Hebrew alphabet
The Hebrew alphabet, known variously by scholars as the Jewish script, square script and block script, is an abjad script used in the writing of the Hebrew language and other Jewish languages, most notably Yiddish, Judeo-Spanish, Judeo-Arabic and Judeo-Persian.
Historically, two separate abjad scripts have been used to write Hebrew. The original, old Hebrew script, known as the paleo-Hebrew alphabet, has been largely preserved in a variant form as the Samaritan alphabet. The present "Jewish script" or "square script", on the contrary, is a stylized form of the Aramaic alphabet and was technically known by Jewish sages as Ashurit, since its origins were alleged to be from Assyria.
Various "styles" of representation of the Jewish script letters described in this article also exist, including a variety of cursive Hebrew styles. In the remainder of this article, the term "Hebrew alphabet" refers to the square script unless otherwise indicated.
The Hebrew alphabet has 22 letters. It does not have case. Five letters have different forms when used at the end of a word. Hebrew is written from right to left. Originally, the alphabet was an abjad consisting only of consonants, but is now considered an "impure abjad". As with other abjads, such as the Arabic alphabet, during its centuries-long use scribes devised means of indicating vowel sounds by separate vowel points, known in Hebrew as niqqud. In both biblical and rabbinic Hebrew, the letters Yodh| Waw | He | Aleph| can also function as matres lectionis, which is when certain consonants are used to indicate vowels. There is a trend in Modern Hebrew towards the use of matres lectionis to indicate vowels that have traditionally gone unwritten, a practice known as "full spelling".
The Yiddish alphabet, a modified version of the Hebrew alphabet used to write Yiddish, is a true alphabet, with all vowels rendered in the spelling, except in the case of inherited Hebrew words, which typically retain their Hebrew spellings.
The Arabic and Hebrew alphabets have similarities because they are both derived from the Aramaic alphabet, and both derive from paleo-Hebrew or Phoenician alphabet. Phoenicia is the Greek term referring to Canaan or kn'n.
History
A distinct Hebrew variant, called the paleo-Hebrew alphabet by scholars, emerged around 800 BCE. Examples of related early inscriptions from the area include the tenth-century Gezer calendar, and the Siloam inscription.The paleo-Hebrew alphabet was used in the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Following the exile of the Kingdom of Judah in the 6th century BCE during the Babylonian captivity, Jews began using a form of the Assyrian Aramaic alphabet, which was another offshoot of the same family of scripts. The Samaritans, who remained in the Land of Israel, continued to use the paleo-Hebrew alphabet. During the 3rd century BCE, Jews began to use a stylized, "square" form of the Aramaic alphabet that was used by the Persian Empire, while the Samaritans continued to use a form of the paleo-Hebrew script called the Samaritan alphabet. After the fall of the Persian Empire in 330 BCE, Jews used both scripts before settling on the square Assyrian form.
The square Hebrew alphabet was later adapted and used for writing languages of the Jewish diaspora – such as Karaim, the Judeo-Arabic languages, Judaeo-Spanish, and Yiddish. The Hebrew alphabet continued in use for scholarly writing in Hebrew and came again into everyday use with the rebirth of the Hebrew language as a spoken language in the 18th and 19th centuries, especially in Israel.
Description
General
In the traditional form, the Hebrew alphabet is an abjad consisting only of consonants, written from right to left. It has 22 letters, five of which use different forms at the end of a word.Vowels
In the traditional form, vowels are indicated by the weak consonants Aleph, He, Waw/Vav, or Yodh serving as vowel letters, or matres lectionis: the letter is combined with a previous vowel and becomes silent, or by imitation of such cases in the spelling of other forms. Also, a system of vowel points to indicate vowels, called niqqud, was developed. In modern forms of the alphabet, as in the case of Yiddish and to some extent Modern Hebrew, vowels may be indicated. Today, the trend is toward full spelling with the weak letters acting as true vowels.When used to write Yiddish, vowels are indicated, using certain letters, either with niqqud diacritics or without, except for Hebrew words, which in Yiddish are written in their Hebrew spelling.
To preserve the proper vowel sounds, scholars developed several different sets of vocalization and diacritical symbols called nequdot. One of these, the Tiberian system, eventually prevailed. Aaron ben Moses ben Asher, and his family for several generations, are credited for refining and maintaining the system. These points are normally used only for special purposes, such as Biblical books intended for study, in poetry or when teaching the language to children. The Tiberian system also includes a set of cantillation marks, called trope or te'amim, used to indicate how scriptural passages should be chanted in synagogue recitations of scripture. In everyday writing of modern Hebrew, niqqud are absent; however, patterns of how words are derived from Hebrew roots allow Hebrew speakers to determine the vowel-structure of a given word from its consonants based on the word's context and part of speech.
