Segol
Encyclopedia
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Segol

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Example

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The word for of in Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...

, shel. The three dots is a segol.
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Other Niqqud
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IPA e
Transliteration
Romanization of Hebrew
Hebrew uses the Hebrew alphabet with optional vowel points. The romanization of Hebrew is the use of the Latin alphabet to transliterate Hebrew words....

e
English example bed
Same sound zeire

Segol is a Hebrew
Hebrew alphabet
The Hebrew alphabet , known variously by scholars as the Jewish script, square script, block script, or more historically, the Assyrian script, is used in the writing of the Hebrew language, as well as other Jewish languages, most notably Yiddish, Ladino, and Judeo-Arabic. There have been two...

 niqqud vowel
Vowel
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...

 sign that is represented by three dots forming an upside down equilateral triangle "ֶ". As such, it resembles an upside down therefore sign
Therefore sign
In a mathematical proof, the therefore sign is a symbol that is sometimes placed before a logical consequence, such as the conclusion of a syllogism. The symbol consists of three dots placed in an upright triangle and is read therefore. It is encoded at . While it is not generally used in formal...

 (a because sign) underneath a letter. In modern Hebrew
Modern Hebrew
Modern Hebrew , also known as Israeli Hebrew or Modern Israeli Hebrew, is the language spoken in Israel and in some Jewish communities worldwide, from the early 20th century to the present....

, it indicates the phoneme
Phoneme
In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....

 /e/ which is the same as the "e" sound in sell and is transliterated
Romanization of Hebrew
Hebrew uses the Hebrew alphabet with optional vowel points. The romanization of Hebrew is the use of the Latin alphabet to transliterate Hebrew words....

 as an "e".

In Modern Hebrew
Modern Hebrew
Modern Hebrew , also known as Israeli Hebrew or Modern Israeli Hebrew, is the language spoken in Israel and in some Jewish communities worldwide, from the early 20th century to the present....

, a segol makes the same sound as a zeire, as does the Hataf Segol ( "Reduced Segol"). The reduced (or hataf) niqqud exist for segol, patach, and kamatz which contain a shva
Shva
Shva or, in Biblical Hebrew, Sh'wa is a Hebrew niqqud vowel sign written as two vertical dots "ְ" underneath a letter. In Modern Hebrew, it indicates either the phoneme or the complete absence of a vowel , whereas in Hebrew prescriptive linguistics, four grammatical entities are differentiated:...

 next to it.

Pronunciation

The following table contains the pronunciation
Pronunciation
Pronunciation refers to the way a word or a language is spoken, or the manner in which someone utters a word. If one is said to have "correct pronunciation", then it refers to both within a particular dialect....

 and transliteration
Transliteration
Transliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...

 of the different segols in reconstructed historical forms and dialect
Dialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...

s using the International Phonetic Alphabet. The transcription in IPA is above and the transliteration is below.

The letters Bet "ב" and Het
Heth (letter)
' or ' is the reconstructed name of the eighth letter of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, continued in descended Semitic alphabets as Phoenician , Syriac , Hebrew ḥēth , Arabic , and Berber .Heth originally represented a voiceless fricative, either pharyngeal , or...

 "ח" used in this table are only for demonstration. Any letter can be used.
Symbol Name | Pronunciation
| Israeli | Ashkenazi
Ashkenazi Hebrew
Ashkenazi Hebrew , is the pronunciation system for Biblical and Mishnaic Hebrew favored for liturgical use by Ashkenazi Jewish practice. Its phonology was influenced by languages with which it came into contact, such as Yiddish, German, and various Slavic languages...

| Sephardi
Sephardi Hebrew language
Sephardi Hebrew is the pronunciation system for Biblical Hebrew favored for liturgical use by Sephardi Jewish practice...

| Yemenite
Yemenite Hebrew language
Yemenite Hebrew , also referred to as Temani Hebrew , is the pronunciation system for Biblical and liturgical Hebrew traditionally used by Yemenite Jews. Yemenite Jews brought their language to Israel through immigration. Their first organized immigration to the region began in 1882.It is believed...

| Tiberian
Tiberian Hebrew
Tiberian Hebrew is the extinct canonical pronunciation of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh and related documents in the Roman Empire. This traditional medieval pronunciation was committed to writing by Masoretic scholars based in the Jewish community of Tiberias , in the form of the Tiberian vocalization...

| Reconstructed
Mishnaic  Biblical
Segol ? ? ? [ɛ, ɛː] ? ?
, ה, Segol Male ? ? ? [ɛː] ? ?
חֱ Hataf Segol ? ? ? [ɛ̆] ? ?


In addition, a letter with a segol or zeire with a succeeding yud often makes the "ei" (also spelled "ey") sound such as in they or tape.

Vowel Length comparison

By adding two vertical dots (sh'va) the vowel is made very short. However, these vowels lengths are not manifested in Modern Hebrew.
| Vowel comparison table
| Vowel Length
Vowel length
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. Often the chroneme, or the "longness", acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one, such as in Australian English. While not distinctive in most dialects of English, vowel length is an important phonemic factor in...

| IPA | Transliteration
Transliteration
Transliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...

| English
example
Long Short Very Short
e temp
Zeire Segol Reduced Segol

Unicode encoding

Glyph Unicode Name
ֶ U+05B6 SEGOL
ֱ U+05B1 HATEF SEGOL
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