Where did the Hebrew vowel pointings come from?
Hebrew is written with 22 letters. Of these 22, 4 were originally vowel/consonants such as our “Y” which can be a consonant as in “Yellow” or a vowel, as in “Fly.” The aleph, hey, vav (archaically waw) and yud were these vowel/consonants but, not all words had these “vowels” and the vowel sounds were often “understood” and remembered by memory. Around 700 CE (AD) the Masorites, wanting to standardize Hebrew pronunciation, added dots and dashes (called nikkudot or nikkud in the singular) above and below the consonants to form vowels. Also at this time all 22 letters became consonants alone and no longer stood for vowels. The nikkudot are only used in Modern Hebrew for beginning Hebrew grammar books, Bibles, Sidduriym (prayer books) and obscure words where the pronuciation is probably not known by most readers. Magazines, books, newspapers, signs, etc. will not use the nikkudot as the words can be recognized by their consonants only. You can see how easy it is for one fluent in the langu
