There are varying font styles in Hebrew as you would also find in other languages like English. Hebrew even has a cursive method of writing, but what I want to focus on today is how Hebrew can be found written with or without vowel markings.

Personally, I prefer Hebrew written with the vowel markings but there is much modern material written without them and you simply have to have memorized the right vowel sounds or infer from context the correct pronunciation.

Here are the vowel names: (Please note that if you look around online you will likely find multiple spellings to some of these.)

• patah
• segol
• hireq
• qames-hatup
• qibbus
• qames
• sere
• holem
• qames-he
• sere-yod
• hireq-yod
• holem-waw
• sureq

In addition, there is a shewa as well which is more like a “half-vowel” when pronounced.