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The Hebrew alphabet is a set of 22 letters used for writing the Hebrew language. Five of these letters have a different form when appearing as the last letter in a word. The Hebrew letters are used in mildly adapted forms for writing several languages of the Jewish diaspora, most famously Yiddish, Ladino, and Judaeo-Arabic (for a full and detailed list, see Jewish languages). Hebrew is written from right to left. The Hebrew word for "alphabet" is אלף-בית (alef-bet), named after the first two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The Hebrew alphabet was in origin an abjad; in other words it had letters for consonants only, but means were later devised to indicate vowels, first by using consonant letters as matres lectionis, later by separate vowel points or nikud. The number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet, their order, their names, and their phonetic values are virtually identical to those of the Aramaic alphabet, as both Hebrews and Arameans borrowed the Phoenician alphabet for their uses during the end of the 2nd millennium BC. The modern script used for writing Hebrew (usually called the Jewish script by scholars, and also traditionally known as the square script, block script, or Assyrian script — not to be confused with the Eastern variant of the Syriac alphabet) evolved during the 3rd century BC from the Aramaic script, which was used by Jews for writing Hebrew since the 6th century BC. Prior to that, Hebrew was written using the old '''Hebrew script''', which evolved during the 10th century BC from the Phoenician script; the Samaritans still write Hebrew in a variant of this script for religious works (see Samaritan alphabet).
Short table The Hebrew alphabet consists of the following letters. Five letters have a different form (known as the Sofit form) at the ends of words: these are shown in the table below the normal form. Description Both the old Hebrew script and the modern Hebrew script have only one case, but in the modern script some letters have special final forms used only at the end of a word. This is similar to the Arabic alphabet, although much simpler. The Hebrew alphabet is an abjad: vowels are normally not indicated. Where they are it is because a weak consonant such as א alef, ה hey, ו vav, or י yod has combined with a previous vowel and become silent or by imitation of such cases in spelling of other forms. When used to write Yiddish, the Hebrew writing system is a true alphabet (see Yiddish orthography), except where Hebrew words are written in Yiddish. To preserve the proper vowel sounds, scholars developed several different sets of diacritic symbols called nikud (ניקוד; literally: "applying 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 used to indicate how scriptural passages should be chanted, used in synagogue recitations of scripture (although these marks do not appear in the scrolls). Hebrew letters may also be used as numbers; see the entry on Hebrew numerals. This use of letters as numbers is used in Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism) in a practice known as gematria. Main table The following table is a breakdown of each letter in the Hebrew alphabet, describing its written glyph or glyphs, its name or names, its Latin script transliteration values used in academic work, and its pronunciation in reconstructed historical forms and dialects using the International Phonetic Alphabet. If two glyphs are shown for a letter, then the left-most glyph is the Final form of the letter (or right-most glyph if your browser doesn't support right-to-left text layout). Name and transliteration Numerical value and pronunciation Notes ---- Vowel formation Some of the letters, as well as their consonantal function, also acted as matres lectionis to represent vowels, as follows: Vowels and consonants in Ancient Hebrew Some of the variations in sound mentioned above are due to a systematic feature of Ancient Hebrew. The six consonants /p t k b d g/ were pronounced differently depending on their position. These letters were also called BeGeDKePHeT (pronounced ) letters. (The full details are very complex; this summary omits some points.) They were pronounced as stops p t k b d g at the beginning of a syllable, or when doubled. They were pronounced as fricatives — IPA when preceded by a vowel. The stop and double pronunciations were indicated by the dagesh. In Modern Hebrew the sounds and have reverted to d and g respectively, and has become t, so only the remaining three consonants /b k p/ show variation. ו vav was a semivowel /w/ (as in English, not as in German). ח het and ע ayin were pharyngeal fricatives, צ tsadi was an emphatic /s/, ט tet was an emphatic /t/, and ק qof was /q/. All these are common Semitic consonants. שׂ sin (the /s/ variant of ש shin) was originally different from both שׁ shin and ס samekh, but had become /s/ 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 IPA the fricative (as in Welsh ll) or the affricate (as in Náhuatl tl). History The original Hebrew script developed alongside others in the region during the course of the late second and first millennia BCE; it is closely related to the Phoenician script, which itself probably gave rise to the use of alphabetic writing in Greece (Greek). It is sometimes claimed that around the 10th century BCE, a distinct Hebrew variant, the original "Hebrew script", emerged, which was widely used in the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah until they fell in the 8th and 6th centuries BCE, respectively. It is not straightforward, however, to distinguish Israelite/Judahite scripts from others which were in use in the immediate area, most notably by the Moabites and Ammonites. Following the Babylonian exile, Jews gradually stopped using the Hebrew script, and instead adopted the Aramaic script (another offshoot of the same family of scripts). This script, used for writing Hebrew, later evolved into the Jewish, or "square" script, that is still used today. Closely related scripts were in use all over the Middle East for several hundred years, but following the rise of Christianity (and later, the rise of Islam), they gave way to the Roman and Arabic alphabets, respectively. The Hebrew alphabet was later adapted in order to write down the languages of the Jewish diaspora (Karaim, Judæo-Arabic, Ladino, Yiddish, etc.). The Hebrew alphabet was retained as the alphabet used for writing down the Hebrew language during its rebirth in the 18th to 19th century, despite several unsuccessful attempts to replace it with the Latin alphabet. Possible linguistic origins The familiar, "square" script used for Hebrew was developed originally for Aramaic, although it was already being used for Hebrew in the last few centuries BCE: Hebrew inscriptions from an earlier period use the rather different archaic script. Like other alphabetic scripts from the region, these derive ultimately from a system which was probably inspired by features of the Egyptian hieroglyphic script, and developed in the late second millennium BCE. The original pictographic aspects of the alphabet are noted in a much later list, which mixes some aspects which are probably historical with others which are quite fanciful, Mathers table, appearing in a Kabbalistic book, The Kabbalah Unveiled (an English translation of Christian Knorr von Rosenroth's Latin translation of The Kabbalah Denudata — a version of the Zohar, a primary Kabbalistic text.): Remember: There is technically no "f" or "j" in Hebrew. The "f" proximity is a soft "p" like "ph" and "j" is a derivative of the "y" or "Yuh" sound. The following sources were used in creating the previous compilation additions: Hebrew Word Pictures, Frank T. Seekins, Living Word Pictures Inc, Phoenix Arizona, 1994 The Inner Meaning of the Hebrew Letters, Robert Haralock The Wisdom of the Hebrew Alphabet, Rabbi Michael Munk How the Hebrew Language Grew, Edward Horowitz Honey from the Rock, Lawrence Kushner The Secrets of Hebrew Words, Benjamin Bleck and extended studies at Austin, TX Tzion MJC, and JewFaq.org More details on Hidden Meanings of the Letters: http://www.inner.org/HEBLETER/HEBLETRS.HTM Unicode table The Unicode Hebrew block extends from U+0590 to U+05FF and from U+FB1D to U+FB40. It includes letters, ligatures, combining diacritical marks (niqqud and cantillation marks) and punctuation. Note: The ligature characters װ ױ ײ are intended for Yiddish. They are not used in Hebrew. HTML Code Table These are the Hebrew Numeric Character References. 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. Alef-Bet Vowels and Unique Characters See also | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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