Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On 11/6/06, Uri Hurwitz wrote:
>   The entire coprus of  medieval Heb poetry's meter, mainly in Spain,
>    but some in Italy and elswehere is based on the diffeerence between
>    long and short vowels, where the chatafim are considered half vowles.

Dear Uri Hurwitz,

Do you mean that hatafim are short vowels equivalent to regular short
vowels or that hatafim are a third vowel length degree, in a scale that
may be called "long", "short", and "shorter"?  Could you provide an
example of this in some actual poem?

Yitzhak Sapir