| name | strip-nikkud |
| description | Remove Hebrew vowel points (nikkud) and/or cantillation marks (te'amim) from Hebrew text. Use when the user asks for "unvocalized", "consonantal", "without nikkud", "ktiv male", "strip vowels", "remove te'amim/trope", or asks to clean Hebrew text fetched from Sefaria (which ships with full nikkud and often te'amim) for plain reading, search, or copy-paste. |
Strip Nikkud
Two paths โ pick based on environment:
- Offline regex (default) โ pure Python, no network. Fast and deterministic.
- Dicta API โ
https://removenikud.dicta.org.il/'s public backend. Use when the user explicitly asks for "Dicta", or when handling unusual edge cases (Yiddish, mixed corpora) where you want their tool's behaviour rather than a raw regex.
When to invoke
- "Strip the nikkud from this verse"
- "Give me Genesis 1:1 without vowels"
- "Remove the trope marks"
- "Unvocalized Hebrew please"
- After a
find-text call where the user wants the consonantal text only
- Preparing Hebrew text for a system that doesn't render nikkud well (search engines, plain-text exports, some fonts)
Path A โ Offline regex (default)
Unicode reference
| Range | Block | Default action |
|---|
U+0591โU+05AF | Cantillation marks (te'amim / trope) | Remove |
U+05B0โU+05BD | Nikkud (sheva, vowels, dagesh, meteg, etc.) | Remove |
U+05BF | Rafe | Remove |
U+05C1, U+05C2 | Shin/sin dot | Remove |
U+05C4, U+05C5 | Upper/lower dot (rare, masoretic) | Remove |
U+05C7 | Qamats qatan | Remove |
Preserve these โ they are punctuation, not diacritics:
U+05BE maqaf (ึพ)U+05C0 paseq (ื)U+05C3 sof pasuk (ื)U+05C6 nun hafukha (ื)U+05F3, U+05F4 geresh, gershayim (ืณ, ืด)
Procedure
-
Confirm scope โ strip nikkud only, teamim only, or both (default for "unvocalized").
-
Run via python3 -c in Bash. Use explicit \u escapes โ the literal-character form silently includes punctuation code points and strips them too. The character class below has deliberate gaps at U+05BE / U+05C0 / U+05C3 / U+05C6 to preserve maqaf, paseq, sof pasuk, and nun hafukha:
import re
TEAMIM = r'[ึ-ึฏ]'
NIKKUD = r'[ึฐ-ึฝึฟืืืื
ื]'
BOTH = r'[ึ-ึฝึฟืืืื
ื]'
def strip(text, mode='both'):
pattern = {'nikkud': NIKKUD, 'teamim': TEAMIM, 'both': BOTH}[mode]
return re.sub(pattern, '', text)
Verified: applied to ืึฐึผืจึตืืฉึดืึืืช ืึธึผืจึธึฃื ืึฑืึนืึดึืื ืึตึฅืช ืึทืฉึธึผืืึทึืึดื ืึฐืึตึฅืช ืึธืึธึฝืจึถืฅื (Genesis 1:1), BOTH mode yields ืืจืืฉืืช ืืจื ืืืืื ืืช ืืฉืืื ืืืช ืืืจืฅื โ sof pasuk preserved.
-
Normalise whitespace afterwards: re.sub(r' {2,}', ' ', text).strip().
-
Don't use NFD-decompose-and-drop-combining-marks. It over-strips and breaks mixed-script text. Always use the explicit ranges above.
Path B โ Dicta API
Public, no auth, no key. The frontend at removenikud.dicta.org.il calls this directly:
curl -sS -X POST https://remove-nikud-2-0.loadbalancer2.dicta.org.il/api \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-d '{"task":"remove_nikud","data":"<HEBREW TEXT>"}'
Notes:
- Undocumented API. Treat it as best-effort โ if the URL 404s, fall back to Path A.
- Be polite: one request per user action, no tight batch loops.
- Strips both nikkud and te'amim โ no mode toggle exposed.
Edge cases
- Mixed-script input (Hebrew + English + transliteration) โ the Path A regex only matches Hebrew code points, so Latin/Arabic/etc. characters pass through untouched. Safe to apply globally.
- Final letters (ื ื ื ืฃ ืฅ) are separate code points from their non-final forms and are not affected โ don't try to "fix" them.
- Yiddish text uses some of the same code points (e.g. U+05B7 patah, U+05BC dagesh) as semantic letters, not vowels. If the source is Yiddish, ask before stripping โ the user may want to keep them, or prefer Path B which is trained on Hebrew specifically.
- Te'amim-only mode (Tanakh with vowels but no trope) is Path A only; Dicta's endpoint doesn't expose it.
Output
Return the cleaned text in a fenced code block so RTL rendering doesn't reflow the user's terminal. Cite which path was used.
