Hebrew alphabet

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 (א), He (ה), Waw/Vav (ו), or Yodh (י) 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 (diacritics), 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 (e.g. אָ or יִ) or without (e.g. ע or י), 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 (נקודות‎, literally "points"). 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 (although these marks do not appear in the scrolls). In everyday writing of modern Hebrew, niqqud are absent; however, patterns of how words are derived from Hebrew roots (called shorashim or triliterals) 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 Hebrew script has five letters that have special final forms,^[c] called sofit (Hebrew: סופית, meaning in this context "final" or "ending") form, used only at the end of a word, somewhat as in the Greek or in the Arabic and Mandaic alphabets.^[b] These are shown below the normal form in the following table (letter names are Unicode standard). Although Hebrew is read and written from right to left, the following table shows the letters in order from left to right:

Order

As far back as the 13th century BCE, ancient Hebrew abecedaries indicate a slightly different ordering of the alphabet. The Zayit Stone, Izbet Sartah abecedary, and one inscription from Kuntillet Ajrud each contain a number of reverse letter orders; such as vav-he, chet-zayin, pe-ayin, etc.

A reversal to pe-ayin can be clearly seen in the Book of Lamentations, whose first four chapters are ordered as alphabetical acrostics. In the Masoretic Text, the first chapter has the now-usual ayin-pe ordering, and the second, third and fourth chapters exhibit pe-ayin. In the Dead Sea Scrolls version (4QLam/4Q111), reversed ordering also appears in the first chapter (i.e. in all the first four chapters). The fact that these chapters follow the pre-exilic pe-ayin order is evidence for them being written shortly after the events described, rather than being later, post-exilic compositions.

Pronunciation

Alphabet

The descriptions that follow are based on the pronunciation of modern standard Israeli Hebrew.

By analogy with the other dotted/dotless pairs, dotless tav, ת, would be expected to be pronounced /θ/ (voiceless dental fricative), and dotless dalet ד as /ð/ (voiced dental fricative), but these were lost among most Jews due to these sounds not existing in the countries where they lived (such as in nearly all of Eastern Europe). Yiddish modified /θ/ to /s/ (cf. seseo in Spanish), but in modern Israeli Hebrew, it is simply pronounced /t/. Likewise, historical /ð/ is simply pronounced /d/.

Shin and sin

Shin and sin are represented by the same letter, ש, 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.

Historically, left-dot-sin corresponds to Proto-Semitic *ś, which in biblical-Judaic-Hebrew corresponded to the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative (or /ś/).

Dagesh

Historically, the consonants ב bet, ג gimmel, ד daleth, כ kaf, פ pe and ת tav each had two sounds: one hard (plosive), and one soft (fricative), 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 (דגש), while the soft sounds lack a dagesh. In modern Hebrew, however, the dagesh only changes the pronunciation of ב bet, כ kaf, and פ pe, and does not affect the name of the letter. The differences are as follows:

In other dialects (mainly liturgical) 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 Krymchaki 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 sounds , , , written ⟨צ׳⟩, ⟨ג׳⟩, ⟨ז׳⟩, and , non-standardly sometimes transliterated ⟨וו⟩, are often found in slang and loanwords that are part of the everyday Hebrew colloquial vocabulary. The symbol resembling an apostrophe after the Hebrew letter modifies the pronunciation of the letter and is called a 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.

Geresh is also used to denote an abbreviation consisting of a single Hebrew letter, while gershayim (a doubled geresh) are used to denote acronyms pronounced as a string of letters; geresh and gershayim are also used to denote Hebrew numerals consisting of a single Hebrew letter or of multiple Hebrew letters, respectively. Geresh is also the name of a cantillation mark used for Torah recitation, though its visual appearance and function are different in that context.

