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Kamatz orqamatz (Modern Hebrew:קָמָץ,IPA:[kaˈmats]; alternativelyקָמֶץqāmeṣ) is aHebrewniqqud (vowel) sign represented by twoperpendicular lines (looking like anuppercaseT)⟨ ָ ‎ ⟩ underneath a letter. Inmodern Hebrew, it usually indicates thephoneme/a/ which is the "a" sound in the wordspa and istransliterated asa. In these cases, its sound is identical to the sound ofpataḥ inmodern Hebrew. In a minority of cases it indicates the phoneme/o/, equal to the sound ofḥolam. In traditionalAshkenazi Hebrew pronunciation, qamatz is pronounced as the phoneme/ɔ/, which becomes/u/ in some contexts in southern Ashkenazi dialects.

The Hebrew of the late centuries BCE and early centuries of theCommon Era had a system with fivephonemic long vowels/aːeːiːoːuː/ and five short vowels/aeiou/.

In the later dialects of the 1st millennium CE, phonemic vowel length disappeared, and instead was automatically determined by the context, with vowels pronounced long inopen syllables and short in closed ones. However, the previous vowel phonemes merged in various ways that differed from dialect to dialect:

• InTiberian Hebrew, which underliesthe written system of vowels, short/a/ became[a] (indicated bypataḥ); long/oː/ became[o] (indicated byḥolam); while/aː/ and/o/ both merged into an in-between sound[ɔ] (similar to the vowel in English "caught" without thecot-caught merger), which was indicated by qamatz.
• In theBabylonian vocalization, however, short and long variants simply merged, with/a/ and/aː/ becoming [a], while/o/ and/oː/ became [o]; and this system underlies the pronunciation ofModern Hebrew.

The result is that in Modern Hebrew, the vowel written with qamatz might be pronounced as either [a] or [o], depending on historical origin. It is often said that the two sounds can be distinguished by context:

• The qamatz sound of[o], known asQamatz Qaṭan (Hebrew:קָמַץ קָטָן,IPA:[kaˈmatskaˈtan], "little qamatz") occurs in a "closed syllable", i.e. one which ends in a consonant marked with ashwa nakh (zero vowel) or with adagesh ḥazaq (which indicates that the consonant was pronouncedgeminated, i.e. doubled);
• The qamatz sound of[a], known asQamatz Gadol (Hebrew:קָמַץ גָּדוֹל[kaˈmatsɡaˈdol], "big qamatz") occurs in an "open syllable", i.e. any other circumstance: one which ends in a consonant followed by a normal vowel, a consonant at the end of a word and with no vowel marking, or a consonant marked with ashwa na (originally pronounced[ə]).

Unfortunately, the two varieties of shwa are written identically, and pronounced identically in Modern Hebrew; as a result, there is no reliable way to distinguish the two varieties of qamatz when followed by a vowel marked with a shwa. (In some cases, Biblical texts are marked with ametheg or othercantillation mark that helps to indicate which pronunciation is intended, but this usage is not consistent, and in any case such marks are absent in non-Biblical texts.) It should also be noted that there are examples of qamatz qaṭan appearing in open syllables, such as in the plural ofשֹׁרֶשׁ‎ ([ˈʃo.ʁɛʃ], "root"),שׇׁרָשִׁים‎ ([ʃo.ʁa.ˈʃim]).

An example of theqamatz qatan is the Modern Hebrew wordתׇּכְנִית‎ ([toχˈnit], "program").

According to the standardHebrew spelling rules as published by theAcademy of the Hebrew Language, words which have a qamatz qatan in their base form must be written without avav, hence the standard vowel-less spelling ofתׇּכְנִית‎ isתכנית‎. In practice, however, Modern Hebrew words containing a qamatz qatan do add avav⟨ו‎⟩ to indicate the[o] pronunciation; hence the nonstandard (also termed "excessive") spellingתוכנית‎ is common in newspapers and is even used in several dictionaries, for exampleRav Milim. Words which in their base form have aḥolam that changes toqamatz qaṭan in declension retain thevav in vowel-less spelling: the nounחֹפֶשׁ‎ ([ˈχofeʃ], "freedom") is spelledחופש‎ in vowel-less texts; the adjectiveחָפְשִׁי‎ ([χofˈʃi], "free") is spelledחופשי‎ in vowel-less text, despite the use of qamatz qatan, both according to the standard spelling and in common practice.

Some books print theqamatz qaṭan differently, although the way in which they do is not consistent. For example, in siddurRinat Yisrael the vertical line of qamatz qatan is longer. InSiddur Sim Shalom, the horizontal line is separated from the bottom. In a book ofPsalms used by someBreslov hassidim the qamatz qatan is bolder. In the popular niqqud textbookNiqqud halakha le-maase byNisan Netser, the qamatz qatan is printed as an encircled qamatz for didactic purposes.

Unicode defines the code pointU+05C7 ׇHEBREW POINT QAMATS QATAN, although its usage is not required.

Ḥaṭaf Qamatz (Hebrew:חֲטַף קָמַץ,IPA:[χaˈtafkaˈmats]) is a "reduced qamatz". Like qamatz qatan, it is pronounced[o], but the rationale for its usage is different: it replaces theshva on letters which require a shva according to the grammar, but where the traditional pronunciation is[o]. This mostly happens with gutturals, for example inאֳרָנִים‎ ([oʁaˈnim], "pines", the plural form ofאֹרֶן‎,[ˈoʁen]), but occasionally also on other letters, for exampleשֳׁרָשִׁים‎ ([ʃoʁaˈʃim], "roots", another plural ofשֹׁרֶשׁ‎[ˈʃoʁeʃ]); andצִפֳּרִים‎ ([tsipoˈʁim], "birds", the plural ofצִפּוֹר‎ ([tsiˈpoʁ]).

The following table contains thepronunciation andtransliteration of the different qamatzes in reconstructed historical forms anddialects using theInternational Phonetic Alphabet. The transcription in IPA is above and the transliteration is below.

The lettersBet⟨ב‎⟩ andHet⟨ח‎⟩ used in this table are only for demonstration, any letter can be used.

These vowel lengths are not manifested in Modern Hebrew. The shorto (qamatz qaṭan) and longa (qamatz) have the sameniqqud. Because of this, the shorto (Qamatz Qaṭan) is usually promoted to a longo (holam male) in Israeli writing, written as avav⟨ו‎⟩, for the sake of disambiguation.

By adding two vertical dots (shva) the vowel is made very short.

Note: the glyph for QAMATS QATAN may appear empty or incorrect if one applies a font that cannot handle the glyph necessary to represent Unicode character U+05C7. Usually this Unicode character isn't used and is substituted with the similar looking QAMATS (U+05B8).

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