20
It's one of 10 traditional exceptions to the rules of BeGeD KePeT recorded by the master masorete Ben Asher in his Dikdukei haTa'amim.
Minchat Shai records two homiletic explanations:
The second מי כמכה follows God's name and we don't want it to sound like we are declaring God to be a fellow named מיכה.
The stronger form in the latter phrase indicates a ...
18
When the word stands on its own, with its own trup-mark, it's אֵת, with a tzeireh. When it's attached to the next word with a dash and therefore does not have its own trup-mark, it's אֶת, with a segol. I think I learned this in high school; unfortunately, I don't know a more precise source.
I'm not sure what would be the underlying reason behind some ...
13
I linked in the comments to the question to an article by Dan Rabinowitz published by Hakirah journal regarding Jewish sources pertaining to the origin of the nekudos. [Note that although the taamim of the Tanach are not mentioned throughout the article, it seems implicit in most of the sources (and in the main source, actually explicit) that the same ...
13
The word is אֵת. When the word is "joined" with the next word with a makaf "־" then they become treated as one long word, and there is no longer an accent on that syllable. Unaccented closed syllables (unlike accented closed syllables) take short vowels, so the vowel shifts to its shorter counterpart: tzere -> segol.
You can also see this same phenomenon in ...
12
The form 'כְּתוּבָה' certainly exists, as you state; it is the passive participle of the root כתב, and means "written", as in: "נבואתו כתובה על הקיר" = "his prophecy is written on the wall".
However, this is not the same as the noun which designates a "marriage contract". Although there are exceptions, for the most part nouns with specific meanings are not ...
10
There some times where (according to kabala or something) one should have a certain vowelization of the name in mind (while still saying "Adonay" of course). You'll sometimes see the name with four tzeres or with four sh'vas or the like then. I know nothing more about this than I've just written.
Otherwise, the vowelization seems to be to point to its ...
9
When משתה is in construct state it has a tzere instead of a segol and would mean "drinking-party of" instead of just "drinking-party".
8
There are grammatical rules in general, but for your case:
It's always שושַן הבירה, otherwise שושָן.
It's always מרדכַי except on an esnachta, sof pasuk, or in exactly one case a zakeif katon ויגידו למרדכָי את דברי אסתר.
The general rule is any of the letters בגדכפת have a dageish (dot) at the beginning of a word, except when they come after a word that (a) ...
8
Here are the mishnayos (and their titles) with nikud, based on the Kaufmann manuscript from "late 11th - mid-12th c.".
7
Yod, like most other letters, can only get a dot in it called a "dagesh chazak." This indicates that the affected consonant should be geminated, or doubled the way you would double, e.g. the 'b' sound in "subbasement."
So, for the word in your example, שִיֵּץ, you would say "shiy-yatz" rather than "shiyatz," and your name would be pronounced "Chay-ya" ...
7
מרדכי takes a Kamatz when it is on a hard pause (same as most nouns that have a patach or segol on the primary stress).
שושן takes a Patach when it is attached to הבירה (same as any noun ending in a Kamatz in construct form).
באה loses it's Dagesh when the previous word ends in an open syllable and has a conjunctive Trop (same with any word opening with a ...
7
This kind of vowelization doesn't appear anywhere in the Tanach, because nouns in semichut, or which mark possession, can never have a definite article in front of them.
Dayan Levi Yitzchak Raskin, in his notes to the Chabad prayer book, notes the anomalous vowelization, and points to a few other places in the prayer book where a sheva takes the place of a ...
7
Generally, when a word ends in a vowel sound, without a pausal cantillation note on that word, the first letter in the next word loses its dagesh. Usually, the rule is stated in terms of the previous word ending with one of the letters אהוי, but here, it seems to be operating on the previous word's last consonant being succeeded in pronunciation by a vowel. ...
6
Rav Saadiah Gaon writes in Chapter 2 of his commentary to Sefer Yetzirah lays down the correct pronunciation of the Hebrew letters, saying that not only is there בגד־כפת letters, but that even the ר has an alternate pronunciation with a dagesh so more like בגד־כפרת according to him.
He basically says that Hebrew and Arabic share all the exact same sounds, ...
6
It's a Dagesh Forte which indicates gemination of the consonant "w". So the word would be read something like Yiwwadha' with a prolonged /w/ sound.
The word is in passive future third-person masculine singular and means "[he] will be known".
6
The letters בגדכפת take a Dagesh Kal at the start of a word, unless they follow a word ending in אהוי. There are four major exceptions to this rule when the Dagesh Kal is there even after a word ending in אהוי, the first of which (called "Mafsik") is when the previous word had a pausal Trop note on it.
So in Gen 18:5 or Jos 5:14 where the phrase means "No, ...