Alphabet
Unlike the Paleo-Hebrew writing script, the modern Ashuri script has five letters that have special final forms, called sofit form, used only at the end of a word, somewhat as in the Greek or in the Arabic and Mandaic alphabets. These are shown below the normal form in the following table. Although Hebrew is read and written from right to left, the following table shows the letters in order from left to right.| Alef | Bet | Gimel | Dalet | He | Waw/Vav | Zayin | Chet | Tet | Yod | Kaf |
| Lamed | Mem | Nun | Samech | Ayin | Pay | Tsade | Qof | Resh | Tav | |
Pronunciation
Alphabet
The descriptions that follow are based on the pronunciation of modern standard Israeli Hebrew.Note that dotless tav, ת, would be expected to be pronounced /θ/, but this pronunciation was lost among most Jews due to its not existing in the countries where they lived. Yiddish modified this /θ/ to /s/, but in modern Israeli Hebrew, it is simply pronounced /t/.
Shin and sin
Shin and sin are represented by the same letter,, but are two separate phonemes. When vowel diacritics are used, the two phonemes are differentiated with a shin-dot or sin-dot; the shin-dot is above the upper-right side of the letter, and the sin-dot is above the upper-left side of the letter.| Symbol | Name | Transliteration | Example | |
| shin | sh | shop | ||
| sin | s | sour |
Historically, left-dot-sin corresponds to Proto-Semitic *ś, which in biblical-Judaic-Hebrew corresponded to the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative, as evidenced in the Greek transliteration of Hebrew words such as balsam as is evident in the Targum Onkelos.
Dagesh
Historically, the consonants beth, gimel, daleth, kaf, pe and tav each had two sounds: one hard, and one soft, depending on the position of the letter and other factors. When vowel diacritics are used, the hard sounds are indicated by a central dot called dagesh, while the soft sounds lack a dagesh. In modern Hebrew, however, the dagesh only changes the pronunciation of beth, kaf, and pe, and does not affect the name of the letter. The differences are as follows:In other dialects there are variations from this pattern.
- In some Sephardi and Mizrahi dialects, bet without dagesh is pronounced, like bet with dagesh
- In Syrian and Yemenite Hebrew, gimel without dagesh is pronounced.
- In Yemenite Hebrew, and in the Iraqi pronunciation of the word "Adonai", dalet without dagesh is pronounced as in "these"
- In Ashkenazi Hebrew, as well as Romaniote Hebrew, tav without dagesh is pronounced as in "silk"
- In Iraqi and Yemenite Hebrew, and formerly in some other dialects, tav without dagesh is pronounced as in "thick"
Sounds represented with diacritic geresh
The pronunciation of the following letters can also be modified with the geresh diacritic. The represented sounds are however foreign to Hebrew phonology, i.e., these symbols mainly represent sounds in foreign words or names when transliterated with the Hebrew alphabet, and not loanwords.
A geresh is also used to denote acronyms pronounced as a string of letters, and to denote a Hebrew numeral. Geresh also is the name of one of the notes of cantillation in the reading of the Torah, but its appearance and function is different.
Identical pronunciation
In much of Israel's general population, especially where Ashkenazic pronunciation is prevalent, many letters have the same pronunciation. They are as follows:- Varyingly
Ancient Hebrew pronunciation
- chet and ayin represented pharyngeal fricatives, tsadi represented the emphatic consonant, tet represented the emphatic consonant, and qof represented the uvular plosive. All these are common Semitic consonants.
- sin was originally different from both shin and samekh, but had become the same as samekh by the time the vowel pointing was devised. Because of cognates with other Semitic languages, this phoneme is known to have originally been a lateral consonant, most likely the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative or the voiceless alveolar lateral affricate .
Regional and historical variation
- velarized or pharyngealized
- pharyngealized
- sometimes said to be ejective but more likely glottalized.
Vowels
Matres lectionis
alef, ע ayin, waw/vav and yod are letters that can sometimes indicate a vowel instead of a consonant. When they do, and are considered to constitute part of the vowel designation in combination with a niqqud symbol – a vowel diacritic, whereas and ע are considered to be mute, their role being purely indicative of the non-marked vowel.Vowel points
Niqqud is the system of dots that help determine vowels and consonants. In Hebrew, all forms of niqqud are often omitted in writing, except for children's books, prayer books, poetry, foreign words, and words which would be ambiguous to pronounce. Israeli Hebrew has five vowel phonemes,, but many more written symbols for them:Note 1: The circle represents whatever Hebrew letter is used.
Note 2: The pronunciation of tsere and sometimes segol – with or without the letter yod – is sometimes ei in Modern Hebrew. This is not correct in the normative pronunciation and not consistent in the spoken language.
Note 3: The dagesh, mappiq, and shuruk have different functions, even though they look the same.
