Tag Archives: matres lectionis

The usage of certain consonants to indicate a vowel in the spelling of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Syriac languages is called matres lectionis (Latin “mothers of reading”, singular form: mater lectionis, Hebrew: אֵם קְרִיאָה mother of reading). The letters that do this in Hebrew are א (aleph), ה (he), ו (waw) and י (yod). The י and ו in particular are more often vowels than they are consonants. The practice of using matres lectionis seems to have originated when [ay] and [aw] diphthongs (written using the י (yod) and ו (waw) consonant letters respectively) monophthongized to simple long vowels [ē] and [ō].… Learn Hebrew