Hebrew diacritical marks (aka vocalization marks)

[r12a]

[from @tomerm]

Vocalization marks are considered “training wheels” for novice readers (i.e. children, people who study Hebrew as foreign language), therefore usually they don't appear in regular texts.

However there are several cases in which they are widely used:

1. Children / student books

2. Poetry

3. Foreign words / terms transliterated with Hebrew script - in such case vocalization mark helps reader to simple read a complex and unusually long (for Hebrew language) words.

4. Ambiguous (from spelling out perspective) word - the same sequence of letters in Hebrew may be read / interpreted differently based on the context. Image below illustrates following word:

• מקל - Makel - stick (noun)
• מקל - Mekel - make it easier (verb)

Image below illustrates a context in which this word is used in the second meaning.

For more info please see following references

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_diacritics
• https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%A0%D7%99%D7%A7%D7%95%D7%93_%D7%94%D7%A2%D7%91%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%AA_%D7%91%D7%AA_%D7%99%D7%9E%D7%99%D7%A0%D7%95

In computers world Hebrew vocalization marks appear:

1. As part of linguistics (aka Natural Language Processing) oriented tools (dictionary creation tool in case of image below)

2. As part of tools working with religious texts (i.e. Hebrew Bible)

[amire80]

Also, an encyclopedic article, which happens to have been written by yours-truly: http://www.academia.edu/7325021/Vocalization_of_Modern_Hebrew_from_Encyclopedia_of_Hebrew_Language_and_Linguistics_

:)