Kamatz

Kamatz or qamatz (Modern Hebrew: קָמָץ, IPA: [kaˈmats]; alternatively קָמֶץ qāmeṣ) is a Hebrew niqqud (vowel) sign represented by two perpendicular lines (looking like an uppercase T) ⟨ ָ ‎ ⟩ underneath a letter. In modern Hebrew, it usually indicates the phoneme /a/ which is the "a" sound in the word spa and is transliterated as a. In these cases, its sound is identical to the sound of pataḥ in modern Hebrew. In a minority of cases it indicates the phoneme /o/, equal to the sound of ḥolam. In traditional Ashkenazi Hebrew pronunciation, qamatz is pronounced as the phoneme /ɔ/, which becomes /u/ in some contexts in southern Ashkenazi dialects. For this reason, the equivalent phoneme in Yiddish (/ɔ/ in some dialects, /u/ in others) is spelled with an aleph marked with a kamatz〈אָ〉, in Yiddish orthography.

The Hebrew of the late centuries BCE and early centuries of the Common Era had a system with five phonemic long vowels /aː eː iː oː uː/ and five short vowels /a e i o u/.

In the later dialects of the 1st millennium CE, phonemic vowel length disappeared, and instead was automatically determined by the context, with vowels pronounced long in open syllables and short in closed ones. However, the previous vowel phonemes merged in various ways that differed from dialect to dialect:

The result is that in Modern Hebrew, the vowel written with qamatz might be pronounced as either [a] or [o], depending on historical origin. It is often said that the two sounds can be distinguished by context:

Unfortunately, the two varieties of shwa are written identically, and pronounced identically in Modern Hebrew; as a result, there is no reliable way to distinguish the two varieties of qamatz when followed by a vowel marked with a shwa. (In some cases, Biblical texts are marked with a metheg or other cantillation mark that helps to indicate which pronunciation is intended, but this usage is not consistent, and in any case such marks are absent in non-Biblical texts.) It should also be noted that there are examples of qamatz qaṭan appearing in open syllables, such as in the plural of שֹׁרֶשׁ‎ ([ˈʃo.ʁɛʃ], "root"), שׇׁרָשִׁים‎ ([ʃo.ʁa.ˈʃim]).

An example of the qamatz qatan is the Modern Hebrew word תׇּכְנִית‎ ([toχˈnit], "program").

According to the standard Hebrew spelling rules as published by the Academy of the Hebrew Language, words which have a qamatz qatan in their base form must be written without a vav, hence the standard vowel-less spelling of תׇּכְנִית‎ is תכנית‎. In practice, however, Modern Hebrew words containing a qamatz qatan do add a vav ⟨ו‎⟩ to indicate the [o] pronunciation; hence the nonstandard (also termed "excessive") spelling תוכנית‎ is common in newspapers and is even used in several dictionaries, for example Rav Milim. Words which in their base form have a ḥolam that changes to qamatz qaṭan in declension retain the vav in vowel-less spelling: the noun חֹפֶשׁ‎ ([ˈχofeʃ], "freedom") is spelled חופש‎ in vowel-less texts; the adjective חָפְשִׁי‎ ([χofˈʃi], "free") is spelled חופשי‎ in vowel-less text, despite the use of qamatz qatan, both according to the standard spelling and in common practice.

Some books print the qamatz qaṭan differently, although the way in which they do is not consistent. For example, in siddur Rinat Yisrael the vertical line of qamatz qatan is longer. In Siddur Sim Shalom, the horizontal line is separated from the bottom. In a book of Psalms used by some Breslov hassidim the qamatz qatan is bolder. In the popular niqqud textbook Niqqud halakha le-maase by Nisan Netser, the qamatz qatan is printed as an encircled qamatz for didactic purposes.