Segol
 |
| Segol | |
| ֶ | |
| IPA | ɛ |
| Transliteration | e |
| English example | bed |
| Same sound | tzere |
| Example | |
| שֶׁל | |
| The word for of in Hebrew, shel. The triangular array of three dots under the letter Shin form the segol. | |
| Other Niqqud | |
Kubutz and Shuruk · Rafe · Sin/Shin Dot
| |
Segol (modern
because sign) underneath a letter. In modern Hebrew, it indicates the phoneme /e/ which is similar to "e" in the English word sound in sell and is transliterated
as an e.
In
next to it.Pronunciation
The following table contains the pronunciation and transliteration of the different segols in reconstructed historical forms and dialects using the International Phonetic Alphabet.
The letters
Het
⟨ח⟩ used in this table are only for demonstration; any letter can be used.
| Symbol | Name | Pronunciation | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Modern | Ashkenazi | Sephardi | Yemenite | Tiberian | Reconstructed | |||
| Mishnaic | Biblical | |||||||
| בֶ | Segol | [e̞] | [e̞] | [e̞] | [a] | [ɛ, ɛː] | ? | [ɛ] |
| בֶי בֶה בֶא | Segol Male | [e̞] | [e̞] | [e̞] | [a] | [ɛː] | ? | [ɛː, ɛj] |
| חֱ | Hataf Segol | [e̞] | [e̞] | [e̞] | [a] | [ɛ̆] | ? | [ɛ] |
In addition, a letter with a segol or tzere with a succeeding yod often makes the "ei" (also spelled "ey") sound such as in they or tape.
Vowel length comparison
By adding two vertical dots (shva), the vowel can be made very short. However, the vowels lengths are not manifested in Modern Hebrew.
| Vowel comparison table | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vowel length | IPA
|
Transliteration | English example | ||
| Long | Short | Very Short | |||
| ֵ | ֶ | ֱ | [e̞] | e | temp |
| Tzere | Segol | Reduced Segol | |||
Unicode encoding
| Glyph | Unicode | Name |
|---|---|---|
| ֶ | U+05B6 | SEGOL |
| ֱ | U+05B1 | HATEF SEGOL |