The
Hebrew alphabet (,
Alephbet 'Ivri), known variously by scholars
as the
Jewish script,
square script,
block script, and because of its place of origin, the
Assyrian script (not to be confused with the
Syriac alphabet used to write the
Aramaic languages of
Syriac and
Assyrian Neo-Aramaic) is the better-known of two script standards used to write the
Hebrew language — the other being the
Samaritan script. It consists of 22 letters and, in mildly adapted forms, is also used for writing several languages of the
Jewish diaspora, most notably
Yiddish,
Ladino, and
Judeo-Arabic, as well as other
Jewish languages. Five of these letters have a different form when appearing as the last letter in a word. The Hebrew alphabet is
written from right to left, not only when writing Hebrew, but all Jewish languages that employ it, irrespective of the language's actual
phylogenetic language family.
The Hebrew word for "
alphabet" is
alephbet (אלפבית), and it is derived from the first two letters of the Hebrew alphabet;
Aleph and
Bet. The Hebrew alphabet is not a true
alphabet, it is in fact an
abjad, having letters only for
consonants. Like other abjads such as the
Arabic alphabet, means were later devised to indicate vowels by separate vowel points, known in Hebrew as
niqqud. In rabbinic Hebrew, the consonant letters אהוי are used as
matres lectionis to represent vowels. 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.
According to contemporary scholars
, the Hebrew alphabet described in this article is a stylized form of the
Aramaic alphabet, from which it descends and evolved from during the
3rd century BCE. Prior to this, Hebrew was written in the
Paleo-Hebrew alphabet by the ancient Israelites, both Jews and Samaritans. It began to fall out of use by the
Jews in the 5th century BCE when they adopted the
Aramaic script of the
Persian Empire (they in turn adopted the alphabet from the
Arameans, forgoing the
Old Persian cuneiform script, but have since then adopted the
Perso-Arabic script), retaining the old script for a limited time thereafter only for the
Tetragrammaton (the Name of God). The
Samaritans, who now number less than one thousand people, have continued to use the Old Hebrew alphabet until today. The
Samaritan script descends directly from the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet, however, because of the numerical advantage of Jews, it is Jewish script herein that is normatively called the "Hebrew alphabet." For other opinions, see below.
History
300px|left|thumb|[[Aleppo Codex: 10th century CE
Hebrew Bible with
Masoretic pointing. Text of
Joshua 1:1]]
According to contemporary scholars, 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 a distinct Hebrew variant, the
original "Hebrew script", emerged around the 10th century BCE, and was widely used in the ancient kingdoms of
Israel and
Judah until they fell in the
8th and 6th centuries BCE, respectively. But it is not straightforward 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 original Hebrew script, and instead adopted the
Aramaic script, which was another offshoot of the same family of scripts. The
Samaritan script, used for writing Hebrew by the
Samaritans, is descended directly from the original Hebrew script. The Aramaic script, as used for writing Hebrew by Jews, later evolved into the Jewish, or "square" script, that is still used and known today as the "Hebrew alphabet". 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 the languages of the
Jewish diaspora (
Karaim,
Judæo-Arabic,
Ladino,
Yiddish, etc.). The Hebrew alphabet was retained as the alphabet used for writing the
Hebrew language during its rebirth in the 18th to 19th century.
In Jewish Religion
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 provenence 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 supposed creative powers of the letters are also referenced in the Talmud and
Zohar.
thumb|left|200px|The four-pronged Shin.Another book, the thirteenth-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.
[The Book of Letters. Woodstock, Vermont: Jewish Lights Publishing, Woodstock. 1990] 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 (a parable intended to discourage speculation about the universe before creation):
Extensive instructions about the proper methods of forming the letters are found in Mishnat Soferim, within
Mishna Berura of
Yisrael Meir Kagan.
Description
thumb|[[Pseudo-Kufic|Pseudo-Hebrew script on the
bustier of
Jan van Scorel's
Maria Magdalena, 1530.]]
