Hebrew alphabet
Script type	Abjad
Time period	2nd–1st century BCE to present[1]
Direction	right-to-left script
Official script	Israel
Languages	Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino, Mozarabic, Levantine Arabic, Aramaic, other Jewish languages
Related scripts
Parent systems	Egyptian hieroglyphs Proto-Sinaitic script Phoenician alphabet Aramaic alphabet Hebrew alphabet
Child systems	Yiddish alphabet Square Maalouli alphabet
Sister systems	Nabataean Syriac Palmyrene Edessan Hatran Elymaic Mandaic Pahlavi Kharosthi
ISO 15924
ISO 15924	Hebr (125), ​Hebrew
Unicode
Unicode alias	Hebrew
Unicode range	U+0590 to U+05FF Hebrew, U+FB1D to U+FB4F Alphabetic Presentation Forms

The Hebrew alphabet (Hebrew: אָלֶף־בֵּית עִבְרִי,^[a] Alefbet ivri), known variously by scholars as the Ktav Ashuri, Jewish script, square script and block script, is traditionally an abjad script used in the writing of the Hebrew language and other Jewish languages, most notably Yiddish, Ladino, Judeo-Arabic, and Judeo-Persian. In modern Hebrew, vowels are increasingly introduced. It is also used informally in Israel to write Levantine Arabic, especially among Druze.^[2][3][4] It is an offshoot of the Imperial Aramaic alphabet, which flourished during the Achaemenid Empire and which itself derives from the Phoenician alphabet.

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 (lit. "Assyrian script"), since its origins were alleged to be from Assyria.^[5]

Various "styles" (in current terms, "fonts") 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 י ו ה א 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 consonant-only spellings.

The Arabic and Hebrew alphabets have similarities because they are both derived from the Aramaic alphabet, which in turn derives either from paleo-Hebrew or the Phoenician alphabet, both being slight regional variations of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet used in ancient times to write the various Canaanite languages (including Hebrew, Moabite, Phoenician, Punic, et cetera).

History

Paleo-Hebrew alphabet containing 22 letters, period, geresh, and gershayim

The Aleppo Codex, a tenth century Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible. Book of Joshua 1:1

The Canaanite dialects were largely indistinguishable before around 1000 BCE.^[6] An example of related early Semitic inscriptions from the area include the tenth-century Gezer calendar over which scholars are divided as to whether its language is Hebrew or Phoenician and whether the script is Proto-Canaanite or paleo-Hebrew.^{[7][8][9][10][11][12]}

A Hebrew variant of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, called the paleo-Hebrew alphabet by scholars, began to emerge around 800 BCE.^[13] An example is the Siloam inscription (c. 700 BCE).^[14]

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 (the Babylonian captivity), Jews began using a form of the Imperial Aramaic alphabet, another offshoot of the same family of scripts, which flourished during the Achaemenid Empire. 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 (and which in turn had been adopted from the Assyrians),^[15] 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

Pronunciation

Vowels

Matres lectionis

Main article: Mater 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, /ʔ/, /ʕ/, /v/ and /j/). 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.

Letter	Name of letter	Consonant indicated when letter consonantal	Vowel designation	Name of vowel designation	Indicated Vowel
א‎	alef	/ʔ/	—	—	ê, ệ, ậ, â, ô
ע‎	ayin	/ʔ/ or /ʕ/	—	—	ê, ệ, ậ, â, ô
ו‎	waw/vav	/w/ or /v/	וֹ‎	ḥolám malé	ô
			וּ‎	shurúq	û
י‎	yud	/j/	ִ י‎	ḥiríq malé	î
			ֵ י‎	tseré malé	ê, ệ

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, /i e a o u/, but many more written symbols for them:

Name	Symbol	Written Position	Israeli Hebrew
			IPA	Transliteration	English example
Hiriq		vowel written below consonant	[i]	i	meet
Tsere		vowel written below consonant	[e̞], ([e̞j] with succeeding yod)	eh (precise pronunciation); ei (imprecise due to modern pronunciation, even if with succeeding yod – see Note 2)	bed, penguin
Segol		vowel written below consonant	[e̞]	e	men
Patach		vowel written below consonant	[ä]	a	father
Kamatz		vowel written below consonant	[ä], (or [o̞])	ah, (or oh)	father, loɡin
Holam Haser		vowel written above consonant	[o̞]	o	home
Holam Male	וֹ‎	isolated vowel written on its own
Shuruk	וּ‎	isolated vowel written on its own	[u]	u	food
Kubutz		vowel written below consonant

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.^[22]
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

Main article: 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

Main article: 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")

Name	Symbol	Israeli Hebrew
		IPA	Transliteration	English example
Shva		[e̞] or ∅	apostrophe, e, or silent	met or silent
Reduced Segol		[e̞]	e	met
Reduced Patach		[ä]	a	cat
Reduced Kamatz		[o̞]	o	on

Comparison table

Vowel comparison table ^[23]

Vowel length (phonetically not manifested in Israeli Hebrew)			IPA	Transliteration	English example
Long	Short	Very Short
ָ ‎	ַ ‎	ֲ ‎	[ä]	a	fall
ֵ ‎	ֶ ‎	ֱ ‎	[e̞]	e	men
וֹ ‎	ֹ ‎	ֳ ‎	[o̞]	o	joke
וּ‎	ֻ ‎		[u]	u	duty
ִ י ‎	ִ ‎		[i]	i	media
Note I:		By adding two vertical dots (sh'va) ְ ‎ the vowel is made very short.
Note II:		The short o and long a have the same niqqud.
Note III:		The short o is usually promoted to a long o in Israeli writing for the sake of disambiguation
Note IV:		The short u is usually promoted to a long u in Israeli writing for the sake of disambiguation

