# ישמור



## Ali Smith

Shalom,

In ישמר yishmor (he will keep), is the shewa under the ש vocal or silent?

Thanks!


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## Drink

It's a shva nach. Also note it's usually spelled ישמור when writing without vowels.


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## Sher Zaman

There are two types of shva: נע na "moving" and נח nach "resting". They both have the same niqqud (two vertical dots under the letter), and they usually sound a bit different, shva nach being a consonant without any vowels, and shva na being a consonant with a bit more of an /ɛ/ sound (like in elevator, dress, bet), but both can sound like each other depending on specific word and accent.


How do you differentiate between them? First, there are two rules you have to remember: a shva at the start of a word will always be a shva na, and a shva at the end of a word (if the last letter has niqqud) will always be a shva nach. If you have two shvas at the end of the word, one directly after another, they are both shva nach.


Now to the difficult bit. In order to find what type of shva it is when it is in the middle of a word, you have to change the word back to its "elementary form" צורת יסוד. For nouns צורת יסוד is the singular form without prefixes and suffixes, and for verbs it's the singular form in the specific tense the original verb was. So for example אֲנַחְנוּ אוֹכְלִים anachnu ochlim "we are eating" -> the צורת יסוד of אוֹכְלִים would be אוֹכֶל ochel (I) am eating. Notice how the khaf in אוכלים has no vowel, but in the צורת יסוד, in the verb אוכל, the khaf has an 'e' vowel. In this case, the shva in the khaf in אוכלים is shva na, because it originally was a vowel (= תנועה, tnu'a movement in Hebrew, so the shva is "moving".) If the shva originally was a shva and it hasn't changed, it's a shva nach. For example, in יִסְפְּרוּ yisperu(they) will count, both the samech and the pey have shva. We need to find the elementary form of יספרו, which is יִסְפֹּר yispor (he) will count. See how the shva in the samech stayed when we moved to the elementary form? Because the pey changed it's niqqud from the elementary form to the verb we are looking at, we conclude that the shva in the pey in יִסְפְּרוּ is a shva na (which usually sounds like more of an /ɛ/ sound, but can cause a consonant sound). Similarly but in the opposite way, because the samech has a shva in the elementary form and retains that shva in the verb we're looking at, we know the shva is shva nach.


The בגד כפת letters get a dagesh when they come after a shva nach. You can see that in יספרו- the samech has a shva nach, so the pey has a dagesh. So we say yisperu and not yisferu, and on the other hand we say כבלים kvalim "cables" and not kbalim, because the kaf has shva na (it is at the start of the word) and the bet does not get a dagesh.


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## Ali Smith

Thank you, but the elementary form (צורת יסוד) of ישמר is שמר shmor, and we all know that the first letter in shmor has a shva na.


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## Drink

Ali Smith said:


> Thank you, but the elementary form (צורת יסוד) of ישמר is שמר shmor, and we all know that the first letter in shmor has a shva na.



What Sher Zaman gave was a rule of thumb. It does not work in all scenarios, and it's a little ambiguous how far you have to go to find the צורת היסוד. I would say you can chance the gender, number, and person to find the צורת היסוד, but you can't change the tense. The future tense and the imperative are different things.

A more reliable test would be to check what happens if the letter after the shva is a בגדכפת letter (or better to confine it to just בכפ). A convenient root for this is כבש. Since יכבוש is pronounced "yichbosh" and not "yichvosh", that means the shva under the כ is a shva nach.


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## Ali Smith

Thank you! Why doesn’t it work in כתבו kitvu (Write!)? It should be kitbu, shouldn’t it? The previous letter has a dagesh, I think.


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## Drink

Ali Smith said:


> Thank you! Why doesn’t it work in כתבו kitvu (Write!)? It should be kitbu, shouldn’t it? The previous letter has a dagesh, I think.



In this case the צורת היסוד is כתוב. This is why כתבו does not have a dagesh in the ב.

I don't know what you mean by "previous letter" or what relevance that would have, but ת does not have a dagesh here.


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## Ali Smith

My bad! I meant “ the previous letter, which is the ת, has a shwa”. Sorry!


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## Drink

Oh. I think you misunderstood my test.

If the letter after the shva is a בגדכפת letter, as in כתבו, then that proves to you that the shva is not a shva nach. However, in this case, it is what is sometimes called a shva merachef (שווא מרחף), which has some aspects of a shva na (it interchanges with full vowels, and it does not cause a following בגדכפת letter to have a dagesh) and some aspects of a shva nach (it is silent, and it is typically preceded by a short vowel).


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