In its traditional usage in
Hebrew (as opposed to
Yiddish and to some extent modern
Israeli Hebrew), the Hebrew alphabet is an abjad:
vowels are normally not indicated. Where they are, it is because a weak
consonant such as
aleph,
hey,
vav, or
yod has combined with a previous vowel and become silent, or by imitation of such cases in the spelling of other forms. When used to write
Yiddish,
all vowels are indicated, using certain letters, either with or without
niqqud-diacritics (e.g., respectively: "אָ", "יִ" or "י", "ע", see
Yiddish orthography), 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 vocalisation and diacritical symbols called
niqqud (, 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), called "trope". In everyday writing of modern Hebrew,
niqqud are absent; however, patterns of how words are derived from Hebrew roots (called shorashim, or
triliteral 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.
Both the old Hebrew script and the modern Hebrew script have only one
case, but some
letters have special
final forms, called
sofit (
Heb. סופית, meaning in this case "final" or "ending") form, used only at the end of a word, somewhat as in the
Arabic and
Mandaic alphabets. As can be seen in the tables given here, only five letters have a
sofit form: ך → כ (
kaph and
khaph), ם → מ (
mem), ן → נ (
nun), ף → פ (
pe and
phe), ץ → צ (
tsadi or
tsade). These are shown below the normal form, in the following table.
Note: The chart reads from right to left.Pronunciation of letter names
See
Hebrew phonology and
Yiddish phonology for phonetic guides to the phonemic transcriptions.
Orthographic variants
The following table displays orthographic 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 three lettering variants currently in use are block, cursive and Rashi. Block and Rashi are used in books. Block lettering dominates, with Rashi lettering typically used for certain editorial inserts (as in the glosses of Isserles to the Shulchan Aruch) or biblical commentaries (as in the commentary of Rashi) in various standard literary works. Cursive is used almost exclusively when handwriting, unless block lettering is desired for stylistic purposes (as in signage).
For additional ancestral scripts, see
Ancestral scripts and script variants.
Yiddish symbols
Numeric values of letters
Hebrew letters are also used to denote numbers, nowadays 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 often 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 5769 is portrayed as ה׳תשס״ט, where ה represents 5000, and תשס״ט represents 769.
Transliterations and Transcriptions of Hebrew Letters
Main articles: Romanization of Hebrew, Hebrew phonologyThe following table lists transliterations and transcriptions of Hebrew
letters used in
Modern Hebrew. For Hebrew
vowel diacritics, see
niqqud; for the phonology of Biblical Hebrew, see
Biblical Hebrew; for the
Yiddish language, see
Yiddish orthography and
Yiddish phonology.
Clarifications:
- For some letters, the Academy of the Hebrew Language offers a precise transliteration which 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 than 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[See online overview at ], differs slightly from the 2006
precise transliteration system of the Academy of the Hebrew Language; for "
ו" SBL uses "v" (≠ AHL "w"), for "
צ" SBL uses "" (≠ AHL ""), 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").
(1)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 /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
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.
(2) The
diacritic geresh – "׳" – is used with some other letters as well (ד׳, ח׳, ט׳, ע׳, ר׳, ת׳, see
geresh), 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 (i.e., inconsistently with the guidelines specified by the
Academy of the Hebrew Language) "ו׳" and "וו" are sometimes used to represent , which like , and appears in Hebrew slang and loanwords. However, the guidelines of the Academy of the Hebrew Language specify that and be indistinguishably represented by "ו" (
vav); see
Hebrew Vav for the orthographic variants of vav.
(3)The Sound (as "ch" in
loch) is often transcribed "ch", inconsistently with the guidelines specified by the
Academy of the Hebrew Language: "cham"; "schach".
(4)"ךּ" (final kaf with dagesh) is rare but exists, e.g. last word in
Deuteronomy 7 1 (דברים פרק ז׳ פסוק א׳) in the word "
מִמֶּךָּ"
When representing ,
pe is always written in its regular, not final, form "פ", even when in final word position, which occurs with loanwords (e.g. שׁוֹפּ
"shop"), foreign names (e.g. פִילִיפּ
"Philip") and some slang (e.g. חָרַפּ
"slept deeply").
Pronunciation
The descriptions that follow are based on the pronunciation of modern standard Israeli Hebrew. For a concise summary, see the article International Phonetic Alphabet for Hebrew. For further information on regional and historical variations in pronunciation, see Hebrew phonology.
