4.14 Rule of Sheva II: No Gutturals

  1. Two vocal Sheva (No Gutturals or Yod): - the two Vocal Sheva become Hireq + Silent Sheva
    • In other words, say you’re reading the Hebrew Bible and you see a word that has \(I + :\).
    • Your Hebrew grammar antenna should go up and you should wonder whether this was originally two vocal sheva
  2. Two Reduced vowels (The _second) consonant is a Yod) - “converts” to the vowel letter \(\hat I\) (Hireq+yod)
    • This is surprisingly frequent in Hebrew

RULE OF SHEVA

Review this table and the table on the next page - Anki will help you to commit these concepts to memory

Type After Rule of Sheva Before*63
Strong קִטְ64 קְטְ*
Yod קִי קְיְ*

  1. When you see an asterisk in the context of a word form, it means this form is impossible.↩︎

  2. Hebrew Grammars have what are called “paradigm words” to represent any combination of consonants meeting the pattern. קטל is a paradigm for any three strong (non-guttural) letters, עמד represents any guttural in the first position, and בחר represents any guttural in the second position.↩︎