tzere

{| align="right" class="wikitable" | colspan="2" style="text-align:center;" |Tzere |- | colspan="2" align="center" style="background:white;height:100px"|ֵ |- | IPA | style="background:white" |, |- | Transliteration | style="background:white" |e |- | English example | style="background:white" |⦁ bed⦁ bay⦁ (Scottish) bay |- | Same sound | style="background:white" | segol |- | colspan="2" style="text-align:center;" |Example |- | colspan="2" align="center" style="background:white;height:50px"|תֵּל |- | colspan="2" style="width:250px;background:white; text-align:center;" | The word for mound in Hebrew, tel. The only vowel (under Tav, the two dots horizontally) is the Tzere itself. |- | colspan="2" style="text-align:center;" |Other Niqqud |- | colspan="2" style="width:250px;background:white; text-align:center;"| ShvaHiriqTzereSegolPatachKamatzHolamDageshMappiqShurukKubutzRafeSin/Shin Dot |} Tzere (also spelled Tsere, Tzeirei, Zere, Zeire, Ṣērê; modern , , sometimes also written ; formerly ṣērê) is a Hebrew niqqud vowel sign represented by two horizontally-aligned dots "◌ֵ" underneath a letter. In modern Hebrew, tzere is mostly pronounced the same as segol and indicates the phoneme /e̞/, which is the same as the "e" sound in the vowel segol and is transliterated as an "e". There was a distinction in Tiberian Hebrew between segol and Tzere.

==Name== The name comes from Aramaic/Syriac “a tearing asunder, splitting, tearing, bursting” is probably a loan translation from Arabic kasrah , the name of the short vowel /i/, literally “a breaking, breach”.