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

Some of the variations in sound mentioned above are due to a systematic feature of Ancient Hebrew. The six consonants were pronounced differently depending on their position. These letters were also called BeGeD KeFeT letters . The full details are very complex; this summary omits some points. They were pronounced as plosives at the beginning of a syllable, or when doubled. They were pronounced as fricatives when preceded by a vowel (sometimes indicated with a macron, ḇ ḡ ḏ ḵ p̄ ṯ). The plosive and double pronunciations were indicated by the dagesh. In Modern Hebrew the sounds ḏ and ḡ have reverted to and , respectively, and ṯ has become , so only the remaining three consonants show variation. ר resh may have also been a "doubled" letter, making the list BeGeD KePoReT. (Sefer Yetzirah, 4:1)

• ח chet and ע ayin represented the pharyngeal fricatives and , respectively, צ tsadi represented the emphatic consonant , ט tet represented the emphatic consonant , and ק qof represented the uvular plosive . All these are common Semitic consonants.
• שׂ sin (the variant of ש shin) was originally different from both שׁ shin and ס samekh, but had become the same as ס 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 (the sound of modern Welsh ll) or the voiceless alveolar lateral affricate (like Náhuatl tl).

Regional and historical variation

The following table contains the pronunciation of the Hebrew letters in reconstructed historical forms and dialects using the International Phonetic Alphabet. The apostrophe-looking symbol after some letters is not a yud but a geresh. It is used for loanwords with non-native Hebrew sounds. The dot in the middle of some of the letters, called a dagesh kal, also modifies the sounds of the letters ב, כ and פ in modern Hebrew (in some forms of Hebrew it modifies also the sounds of the letters ג, ד and/or ת; the dagesh chazak – orthographically indistinguishable from the dagesh kal – designates gemination, which today is realized only rarely – e.g. in biblical recitations or when using Arabic loanwords).

1. velarized or pharyngealized
2. pharyngealized
3. sometimes said to be ejective but more likely glottalized.

Vowels

Matres lectionis

א alef, ע ayin, ו waw/vav and י yod are letters that can sometimes indicate a vowel instead of a consonant (which would be, respectively, ). When they do, ו and י are considered to constitute part of the vowel designation in combination with a niqqud symbol – a vowel diacritic (whether or not the diacritic is marked), whereas א 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 (waw/vav) is used since it can only be represented by that letter.

Meteg

By adding a vertical line (called Meteg) 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 (called sh'va) 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" (but in some instances, it makes the first letter silent without a vowel (vowel-less): e.g. וְ wè to "w").

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. ר״ת. Gershayim is also the name of a cantillation mark in the reading of the Torah, printed above the accented letter, e.g. א֞.

Stylistic variants

The following table displays typographic and chirographic variants of each letter. For the letters that have different forms in word-final position, the final forms are displayed beneath the regular forms.

The block (square, or print form) and cursive (handwritten form) are the only variants in widespread contemporary use. Rashi is also used, for historical reasons, in a handful of standard texts.

Yiddish symbols

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 BCE, 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 (e.g. שלב א׳, שלב ב׳ – "phase a, phase b"), commonly in Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism) in a practice known as gematria, and often in religious contexts.

The numbers 500, 600, 700, 800 and 900 are commonly represented by the juxtapositions ת״ק, ת״ר, ת״ש, ת״ת, and תת״ק 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.

Note: SBL's transliteration system, recommended in its Handbook of Style, differs slightly from the 2006 precise transliteration system of the Academy of the Hebrew Language; for ⟨צ⟩ SBL uses ⟨ṣ⟩ (≠ AHL ⟨ẓ⟩), and for בג״ד כפ״ת with no dagesh, SBL uses the same symbols as for with dagesh (i.e. ⟨b⟩, ⟨g⟩, ⟨d⟩, ⟨k⟩, ⟨f⟩, ⟨t⟩).

Notes

^{A1^2^3^4^}In transliterations of modern Israeli Hebrew, initial and final ע (in regular transliteration), silent or initial א, and silent ה are not transliterated. To the eye of readers orientating themselves on Latin (or similar) alphabets, these letters might seem to be transliterated as vowel letters; however, these are in fact transliterations of the vowel diacritics – niqqud (or are representations of the spoken vowels). E.g., in אִם ("if", ), אֵם ("mother", ) and אֹם ("nut", ), the letter א always represents the same consonant: (glottal stop), whereas the vowels , and 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 (whether or not their corresponding vowel diacritics appeared in the text being transliterated), resulting in "im", "em" and "om", respectively.

