Hebrew Vowels: Patah/Kamets

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The next two Hebrew Vowels are called Patah and Kamets. Patah is pronounced with the letter Chet at the end. These two vowels are considered together because there is a very close relationship between them.

Patah is represented by a small straight horizontal line under the letter. Kamets is represented by a similar straight line, but with a small vertical line in the middle, giving a tiny T shape. These two vowels are very common and occur in the vast majority of Hebrew words.

Here is what Patah and Kamets look like with imaginary Hebrew letters:

Hebrew vowel Patah  Patah

Hebrew vowel Kamets  Kamets
Patah and Kamets are very similar Hebrew Vowels, and some Biblical Hebrew grammars try to explain the difference by saying that Patah is a short vowel and Kamets is a long vowel.

If there ever was a difference in the length of these vowels, this has now been lost. In Israel today, the sound of both these vowels is exactly the same - a medium-length a sound, like the words apple, bat or cat. Why, then, are different vowel signs used if both these Hebrew Vowels have the same sound?

The different vowels are used to indicate where the stress and emphasis in the Hebrew word lies, and to indicate whether a syllable is open or closed. (An open syllable is one that ends with a vowel, and a closed syllable is one that ends with a consonant).

A Patah is generally used in two situations:
  • when there is a closed syllable,
  • when the syllable with the Patah is stressed.

A Kamets on the other hand, is used in the opposite situations:
  • when the syllable is open,
  • when the syllable with the Kamets is not stressed.
Observing carefully whether the vowel is Patah or Kamets will help you enormously in understanding how to pronounce a Hebrew word, once you know what the other Hebrew Vowels and letters are. Take, for example, the following Hebrew word:

Hebrew word makom  a place, occurs 84 times in the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible)

This word means a place, and you will know by now that it is pronounced makom. But knowing only this does not necessarily mean that you will pronounce it exactly correct. It could be pronounced ma-Kom, with the emphasis on the Kom, or mak-Om, similar to Scottish names beginning with Mac. So which is it?

Since the first Mem has a Kamets under it, and we now know that Kamets is used for an open or unstressed syllable, it must be ma-Kom, which is the only pronunciation which leaves the ma as an open syllable.
As another example, take the Hebrew word Hebrew word haya pronounced haya, meaning it/he was, and used 345 times in the Tanakh. Since this has Kamets under the first two consonants, it means that both are open syllables. Thus, the correct pronunciation must be ha-ya, leaving both syllables open. If it were hay-a (similar to the English greeting Hiya!) then the first syllable would be closed and Patah would have been used instead.

Finally, let us look at a word where only Patah is used. In the Hebrew word Hebrew word gam meaning also (used 508 times in the Hebrew Bible), the Patah indicates that the pronunciation is gam. It is a closed syllable, and there is no other way to pronounce it.

As you learn more Hebrew grammar, you will see how both of these Hebrew Vowels are used and how the vowel changes depending on what happens to the word and what form it takes.


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