Note 4: The letter ו is used since it can only be represented by that letter.
Meteg
By adding a vertical line underneath the letter and to the left of the vowel point, the vowel is made long. The meteg is only used in Biblical Hebrew, not Modern Hebrew.Sh'va
By adding two vertical dots underneath the letter, the vowel is made very short. When sh'va is placed on the first letter of the word, mostly it is "è"Comparison table
Gershayim
The symbol is called a gershayim and is a punctuation mark used in the Hebrew language to denote acronyms. It is written before the last letter in the acronym, e.g.. Gershayim is also the name of a note of cantillation in the reading of the Torah, printed above the accented letter, e.g..Stylistic variants
The following table displays typographic and chirographic variants of each letter. For the five letters that have a different final form used at the end of words, the final forms are displayed beneath the regular form.The block and cursive are the only variants in widespread contemporary use. Rashi is also used, for historical reasons, in a handful of standard texts.
Yiddish symbols
| Symbol | Explanation |
| These are intended for Yiddish. They are not used in Hebrew, aside from in loan words. | |
| The rafe diacritic is no longer regularly used in Hebrew. In Masoretic Texts and some other older texts, lenited consonants and sometimes matres lectionis are indicated by a small line on top of the letter. Its use has been largely discontinued in modern printed texts. It is still used to mark fricative consonants in the YIVO orthography of Yiddish. |
Numeric values of letters
Following the adoption of Greek Hellenistic alphabetic numeration practice, Hebrew letters started being used to denote numbers in the late 2nd century BC, and performed this arithmetic function for about a thousand years. Nowadays alphanumeric notation is used only in specific contexts, e.g. denoting dates in the Hebrew calendar, denoting grades of school in Israel, other listings, commonly in Kabbalah in a practice known as gematria, and often in religious contexts., with Hebrew numerals in counterclockwise order.
| letter | numeric value | letter | numeric value | letter | numeric value |
| א | 1 | י | 10 | ק | 100 |
| ב | 2 | כ | 20 | ר | 200 |
| ג | 3 | ל | 30 | ש | 300 |
| ד | 4 | מ | 40 | ת | 400 |
| ה | 5 | נ | 50 | - | - |
| ו | 6 | ס | 60 | - | - |
| ז | 7 | ע | 70 | - | - |
| ח | 8 | פ | 80 | - | - |
| ט | 9 | צ | 90 | - | - |
The numbers 500, 600, 700, 800 and 900 are commonly represented by the juxtapositions ק״ת, ר״ת, ש״ת, ת״ת, and ק״תת respectively.
Adding a geresh to a letter multiplies its value by one thousand, for example, the year 5778 is portrayed as ה׳תשע״ח, where ה׳ represents 5000, and תשע״ח represents 778.
Transliterations and transcriptions
The following table lists transliterations and transcriptions of Hebrew letters used in Modern Hebrew.Clarifications:
- For some letters, the Academy of the Hebrew Language offers a precise transliteration that differs from the regular standard it has set. When omitted, no such precise alternative exists and the regular standard applies.
- The IPA phonemic transcription is specified whenever it uses a different symbol from the one used for the regular standard Israeli transliteration.
- The IPA phonetic transcription is specified whenever it differs from IPA phonemic transcription.
| Hebrew letter | Standard Israeli transliteration – regular | standard Israeli transliteration – precise | IPA phonemic transcription | IPA phonetic transcription | ||||
| א consonantal, in initial word positions | none | |||||||
| א consonantal, in non initial word positions | ' | ʾ | ||||||
| א silent | none | |||||||
| בּ | b | |||||||
| ב | v | |||||||
| גּ | g | g | ||||||
| ג | g | ḡ | ||||||
| ג׳ | ǧ | |||||||
| דּ | d | d | ||||||
| ד | d | ḏ | ||||||
| ה consonantal | h | |||||||
| ה silent | none | |||||||
| ו consonantal | v | w | ||||||
| וּ | u | |||||||
| וֹ | o | or | ||||||
| ז | z | |||||||
| ז׳ | ž | |||||||
| ח | ẖ | ḥ | or | |||||
| ח | ẖ | ḥ | dialectical | |||||
| ט | t | ṭ | ||||||
| י consonantal | y | |||||||
| י part of hirik male | i | |||||||
| י part of tsere male | e | é | or | or | ||||
| כּ, ךּ | k | |||||||
| כ, ך | kh | ḵ | or | |||||
| ל | l | |||||||
| מ, ם | m | |||||||
| נ, ן | n | |||||||
| ס | s | |||||||
| ע in initial or final word positions | none | ʿ | only in initial word position | |||||
| ע in initial or final word positions | none | ʿ | dialectical | |||||
| ע in medial word positions | ' | ʿ | ||||||
| ע in medial word positions | ' | ʿ | dialectical | |||||
| פּ | p | |||||||
| פ, ף | f | |||||||
| צ, ץ | ts | ẓ | ||||||
| צ׳, ץ׳ | č | |||||||
| ק | k | q | ||||||
| ר | r | or | ||||||
| ר | r | dialectical or | ||||||
| שׁ | sh | š | ||||||
| שׂ | s | ś | ||||||
| תּ | t | t | ||||||
| ת | t | ṯ |
;Notes:
A1234In transliterations of modern Israeli Hebrew, initial and final ע, silent or initial א, and silent ה are not transliterated. To the eye of readers orientating themselves on Latin alphabets, these letters might seem to be transliterated as vowel letters; however, these are in fact transliterations of the vowel diacritics – niqqud. E.g., in אִם, אֵם and אֹם, the letter א always represents the same consonant: , whereas the vowels /i/, /e/ and /o/ respectively represent the spoken vowel, whether it is orthographically denoted by diacritics or not. Since the Academy of the Hebrew Language ascertains that א in initial position is not transliterated, the symbol for the glottal stop ʾ is omitted from the transliteration, and only the subsequent vowels are transliterated, resulting in "im", "em" and "om", respectively.
