This document discusses vowel changes that occur in Hebrew verbs due to guttural letters like aleph, ayin, chet, and het. Specifically: - Verbs ending in aleph or ayin take on a final vowel sound rather than a consonant. When suffixes are added, ayin causes the vowel to change to an "ah" sound. - Verbs ending in chet add an extra vowel before the last consonant in the masculine form, and after the last consonant in the feminine form. - Verbs ending in aleph behave like normal verbs but add an "e" sound instead of a consonant at the end. - Het causes no spelling changes

1. Vowel changes with
Gutturals
The last lesson introduced quite a few new verbs.
Let’s examine some vowel changes that occur due
to the guttural letters ‫,ך‬ ‫,ע‬ ‫,ח‬ and ‫.א‬

2. Vowel changes with
Gutturals
First off, congratulations!! You now know over 100
Hebrew words. You are well on your way to learning
this great language.
Guttural letters in Hebrew can be a bit tricky to
pronounce, especially ‫ע‬ and ‫.א‬ These two letters
are actually silent and are never pronounced,
however they do cause changes in the verbs that
surround them.
Let’s look at some examples.

3. Vowel changes with ‫ע‬ and
‫א‬
In Hebrew, normally words begin and end with a
consonant sound: ‫סופר‬ SofeR ‫שומר‬ ShomeR
When a word, especially a verb ends in either ‫ע‬ or
‫,א‬ the final sound is usually a vowel.
‫מוצא‬ MotsE ‫יודע‬ Yode’A
This is because the final consonant in these words
is silent. The last sound you hear is the second
vowel.

4. Vowel changes with ‫ע‬
Since there is no consonant sound at the end of
these words, interesting things happen when
suffixes are added.
A normal feminine ending simply adds the “et”
sound to the end of the word in verbs: ‫כותבת‬
kotevET
‫ע‬ is said to change the “e” sound to an “ah” sound
when suffixes are added.

5. Vowel changes with ‫ע‬
The “ah” sound is doubled as well. For example:
‫כותב‬ kotev ‫כותבת‬ kotevet
‫יודע‬ yode’a ‫יודע‬‫ת‬ yoda’at
Yode”ah” and for the feminine yod “ah” “ah” t.
There is a slight pause between the two “ah”s here.
Think of the word in three sylables
1. yod 2. “ah” 3. “ah”t
The plural sounds are the same as regular verbs
Yod’im yod’ot

6. Vowel changes with ‫א‬
‫א‬ is a little different. It behaves the same as normal
verbs except that it adds an “e” sound instead of a
consonant sound. In effect, a three root letter
ending in ‫א‬ only has two consonant sounds + the
ending “t” sound.
‫מוצא‬ MotsE ‫מוצא‬‫ת‬ MotseT

7. Vowel changes with ‫ח‬
Words ending in ‫ח‬ have an extra vowel added with
the consonant that creates an “ah” sound as well.
However instead of following the normal consonant-
vowel-consonant-vowel-consonant format, this extra
vowel gets added in the masculine form before the
last consonant: con-vow-con-vow-Extra Vow-con
‫פותח‬ pote’ach
When adding the feminine ending, the second vowel
changes to the “ah” sound instead of the “e” and the
extra vowel is placed after the third consonant:
‫פותחת‬ potachat

8. Other gutturals
The ‫ה‬ guttural is also different in that the verb
doesn’t change spelling when going from masculine
to feminine, but the sounds change.
‫קונה‬ is the form for both masculine and feminine.
The final vowel for masculine verbs is “e” and the
final vowel for feminine verbs is “a”.
Masculine pronounciation: kone (buy)
Feminine pronounciation: kona (buy)
The other gutterals ‫,ר‬ and ‫ך‬ create endings that are
similar to a normal verb. There are no vowel
changes with these letters.