Cantillation is the ritual chanting of readings from the
Hebrew Bible in
synagogue services. The chants are written and notated in accordance with the special signs or marks printed in the
Masoretic text of the
Hebrew Bible (or
Tanakh) to complement the letters and vowel points. These marks are known in English as
accents and in
Hebrew as
ta`amei ha-mikra or just
te`amim. Some of these signs were also sometimes used in medieval manuscripts of the
Mishnah. The musical motifs associated with the signs are known in Hebrew as
niggun or
neginot (not to be confused with
Hasidic nigun) and in
Yiddish as
trop: the word
trope is sometimes used in English with the same meaning.