Kamats Katan: The "A" that sounds like "O"
It's time to let the cat out of the bag: although most of Hebrew is pronounced as it's written, there's one exception:
a special case of the vowel Kamats — as in
—
that has an "O" sound like
.
What?
Luckily it doesn't happen very often (and Israelis often write it with a
— see the sidebar) but the rules
are a bit hard to remember. The easiest thing to remember is that it never happens on an unstressed syllable
if a word is longer than one syllable. Stress in Hebrew is usually on the last syllable, so it won't be there.
The Rules of Kamats Katan
The rules of when a Kamats is a Kamats Katan are somewhat complex: here is a good guide.
This is only really an issue for people who use a Sephardic style pronunciation, which is the
way modern Israeli Hebrew is pronounced and the pronunciation we've used for CartoonHebrew.com. The Ashkenazic
pronunciation merges both sounds for
into a single sound more or less like the "aw" in "paw."
Israelis often "fix" this by using modern spellings that use
for the O sound of
Kamatz Katan to avoid confusion.
However, modern Hebrew actually doesn't have as many words that would use the Kamats Katan in the first place.
It's most commonly encountered in the Torah and in Jewish prayer books (siddurim).
But for the most part, it's most practical to memorize the common cases. You'll notice that most of them are old Biblical words.
(kol) - All! As in "I want ALL the jelly beans!"
(chochmah) - Wisdom!
(korban) - Means
offering - in the sense of the food offerings that were brought to
the temple in ancient Israel.
(bechol) - With all or
in all. As in "with all my heart" or "in all the things you do."
We'll see some more in the next page when we look at extra short vowels.
Don't worry, we're almost done!
