Nikud Explaind

In this lesson I will explain the vowel system in Hebrew, Ivrit.  The Ivrit vowels is called Nikud, it means dotting, pointing. 
It is a system of small marks or symbols. Lines and dots are used to represent the vowels. They are places under, on top or in letters.

Once you become a more comfortable reader you will be able to read without the Nikud (sound symbols).

Although the Ivrit letters are all consonants, two of them can be used as vowels. Its just like in English where the consonant letter 'Y' sometimes behaves like a vowel. 
Example of this is in the word Baby.  This will be explained separately.

To help you understand how the Nikud system  works, lets look at the sentence:

The Rabbit took the carrot.

Now lets imagine this sentence, written again, but lets put the vowels (as smaller letters), where they would appear if it was Ivrit. 

What we end up with, is a string of consonants with vowels underneath or on top of the letters.  In Ivrit these will be small symbols (Lines and dots)

Lets look at an example: 

The vowel 'a' in the word Rabbit is places under the 'R' to make 'R' sound like 'Ra'. 

In Ivrit , instead of letter we use this symbol:

 and it will be placed under the letter.

Look at the rest of the sentence to understand how the consonants gets the sound by placing the small vowel underneath.

This is a post to teach you all the symbols - Nikud.