The Hebrew grammatical syllable is defined by Benjamin Herson's
book, "Secret of the Pyramid", as having
"one independent (full) vowel. Some syllables have
one full vowel and weak (slurred) vowels. No syllable
has more than one full vowel." (p. 17). The hatuf vowels
and sheva na' are considered weak
vowels in this definition. This author has found
that this concept is not always easy for novice Hebrew
readers to master.
On the other hand, it seems easier
for them to relate to a letter‑vowel or
letter‑vowel‑letter‑sheva nach
combination as a syllable. This approach is validated by
Jacobson in his book, "Chanting the Hebrew Bible",
where he counts hatuf vowels and sheva na'
as eligible vowels for a syllable, since "anyone who
is chanting these words must assign at least one note
to each vowel, no matter how short." (p. 326)
This author uses the term "audible syllable" to express this concept.
When this macro is executed on each verse,
it splits each word into its constituent audible
Hebrew syllables. Figure 29 shows the
result of running the text from Macro 6 through Macro 8.
-
Change each space to a plus-sign (+).
(This prepares the text to be "space-neutral",
so that the algorithm won't confuse the syllable
spaces that will be inserted with the spaces between
the words, which have just been changed to plus-signs.
These plus-signs will be restored to spaces at the end of the algorithm.)
-
Insert a space after every character, except plus-signs.
(Each nikud is tied to a letter,
so they are not separated.)
-
Remove the spaces between the letters of the exception word
that is pronounced "hee" (spelled
הִוא [hay‑vav‑aleph]).
-
Remove the space before every
וֹ [cholam].
-
Remove the space before every
וּ [shuruk].
-
Remove the space before every
י [yud]
that has no vowel mark.
-
Remove the space before every
א [aleph]
that has no vowel mark.
-
Remove the space before any
letter‑without‑a‑vowel‑mark
at the end of a word.
-
Remove the space before any letter marked with sheva nach.
-
Remove the space before
וֹ [cholam]
that is pronounced as "vo".
-
Remove the spaces between the letters of the tetragrammaton.
-
Make sure that there are seven spaces after each
word with a disjunctive as established in Macro 1.
-
Remove spaces between letters of bracketed k'tiv words.
