Segol | - | ֶ | |||||
IPA | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||
Transliteration | e | ||||||
English example | bed | ||||||
Same sound | tzere | ||||||
Example | - | שֶׁל | - | The word for of in Hebrew, shel. The triangular array of three dots under the letter Shin form the segol. | |||
Other Niqqud | |||||||
In Modern Hebrew, segol makes the same sound as tzere, as does the Hataf Segol (Hebrew: חֲטַף סֶגּוֹל pronounced as /he/, "Reduced Segol"). The reduced (or ħataf) niqqud exist for segol, patah, and kamatz which contain a shva next to it.
The following table contains the pronunciation and transliteration of the different segols in reconstructed historical forms and dialects using the International Phonetic Alphabet.
The letters Bet and Het used in this table are only for demonstration; any letter can be used.
Symbol | Name | Pronunciation | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Modern | Ashkenazi | Sephardi | Yemenite | Tiberian | Reconstructed | |||
Biblical | ||||||||
Segol | pronounced as /link/ | [e̞] | [e̞] | [a] | pronounced as /[ɛ, ɛː]/ | ? | pronounced as /[ɛ]/ | |
Segol Male | pronounced as /link/ | [e̞] | [e̞] | [a] | pronounced as /[ɛː]/ | ? | pronounced as /[ɛː, ɛj]/ | |
Hataf Segol | pronounced as /link/ | [e̞] | [e̞] | [a] | pronounced as /[ɛ̆]/ | ? | pronounced as /[ɛ]/ | |
In addition, a letter with a segol or tzere with a succeeding yod often makes the "ei" (also spelled "ey") sound such as in they or tape.
By adding two vertical dots (shva), the vowel can be made very short. However, the vowels lengths are not manifested in Modern Hebrew.
Vowel comparison table | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Vowel length | IPA | Transliteration | English example | ||
Long | Short | Very Short | |||
pronounced as /link/ | e | temp | |||
Tzere | Segol | Reduced Segol |
Glyph | Unicode | Name | |
---|---|---|---|
ֶ | U+05B6 | SEGOL | |
ֱ | U+05B1 | HATEF SEGOL |