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

Letter name (Unicode)	Variants
	Contemporary			Early modern	Ancestral
	Block serif	Block sans-serif	Cursive	Rashi	Phoenician	Paleo-Hebrew	Aramaic
Alef	א	א			𐤀
Bet	ב	ב			𐤁
Gimel	ג	ג			𐤂
Dalet	ד	ד			𐤃
He	ה	ה			𐤄
Vav (Unicode)[16] / Waw	ו	ו			𐤅
Zayin	ז	ז			𐤆
Chet	ח	ח			𐤇
Tet	ט	ט			𐤈
Yod	י	י			𐤉
Kaf	כ	כ			𐤊
Final Kaf	ך	ך
Lamed	ל	ל			𐤋
Mem	מ	מ			𐤌
Final Mem	ם	ם
Nun	נ	נ			𐤍
Final Nun	ן	ן
Samekh	ס	ס			𐤎
Ayin	ע	ע			𐤏
Pe	פ	פ			𐤐
Final Pe	ף	ף
Tsadi	צ	צ			𐤑		,
Final Tsadi	ץ	ץ
Qof	ק	ק			𐤒
Resh	ר	ר			𐤓
Shin	ש	ש			𐤔
Tav	ת	ת			𐤕

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,^[24] 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 lower clock on the Jewish Town Hall building in Prague, with Hebrew numerals in counterclockwise order.

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.

Note: SBL's transliteration system, recommended in its Handbook of Style,^[25] 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", [ʔim]), אֵם ("mother", [ʔe̞m]) and אֹם ("nut", [ʔo̞m]), the letter א always represents the same consonant: [ʔ] (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  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 /w/, which like /d͡ʒ/, /ʒ/ and /t͡ʃ/ appears in Hebrew slang and loanwords.

^{C1^ 2^} The Sound /χ/ (as "ch" in loch) is often transcribed "ch", inconsistently with the guidelines specified by the Academy of the Hebrew Language: חם /χam/ → "cham"; סכך /sχaχ/ → "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 /p/ is always represented by pe in its regular, not final, form "פ", even when in final word position, which occurs with loanwords (e.g. שׁוֹפּ /ʃop/ "shop"), foreign names (e.g. פִילִיפּ /ˈfilip/ "Philip") and some slang (e.g. חָרַפּ /χaˈrap/ "slept deeply").

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 (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]");^[27] 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.^[28]

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.^[29][30]

The four-pronged Shin

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.^[31] 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".^[31]

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.

Mathematical use

In set theory, ${\displaystyle \aleph _{0}}$, pronounced aleph-naught or aleph-zero, 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 ${\displaystyle \aleph _{\alpha }}$ 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 ${\displaystyle \aleph _{0}}$. 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

An example of a Hebrew keyboard.

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.^[16] 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.

See also

• Hebrew braille
• Hebrew diacritics
• Cursive Hebrew
• Hebrew punctuation
• Hebrew spelling
• Help:Hebrew
• Inverted nun
• Koren Type
• Ktiv hasar niqqud ("spelling lacking niqqud")
• Significance of numbers of Judaism

Notes

^{a^} "Alef-bet" is commonly written in Israeli Hebrew without the maqaf (מקף, "[Hebrew] hyphen"), אלפבית עברי, as opposed to with the hyphen, אלף־בית עברי.

^{b^} The Arabic letters generally (as six of the primary letters can have only two variants) have four forms, according to their place in the word. The same goes with the Mandaic ones, except for three of the 22 letters, which have only one form.

^{c^} In forms of Hebrew older than Modern Hebrew, כ״ף, בי״ת and פ״א can only be read b, k and p, respectively, at the beginning of a word, while they will have the sole value of v, kh and f in a sofit (final) position, with few exceptions.^[20] In medial positions, both pronunciations are possible. In Modern Hebrew this restriction is not absolute, e.g. פִיזִיקַאי /fiziˈkaj/ and never /piziˈkaj/ (= "physicist"), סְנוֹבּ /snob/ and never /snov/ (= "snob"). A dagesh may be inserted to unambiguously denote the plosive variant: בּ = /b/, כּ = /k/, פּ =/p/; similarly (though today very rare in Hebrew and common only in Yiddish) a rafé placed above the letter unambiguously denotes the fricative variant: בֿ = /v/, כֿ = /χ/ and פֿ = /f/. In Modern Hebrew orthography, the sound [p] at the end of a word is denoted by the regular form "פ", as opposed to the final form "ף", which always denotes [f] (see table of transliterations and transcriptions, comment^[D]).

^{d^} However, וו (two separate vavs), used in Ktiv male, is to be distinguished from the Yiddish ligature װ (also two vavs but together as one character).

^{e1^ e2^ e3^ e4^ e5^} The Academy of the Hebrew Language states that both [v] and [w] be indistinguishably represented in Hebrew using the letter Vav.^[26] Sometimes the Vav is indeed doubled, however not to denote [w] as opposed to [v] 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 [w], Hebrew readers must therefore rely on former knowledge and context.

Explanatory footnotes

References

Bibliography

•  Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar, §5 ff.
• Hoffman, Joel M. 2004. In the Beginning: A Short History of the Hebrew Language. New York: New York University Press.
• Saenz-Badillos, Angel. 1993. A History of the Hebrew Language. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
• Steinberg, David. History of the Hebrew Language.
• Mathers table

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Hebrew alphabet.