Hiriq

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Hiriq
ִ
IPA	i
Transliteration	i
English example	ski
Hiriq Example
נִקּוּד
The word niqqud in Hebrew. The first vowel (the dot underneath the letter) is a hiriq itself.
Hiriq Male Example
נִיקּוּד
The word niqqud in Hebrew in full spelling (with niqqud). Notice the additional Yud "י".
Other Niqqud
Shva · Hiriq · Zeire · Segol · Patach · Kamatz · Holam · Dagesh · Mappiq · Shuruk · Kubutz · Rafe · Sin/Shin Dot

Hiriq (Hebrew: חִירִיק‎ Hirik) is a Hebrew niqqud vowel sign represented by a dot "ִ" underneath letter. In modern Hebrew, it indicates the phoneme /i/ which is the same as the "ee" sound in deep and is transliterated as a "i".

In Israeli writing a Hiriq is often promoted to Hiriq Male (Hebrew: חִירִיק מָלֵא‎) for the sake of disambiguation (see ktiv male). A Hiriq Male is a Yud preceded by a letter with a hiriq "י" and in writing without niqqud, the hiriq is omitted leaving only the Yud "י". The usage of a consonant (in this case Yud) to indicate a vowel comes from mater lectionis.

[edit] Pronounciation

The following table contains the pronunciation and transliteration of the different Hiriqs in reconstructed historical forms and dialects using the International Phonetic Alphabet. The pronunciation in IPA is above and the transliteration is below.

The letter Bet "ב" used in this table is only for demonstration. Any letter can be used.

Symbol	Name	Pronunciation
		Israeli	Ashkenazi	Sephardi	Yemenite	Tiberian	Reconstructed
		Israeli	Ashkenazi	Sephardi	Yemenite	Tiberian	Mishnaic	Biblical
בִ	Hiriq	[i]	[i]	[i]	?	[i, iː]	?	?
בִי	Hiriq Male (Also called, Hiriq Yud)	[i]	[iː]	[iː]	?	[iː]	?	?

[edit] Vowel Length comparison

These vowels lengths are not manifested in Modern Hebrew. In addition, the short i is usually promoted to a long i in Israeli writing for the sake of disambiguation.

Vowel comparison table
Vowel Length			IPA	Transliteration	English example
Long	Short	Very Short	IPA	Transliteration	English example
ִ י	ִ	n/a	[i]	i	ski

[edit] Computer encoding

Glyph	Unicode	Name
ִ	U+05B4	HIRIQ

In computers, a zero-width non-joiner is used to differentiate between the vowel holam male, and the constant-vowel combination vav+holam haser, with the latter being written as vav, ZWNJ, holam haser.