Hebrew vowels (nikud)

Hebrew’s 22 letters are all consonants, or silent placeholders like alef and ayin. For most of the language’s history that was enough: a reader who already knew the word could supply the vowel sound from context, the way an English reader silently fills in the missing letters of a heavily abbreviated note. Nikud, the system of dots and dashes added above, below and inside letters, was developed later (by the Masoretes, roughly the 7th to 10th centuries CE) to fix the exact pronunciation of the biblical text once it was no longer everyone’s spoken language.

Modern Israeli Hebrew keeps that split. Adults reading their own language skip nikud almost everywhere: news sites, novels, street signs, most of this website. It stays in places where the reader cannot yet guess the vowel: children’s books and school textbooks, poetry where the rhythm matters, prayer books and the Torah itself, dictionaries, and anywhere a word could be read two ways (שיר without nikud could be “shir”, song, or the same letters with a different vowel pattern).