The Guttural Letters

The guttural letters are:

א  ה  ח  ע

The letter ר is a semi-guttural.

Why are they called guttural letters?

• They are letters that were originally pronounced deep in the throat.

The guttural letters share 4 characteristics:

1.  Gutturals take a composite shewa, not a simple shewa.
   • The composite shewa looks like a shewa with a vowel:
     • The hatef-patah אֲ
     • The hatef-seghol אֱ
     • The hatef-qammes-hatuf אֳ
2. Gutturals reject the Dagesh Forte.
   • This is the only characteristic ר – being a semi-guttural – shares with the other gutturals.
3. Gutturals prefer a ‘patah’ (the short ‘a’ vowel) under them or before them.  Compare the two words:
   • בֶּגֶד – a segholate noun with two segholates
   • נַעַר – also a segholate noun, but the ‘ayin’ changes the ‘seghol’ vowels to ‘patah’
4. The gutturals ה ח ע receive a ‘furtive patah’ when:
   • they end a word, and
   • if the vowel preceding them is not a ‘patah’ (short ‘a’) or a ‘qammes’ (long ‘a’)
   • For an example of a ‘furtive patah’ see Genesis 1:2 in your printed Hebrew bibles-the word רוּחַ.  The ‘patah’ is off-centered to the right – this is the ‘furtive patah.’
     • The fonts used in Accordance and for word processors do not account for the ‘furtive patah’ for reasons unknown to me.
     • I have not checked BibleWorks or Logos.
     • If you know of a font that does produce the ‘furtive patah’ I’m all ears!

Adapted from:

Fuller and Choi, Invitation to Biblical Hebrew, pg. 22.