Patach, pathah, or pathaḥ (Israeli Hebrew: פַּתַּח, /pataχ/; Classical Hebrew: פַּתָח, ) is a Hebrew niqqud vowel sign represented by a horizontal lineunderneath a letter. In modern Hebrew, it indicates the phoneme which is close to the sound in the English word far and is transliterated as an a.

In Modern Hebrew, a patach makes the same sound as a qamatz, as does the hataf patach (). The reduced (or hataf) niqqud exist for patach, qamatz, and segol which contain a shva next to it.

In Yiddish orthography, a patach (called pasekh in Yiddish) has two uses. The combination of pasekh with the letter alef, , is used to represent the vowel ; the combination of pasekh with a digraph consisting of two yodss, , is used to represent the diphthong .

Etymology

The patach name comes from the verb (pāṯáḥ) 'to open', because the vowel's pronunciation, the sound, requires the mouth to be opened wide.

Pronunciation

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

The letters Beth and Heth used in this table are only for demonstration, any letter can be used.A patach on a letter , , or (that is, with a mappiq in it) at the end of a word is sounded before the letter, and not after. Thus, (Noah) is pronounced in Hebrew. This only occurs at the ends of words, only with patach and only with these three letters. It is sometimes called a patach gnuva (literally, , but usually translated as ), evoking the idea of these letters stealing the patach from its usual position.

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

• Kamatz

• Fathah, the related diacritic in Arabic

References