Chanting the Hebrew Bible

Many American Jews pronounce the קמץ vowel using a phoneme that is actually totally absent from modern Israeli Hebrew. It’s the sound “uh” as in “come” or “lump”. In the IPA the symbol is [ʌ].

 

Say these words:

לְעוֹלָם

אַבְרָהָם

לְדַבֵּר־בָּם

Does the final syllable contain the vowel “uh” or the vowel “ah” [a]?

 

Compare the vowels: “come” and “calm”

Compare the vowels: “lump” and “llama”

Compare the vowels: “duck” and “dark”