced more strongly than a normal he, sometimes with a slight following shwa sound (this rule is also followed by Dutch Sephardim), and in Ashkenazi Hebrew, it is pronounced pronounced as /[ʔʼ]/. In modern Hebrew, however, it is normally silent; although it is still pronounced in religious contexts by careful readers of the prayers and scriptures.
In Masoretic manuscripts the opposite of a mappiq would be indicated by a rafe, a small line on top of the letter. This is no longer found in Hebrew.