Diacritics in Hebrew

I noticed Hebrew actually has a lot of diacritics :

- Sheva
- qubuts
- hataf qamats
- hiriq
- tsere
- hataf segol
- segol
- hataf patah
- patah
- qamats
- holam
- holam haser
- dagesh
- meteq
- maqaf
- pasuq
- sof pasuq
- geresh
-gershayim

But on the texts that are submitted from Hebrew, and in the translations that are done into Hebrew, I didn't see any diacritic.

Is it because

- It is too complicated and it would take too much time to write or type a text in Hebrew using these diacritics?

- They simply are not used anymore, except in newspapers and books?

I just would like to know, simple curiosity!

Thanks a lot!

CC: libera milkman

Francky,

The simple answer is that we have 2 ways of writing - with diacritics and without diacritics. Without diacritics, we use more vowel letters as a replacement. Also, Hebrew readers recognize words written without the diacritics and know how to pronounce them. Sometimes it can be tricky, and people do make mistakes - but not usually.

I imagine that the method of writing without diacritics developed in order to enable faster writing. The sad truth is, that today almost no one knows how to write diacritics correctly. It is taught in high schools for matriculation exams, and of course Hebrew linguists need to be proficient - but most of the adult population in Israel does not have a clue.

Diacritics are usually used when learning to read Hebrew (foreign language students and children). Most children's books, for instance, are written with diacritics, in order to enable a learning process, which will eventually result in word recongition by their pattern. In everyday 'grown-up' usage, diacritics are rarely used. In publications, when there is more than one way to read a word, in a way that will change its meaning - a diacritic (single one, usually) will be used to diffrentiate between the two options. This is especially true when the less-frequent usage of the word is intended, and presumably not all readers will intuitively understand how to read it correctly.

I would also like to add, that in your list there are several diacritics which are used only in scripture (such as meteg and sof pasuk). Scripture is written with a lot of diacritics, without which it would be difficult to read. And the scribes are not allowed any degree of freedom when writing scripture - it must follow the writing convention to the dot.

I hope your curiousity is satisfied :-)

Thanks a lot libera!
With milkman's, who sent me a message in private to answer, and your very complete explanation above, I must say I know a lot more about diacritics in Hebrew, and my curiosity is fully satisfied!

I got names from the Hebrew diacritics here :
http://www.lexilogos.com/clavier/ivrit.htm .

Name appears when one points the sign out with the mouse.