chataf kamatz

[Guy]

That’s an excellent question that requires going a bit under the hood for my thought process when designing that part of the course.

Before I explain, it’s important to contextualize – there are things that are simplified in the course on purpose to make your knowledge practical. This course is about Modern Hebrew as used in Israel – therefore I decided that generally, if something that I would teach you is both mentally taxing and a native speaker would not know it, then neither should you. There is nowhere where this is truer than the vowel markers (and I believe I mentioned this explicitly in the lesson itself). Most native speakers don’t use or remember them past 2nd grade, and they aren’t used almost anywhere that you would encounter native content. We are learning them mostly as a crutch to get to where we wouldn’t need them any longer.

With that in mind, kamatz can make either the a/o sound, and khataf kamatz generally SHOULD be an “o” sound. However, in Israel it also makes both sounds, and has become more of an issue of accent where Israelis differ from Americans. As an example, צָהֳרַיִם is pronounced as Tzaharayim at least as often as it’s pronounced Tzohorayim in Israel. And in most texts where you would have either kamatz with an “o” sound, the writing without vowels has replaced it with a Vav (ו) anyway. For example – תָּכְנִית would normally be written as תוכנית in everyday texts. So for all practical purposes, it’s just not worth going into all the details – you would almost never see a khataf kamatz, and if you do it’s probably going to be read as an “a” anyway in Israel (as when it isn’t it’s going to be replaced with a ו instead).

So while technically you are correct, practically this would be a bad way of teaching vowels for everyday use considering how little practical use they would have beyond the initial crutch phase. I might create an explanation document down the line, but since I clearly signpost that this is a simplification, the rare student for whom the underlying mechanism would matter (such as someone looking for Biblical Hebrew and/or is highly interested in poetry) can easily find the explanations elsewhere.

I hope my thought process here makes sense and that this clears up the issue. But having said all that, if you still think I should revise anything about it I’m more than open to hearing why.