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Pataḥ ( Hebrew: פַּתָּח patákh, IPA: [paˈtaχ], Biblical Hebrew: pattā́ḥ) is a Hebrew niqqud vowel sign represented by a horizontal line ⟨ אַ‎ ⟩ underneath a letter. In modern Hebrew, it indicates the phoneme / a/ which is close to the "[a]" sound in the English word far and is transliterated as an a.

In Modern Hebrew, a pataḥ makes the same sound as a qamatz, as does the ḥaṭaf pataḥ ( Hebrew: חֲטַף פַּתַח IPA: [ħaˈtaf paˈtaħ], "reduced pataḥ"). The reduced (or ḥaṭaf) niqqud exist for pataḥ, qamatz, and segol which contain a shva next to it.

In Yiddish orthography, a pataḥ (called pasekh in Yiddish) has two uses. The combination of pasekh with the letter aleph, אַ, is used to represent the vowel [a]; the combination of pasekh with a digraph consisting of two yods, ײַ, is used to represent the diphthong [aj].

Pronunciation

The following table contains the pronunciation and transliteration of the different pataḥs in reconstructed historical forms and dialects using the International Phonetic Alphabet.

The letters Bet ⟨ב‎⟩ and Het ⟨ח‎⟩ used in this table are only for demonstration, any letter can be used.

A pataḥ on a letter ח‎, ע‎, or הּ‎ (that is, ה‎ with a dot (mappiq) in it) at the end of a word is sounded before the letter, and not after. Thus, נֹחַ ( Noah; properly transliterated as Noaḥ) is pronounced /no.aχ/ in Modern Hebrew and /no.aħ/ or /no.ʔaħ/ in Biblical Hebrew. This only occurs at the ends of words, only with pataḥ and only with these three letters. This is sometimes called a pataḥ gnuva, or "stolen" pataḥ (more formally, "furtive pataḥ"), since the sound "steals" an imaginary epenthetic consonant to make the extra syllable.

Vowel length comparison

By adding two vertical dots ( shva) the vowel is made very short. However, these vowels lengths are not manifested in Modern Hebrew.

Unicode encoding

See also

• Niqqud
• Qamatz
• Fathah, the related diacritic in Arabic