Zarka (trope)


Zarka or zarqa is a cantillation mark found in the Torah, Haftarah, and other books of the Hebrew Bible. It is usually found together with the Segol, with a Munach preceding either or both. The symbol for a Zarka is a 90 degrees rotated, inverted S. The Hebrew word translates into English as scatterer, since it is a scattering of notes.
Zarka is part of the Segol group. In this group, Zarka is the connector and Segol is the separator.

Zarka, Tsinnor and Tsinnorit

Zarka is also sometimes called tsinnor. Properly speaking, tsinnor is the name it receives when appears on the three poetic books, and zarqa the name it gets on the remaining 21 books of the Hebrew Bible. Both sets of books use a different cantillation system.
Caution must be taken not to confuse this mark with the very similar mark tsinnorit, which has the same shape but different position and use. They differ in the following:

Melody