^{B1^2^3^}The diacritic geresh ⟨׳⟩ is used with some other letters as well (ד׳, ח׳, ט׳, ע׳, ר׳, ת׳), but only to transliterate from other languages to Hebrew – never to spell Hebrew words; therefore they were not included in this table (correctly translating a Hebrew text with these letters would require using the spelling in the language from which the transliteration to Hebrew was originally made). The non-standard ⟨ו׳⟩ and ⟨וו⟩ ^[e1] are sometimes used to represent , which like , and appears in Hebrew slang and loanwords.

^{C1^2^}The sound (as ⟨ch⟩ in loch) is often transcribed ⟨ch⟩, inconsistently with the guidelines specified by the Academy of the Hebrew Language: חם → "cham"; סכך → "schach".

^{D^}Although the Bible does include a single occurrence of a final pe with a dagesh (Book of Proverbs 30, 6: אַל-תּוֹסְףְּ עַל-דְּבָרָיו: פֶּן-יוֹכִיחַ בְּךָ וְנִכְזָבְתָּ.), in modern Hebrew is always represented by pe in its regular, not final, form פ, even when in word-final position, which occurs with loanwords (e.g. שׁוֹפּ "shop"), foreign names (e.g. פִילִיפּ "Philip") and some slang (e.g. חָרַפּ "slept deeply").

Religious use

The signet ring of God is "Emess" (Truth), which contains the first, middle, and last of the Hebrew Alphabet; for God is within everything, surrounds everything, and nothing is outside of Him

— Maggid of Mezeritch

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 (the Jerusalem Talmud, for example, records that "the Israelites took for themselves square calligraphy", and that the letters "came with the Israelites from Ashur [Assyria]"); 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 letters are connected with the planets of universe, the astrology, with all parts of human-body and their "cause-effect reactions", the Sefirot and the ways of spiritual and material life; so Bereshit Rabbah, the Midrash of Genesis, teaches that God did the world with his wisdom, that is the Torah with the letters of Hebrew. In Kabbalah all letters had the symbolic value that could be studied with trascendent exegesis, i.e. the "sod" of Pardes; the created things (mineral, vegetal, animal and human levels of this world) have hebrew names which conceal their essential nature, like the first man Adam who was knowing all names of all animals. 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 distinct 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 (a parable intended to discourage speculation about the universe before creation); there is a discussion about this in "Kabbalah-texts": this Creation was created at first time only with Genesis, not before. So great Rabbanim explain that God has to create the universe in a moment that we don’t know why… before or after. God has not time, that is a category of material world, so we cannot explain what is the reason of Creation not but for Glory of God. In any case God creates "Homer Hayiulì" before this Creation as part of all things, that is the Hyle:

Why does the story of creation begin with bet? ... In the same manner that the letter bet is closed on all sides and only open in front, similarly you are not permitted to inquire into what is before or what was behind, but only from the actual time of Creation.

— Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Hagigah, 77c

Extensive instructions about the proper methods of forming the letters are found in Mishnat Soferim, within Mishna Berura of Yisrael Meir Kagan.

Mathematical use

In set theory, ${\displaystyle {\mathrm{\aleph }}_0}$, pronounced aleph-naught, aleph-zero, or aleph-null, is used to mark the cardinal number of an infinite countable set, such as ${\displaystyle \mathbb{Z}}$, the set of all integers. More generally, the ${\displaystyle {\mathrm{\aleph }}_{\alpha }}$ aleph number notation marks the ordered sequence of all distinct infinite cardinal numbers.

Less frequently used, the ${\displaystyle {\beth }_{\alpha }}$ beth number notation is used for the iterated power sets of ${\displaystyle {\mathrm{\aleph }}_0}$. The second element ${\displaystyle {\beth }_1}$ is the cardinality of the continuum. Very occasionally, a gimel function 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 (Niqqud and cantillation 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.