niqqud

This article concerns the vowel points or vowel marks of Hebrew. For those of Arabic, see Harakat. In Hebrew orthography, Niqqud or Nikkud is the system of diacritical signs used to represent vowels or distinguish between alternative pronunciations of letters in the Hebrew alphabet. Several orthographic systems for representing Hebrew vowels were developed in the Early Middle Ages. The most widespread system (and the only one still used to a significant degree today) was created by the Masoretes of Tiberias (see Masoretic Text, Tiberian Hebrew) in the second half of the first millennium in the Land of Israel.
See more at Wikipedia.org...