Hiriq Information
Hiriq (Hebrew: חִירִיק Ḥirik IPA: [ˈχiʁik]) is a Hebrew niqqud vowel sign represented by a dot "ִ" underneath the letter. In modern Hebrew, it indicates the phoneme /i/ which is the same as the "ee" sound in deep and is transliterated as a "i".
In Israeli writing a Hiriq is often promoted to Hiriq Male (Hebrew: חִירִיק מָלֵא IPA: [ˈχiʁik maˈle]) for the sake of disambiguation (see ktiv male). A Hiriq Male is a Yud preceded by a letter with a hiriq "ּי" and in writing without niqqud, the hiriq is omitted leaving only the Yud "י". The usage of a consonant (in this case Yud) to indicate a vowel comes from mater lectionis.
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Pronunciation
The following table contains the pronunciation and transliteration of the different Hiriqs in reconstructed historical forms and dialects using the International Phonetic Alphabet. The pronunciation in IPA is above and the transliteration is below.
The letter Bet "ב" used in this table is only for demonstration. Any letter can be used.
| Symbol | Name | Pronunciation | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Israeli | Ashkenazi | Sephardi | Yemenite | Tiberian | Reconstructed | |||
| Mishnaic | Biblical | |||||||
| בִ | Hiriq | [i] | [i] | [i] | ? | [i, iː] | ? | ? |
| בִי | Hiriq Male (Also called, Hiriq Yud) | [i] | [iː] | [iː] | ? | [iː] | ? | ? |
Vowel Length comparison
These vowels lengths are not manifested in Modern Hebrew. In addition, the short i is usually promoted to a long i in Israeli writing for the sake of disambiguation.
| Vowel comparison table | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vowel Length | IPA | Transliteration | English example | ||
| Long | Short | Very Short | |||
| ִי | ִ | n/a | [i] | i | ski |
Computer encoding
| Glyph | Unicode | Name |
|---|---|---|
| ִ | U+05B4 | HIRIQ |
See also
Categories:
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