Aramaic Vowels: Holem

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The next Aramaic vowel is called Holem, pronounced with the h or ch sound of the letter Chet. Holem is pronounced ho-lem. It is pronounced with a short o sound, similar to the o in the English words pot, cot, dot or got.

Holem is represented by a single dot above the letter, and to the left of the letter. Here is what Holem looks like with an imaginary Aramaic letter:


 
Here are some examples of Holem used in common words from the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible):

       to him/it, 1150 times
     him/it, 595 times
          in him/it, 365 times
hundred(s), 302 times
    sign, 22 times

We have seen that when a dot occurs above the letter Waw, it is pronounced o. This is, in fact, simply the vowel Holem. There is no difference between the pronunciation of Waw being used with Holem in this manner and Holem at any other time. Again, words are not pronounced differently just because they sometimes contain an extra Waw to make the word easier to read.

One final point about the vowel Holem. Since Holem goes above and slightly to the left of a letter, in some printed Aramaic fonts it clashes with the dot above the letters Sheen, . When this happens, some texts merge the dots and only print one of them. This sometimes happens, for example, in the Hebrew/Aramaic for Moses. Instead of writing some texts will omit one dot and will print instead.

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