6
Depending on which tractate you're looking for, you could try Tuvia's who also makes his texts available online for free at e-daf.com. (It's one of the "size" options in the dropdown. Note: they don't have all tractates.) Greenfield Judaica also has the Oz V'Hadar Menukad.
For other online versions (which also don't appear to be complete as of this posting)...
6
If you're willing to accept a drasha that doesn't explicitly use the words אל תקרי, then Shekalim 6:6 should qualify:
זֶה מִדְרָשׁ דָּרַשׁ יְהוֹיָדָע כֹּהֵן גָּדוֹל, (ויקרא ה) אָשָׁם הוּא אָשֹׁם אָשַׁם לַיְיָ. (זֶה הַכְּלָל), כֹּל שֶׁהוּא בָּא מִשּׁוּם חֵטְא וּמִשּׁוּם אַשְׁמָה, יִלָּקַח בּוֹ עוֹלוֹת, הַבָּשָׂר לַשֵּׁם, וְהָעוֹרוֹת לַכֹּהֲנִים. נִמְצְאוּ ...
5
You are correct in that a I-guttural (a peh-gronit verb) usually takes a composite shewa (although be mindful of the fact that it's not always with patach), but the major exception to this is where it appears in a closed syllable, after the lamed of the infinite construct, in which it often (although not always) takes a regular shewa.
So, for example, ...
5
It's very common in some of the manuscripts - for example, the codex of the Prophets from the Qaraite synagogue in Cairo, which was written by Moshe ben Asher. There, it features in every the occasional consonantal aleph (and might therefore be understood to be a mappiq). This is generally considered to have been a feature of the Palestinian vocalisation ...
5
Phonetic Background
Recall that we can split words up into syllables, e.g. English "pronounciation" = "pro-nun-ci-a-tion". As is described in that Wikipedia article, an "open syllable" is a syllable which ends in a vowel and a closed syllable is one that ends in a consonant, e.g. in "pronunciation" the open syllables are "pro", "ci" and "a", while the ...
5
"Chajes" is not the English version of the name, but the German version, which would point to a pronunciation of "חַיֶס". In Hebrew, though, there's a vav, which it seems was pronounced as a cholam. But I can't find any explicit evidence for this.
If you look at his Iggeres Bikores republished in 1853 by Jacob Brull, you'll see the German version "Chajes" ...
5
The Babylonian system derives its name from its place of origin, but
it was also found well out of Babylon. In Yemen, for instance,
manuscripts following this system have been used up to this day. The
earliest manuscripts using this system are a Geniza fragment from
Cairo of the beginning of the tenth century and a complete manuscript
of the ...
5
My fellow yeshiva bachur studied Aramaic intensely, and could hold a fluent conversation (if he had anybody to speak with). He said it should be אוֹרִייַתָא.
5
Shadal, while commenting on the word זמרת in Exodus 15:2, discusses cases where there is a kamats instead of the expected patach (or other reduction) in smikhut. The cases he mentions are:
Isaiah 11:11 "שאָר עמו", Isaiah 45:13 "גָלותי" Esther 1:4 "יקָר תפארת גדולתו", Esther 1:20 "פתגָם המלך", Esther 4:8 "כתָב הדת", Job 34:25 "מעבָדיהם", II Chronicles 31:3 "...
5
The divine name YHVH is always an instance of Qere and Ketiv. The convention used for representing Qere and Ketiv is to give the consonants of the written word but point the consonants with the vowels of the word that is to be read instead of it.
The default choice for what to read for YHVH is Adonay, so most often YHVH is pointed with the vowels of Adonay. ...
4
Rashi on Berachot 62A says that people used to use hand signs to indicate the proper vocalization of the words as the Torah was read. I have heard from several different people, but not seen in writing, that the nekudot and taamim that are printed today are attempts to pictographically represent these hand gestures. This would explain why earlier texts such ...
4
The word would appear to be a semi-colloquial pluralization of the word טהרה, appearing in the Torah as a nominal infinitive. Exclusively in the singular, its nikud is טָהֳרָה.
(By "semi-colloquial" I mean that a word like that is already somewhat abstract and shouldn't need to be pluralized to refer to the class of activities that pertains to purity and ...
4
I read the following in the introduction to the Eizer L'Seifer Movo Likrio, which is the aid to the original book Sefer Movo Likrio, which is used in Lubavitch cheiderim to teach small children the alef-beis.
...The letters themselves have within them holiness (which is why [our Sages] have strongly warned us about the necessity of studying the letters ...
4
The word גשם occurs at an etnachta only in Prov 25:23, where it has a kamatz. It occurs at a sof pasuk four times (1 Kings 18:41, 18:44, Zech 14:17, Eccl 12:2), each time with a kamatz. All occurrences of גשם on lesser disjunctives are with a segol (Gen 7:12, etc.).
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