2296: (New) Hebrew Stress Mar 30, 2021

Traditionally, Hebrew stress was almost always placed on the final syllable of the word, though there is a pattern which places it on the penultimate syllable. Increasingly however the stress is placed on the penultimate syllable outside of that aforementioned pattern, in general colloquial use, names, and loanwords. Previously, the stress was always predictable depending on syllable weight—i.e. the syllable length and whether the syllable had a coda—but the stress now is phonemic, insofar as it is now used to distinguish between words of different meanings, such as

/ˈboker/ (בּוֹקֵר‎)—"morning" /boˈker/ (בֹּקֶר)—cowboy