In modern Hebrew, it indicates the phoneme /a/ which is close to the "[a]" sound in the English word far and is transliterated as an a.
The reduced (or ḥaṭaf) niqqud exist for pataḥ, qamatz, and segol which contain a shva next to it.
The combination of pasekh with the letter aleph, אַ, is used to represent the vowel [a]; the combination of pasekh with a digraph consisting of two yods, ײַ, is used to represent the diphthong [aj].
The following table contains the pronunciation and transliteration of the different pataḥs in reconstructed historical forms and dialects using the International Phonetic Alphabet.
By adding two vertical dots (shva) the vowel is made very short.