Hebrew Vowels: Hirek

This series of web pages provides free lessons on the Hebrew Vowels. Previous lessons looked at the Hebrew Alphabet. If you want to learn Hebrew quickly, why not download our Hebrew Vowel Flashcards and get started within minutes?


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The first Hebrew vowel is called Hirek, pronounced similar to hear-eck. (Not ear-ache!)

Hirek is represented by a single dot below the letter, in the middle of the letter. Here is what Hirek looks like with an imaginary Hebrew letter:

Hebrew vowel Hirek

Hirek is pronounced with a short ee sound, similar to the ea in the English words beat, peat or feat. The ee sound is not as long as the ee in words like bee, pea or see.

Here are some examples of Hirek used in actual words, and how often each word occurs in the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible). As you can see, these are very common words. Make sure you memorize them!
Hebrew word li       to me, 751 times
Hebrew word Davd.   David, 600 times
Hebrew word mi       who?, 391 times
Hebrew word bi       in me, 159 times

In the lesson Using Hebrew Letters As Vowels, we saw that the Hebrew letter Yod is often used as an auxiliary vowel. When this happens, Hirek appears below the previous letter. This happens in the word David in some books of the Bible:

Hebrew word David  David, pronounced Da-veed

The sound of Hirek does not change just because some words add the letter Yod as an aid to reading! Some Biblical Hebrew grammars distinguish between Hirek on its own and Hirek when it is followed by a Yod, often claiming that one is a long vowel and the other short. In Israel today, however, there is no difference (if there ever was). Either way, the sound of Hirek is always a short ee.

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