Shin and sin
Shin and
sin are represented by the same letter, , but are two separate
phonemes. They are not mutually
allophonic. 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 *, which in biblical-Judaic-Hebrew corresponded to a
voiceless alveolar lateral fricative , as is evident in Greek transliteration of Hebrew words such as
Balsam (בוֹשׂם)(the
ls - 'שׂ') as is evident in the
Targum Onkelos. Rendering of proto-semitic * as , is still evident in the
Soqotri language.
Dagesh
Historically, the consonants
bet,
beis,
gimel,
dalet,
kaf,
kof,
pe,
pey, and
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 (), while the soft sounds lack a
dagesh. In modern Hebrew, however, the
dagesh only changes the pronunciation of
bet,
kaf,
pe, and
tav (
tav only changes in Ashkenazi (sof) and Yemenite pronunciations).
* Only in Ashkenazi pronunciations. In Israeli Hebrew, it is always a tav, with a sound.
** The letters gimmel () and dalet () also have dagesh (dotted) forms, but these do not differ phonetically from the forms without the dagesh in most of the Modern Hebrew dialects. Israeli Hebrew also exhibits no phonetic distinction between tav () with or without a dagesh. Identical pronunciation
In
Israel's general population, many consonants have the same pronunciation. They are:
* VaryinglyAncient 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
BeGeDKePHeT letters ( in English). (The full details are very complex; this summary omits some points.) They were pronounced as
stops at the beginning of a syllable, or when doubled. They were pronounced as
fricatives when preceded by a vowel (commonly indicated with a macron, ). The stop and double pronunciations were indicated by the
dagesh. In Modern Hebrew the sounds and have reverted to and , respectively, and has become , so only the remaining three consonants show variation. "reish" may have also been a "doubled" letter, making the list
BeGeD KePoReS and also rendering Hebrew one of the only languages to possess two 'r' sounds. (
Sefer Yetzirah, 4:1, this depends on the antiquity of this book.)
- vav was a semivowel (as in English, not as in German).
Vowels
Matres lectionis
aleph,
he,
vav and
yod are letters that can sometimes indicate a vowel instead of a consonant (which would be, repectively, ). When they do, and 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 and are considered to be mute, their role being purely indicative of the non-marked vowel.
Vowel points
Niqqud is the system of dots the 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 Ⅰ: The symbol "O" represents whatever Hebrew letter is used.
Note Ⅰ: The zeire is pronounced correctly as ei in modern Hebrew.
Note Ⅱ: The dagesh, mappiq, and shuruk have different functions, even though they look the same.
Note Ⅲ: The letter ו (vav) is used since it can only be represented by that letter.Sh'va
By adding two vertical dots (called
Sh'va) underneath the letter, the vowel is made very short.
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. Gershayim is also the name of a note of
cantillation in the reading of the
Torah, printed above the accented letter.
Sounds represented with diacritic geresh
The sounds , , , written "", "", "", and , non-standardly sometimes transliterated or
, are often found in slang and loanwords that are part of the everyday Hebrew colloquial vocabulary. The apostrophe-looking symbol after the Hebrew letter modifies the pronunciation of the letter and is called a
geresh. (As mentioned above, while still done, using to represent is non-standard; standard spelling rules allow no usage of whatsoever.
[ issued by the Academy of the Hebrew Language states that both and be indistinguishably represented in Hebrew using the letter Vav. Sometimes the Vav is indeed doubled, however not to denote as opposed to but rather, when spelling without niqqud, to denote the phoneme /v/ at a non-initial and non-final position in the word, whereas a single Vav at a non-initial and non-final position in the word in spelling without niqqud denotes one of the phonemes /u/ or /o/. To pronounce foreign words and loanwords containing the sound , Hebrew readers must therefore rely on former knowledge and context, see also pronunciation of Hebrew Vav.])
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 only represent sounds in foreign words or names when transliterated with the Hebrew alphabet, and never
loanwords.
A
geresh is also used to denote
initialisms 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.
Unicode and HTML
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. 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.
See also