B123The diacritic geresh – "׳" – is used with some other letters as well, but only to transliterate from other languages to Hebrew – never to spell Hebrew words; therefore they were not included in this table. The non-standard "ו׳" and "וו" are sometimes used to represent, which like, and appears in Hebrew slang and loanwords.
C12The Sound is often transcribed "ch", inconsistently with the guidelines specified by the Academy of the Hebrew Language: חם → "cham"; סכך → "schach".
DAlthough the Bible does include a single occurrence of a final pe with a dagesh, in modern Hebrew is always represented by pe in its regular, not final, form "פ", even when in final word position, which occurs with loanwords, foreign names and some slang.
Religious use
The letters of the Hebrew alphabet have played varied roles in Jewish religious literature over the centuries, primarily in mystical texts. Some sources in classical rabbinical literature seem to acknowledge the historical provenance of the currently used Hebrew alphabet and deal with them as a mundane subject ; others attribute mystical significance to the letters, connecting them with the process of creation or the redemption. In mystical conceptions, the alphabet is considered eternal, pre-existent to the Earth, and the letters themselves are seen as having holiness and power, sometimes to such an extent that several stories from the Talmud illustrate the idea that they cannot be destroyed.The idea of the letters' creative power finds its greatest vehicle in the Sefer Yezirah, or Book of Creation, a mystical text of uncertain origin which describes a story of creation highly divergent from that in the Book of Genesis, largely through exposition on the powers of the letters of the alphabet. The supposed creative powers of the letters are also referenced in the Talmud and Zohar.
Another book, the 13th-century Kabbalistic text Sefer HaTemunah, holds that a single letter of unknown pronunciation, held by some to be the four-pronged shin on one side of the teffilin box, is missing from the current alphabet. The world's flaws, the book teaches, are related to the absence of this letter, the eventual revelation of which will repair the universe. Another example of messianic significance attached to the letters is the teaching of Rabbi Eliezer that the five letters of the alphabet with final forms hold the "secret of redemption".
In addition, the letters occasionally feature in aggadic portions of non-mystical rabbinic literature. In such aggada the letters are often given anthropomorphic qualities and depicted as speaking to God. Commonly their shapes are used in parables to illustrate points of ethics or theology. An example from the Babylonian Talmud :
Extensive instructions about the proper methods of forming the letters are found in Mishnat Soferim, within Mishna Berura of Yisrael Meir Kagan.
Mathematical use
See aleph number and beth number and gimel function.In set theory,, pronounced aleph-naught or aleph-zero, is used to mark the cardinal number of an infinite countable set, such as, the set of all integers. More generally, the notation marks the ordered sequence of all distinct infinite cardinal numbers.
Less frequently used, the notation is used for the iterated power sets of. The 2nd element is the cardinality of the continuum. Very occasionally, gimel is used in cardinal notation.
Unicode and HTML
The Unicode Hebrew block extends from U+0590 to U+05FF and from U+FB1D to U+FB4F. It includes letters, ligatures, combining diacritical marks and punctuation. The Numeric Character References is included for HTML. These can be used in many markup languages, and they are often used in Wiki to create the Hebrew glyphs compatible with the majority of web browsers.Standard Hebrew keyboards have a 101-key layout. Like the standard QWERTY layout, the Hebrew layout was derived from the order of letters on Hebrew typewriters.
General
**
- —including Hebrew letters, sorted by shape
Keyboards
- – Virtual & Interactive Hebrew Keyboard
- – For typing Hebrew with an English keyboard
- Biblical Archaeology Review