Hebrew: Alphabet
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The Hebrew alphabet is a set of 22 letters used to write the Hebrew language. Hebrew is read from right to left. Hebrew orthography is highly phonetic, that is, a word's pronunciation is clearly defined by the way it is spelled.
The Hebrew word for "alphabet" is אלף-בית (alef-bet), named after the first two letters of the Hebrew alphabet.
Hebrew has two different systems for pronunciation. The Ashkenazi version is from eastern Europe. The Sephardic version is from Spain. The pronunciation given here is the modern Hebrew pronunciation used in Israel, which is based mostly on Sephardic Hebrew.
Diacritic Punctuation
Hebrew is written with vowels underneath the consonants. You pronounce the consonant sound first, then the vowel that is underneath it.
Some consonants make more than one sound. These different sounds are differentiated with diacritic punctuation, the dots and other marks that appear around consonants. For example, the letters Bet and Vet are different because of the dot (dagesh) inside the letter. The dagesh tends to make consonant sounds 'harder,' such as turning /v/ into /b/.
In printed material such as newspapers, Hebrew is written without any diacritic marks, including vowels. This may seem daunting at first, but as you learn vocabulary you will be surprised by how easily you can recognize words without vowels.
Final forms
Some letters appear differently when at the end of a word. It does not affect their pronounciation.
Consonants
Here, each consonant is shown in its own box. Each line contains the name of the letter in English, the actual letter, the transliteration used throughout the book and the IPA equivalent.
| Name | Letter | Transliteration | IPA | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aleph | א | - | - | One of two silent letters. Usually appears at the start of a syllable to make the syllable start with a vowel sound. |
| Bet | בּ | b | b | Sounds just like the English letter B. |
| Vet | ב | v | v | Sounds just like the English letter V. |
| Gimel | ג | g | ɡ | Sounds like a hard g as in give |
| Dalet | ד | d | d | Sounds like d as in dog. |
| He | ה | h | h | Sounds like the English letter H when it's in the beginning or middle of a word. At the end of a word, it is silent. |
| Vav | ו | v | v | Sounds like v as in vacuum. Also used to make a couple of vowel sounds. |
| Zayin | ז | z | z | Sounds like z as in zoo. |
| Het | ח | kh | χ | This is a sound that English doesn't have. It sounds like the ch in the German name Bach or in the Scottish word loch. It is the throat clearing guttural sound. |
| Tet | ט | t | t | Sounds like t as in tetris. |
| Yod | י | y | j | Sounds like y as in yard. It can also change the sound of the vowel that precedes it. |
| Kaf | כּ | k | k | Sounds like k as in kitten. |
| Kaf Final | ךּ | k | k | Rarely used (almost no words end with Kaf). |
| Khaf | כ | kh | x | Sounds just like Het, except that it isn't guttural. |
| Khaf Final | ך | kh | x | - |
| Lamed | ל | l | l | Sounds like l as in lamb. |
| Mem | מ | m | m | Sounds like m as in mother |
| Mem final | ם | m | m | - |
| Nun | נ | n | n | Sounds like n as in name. |
| Nun final | ן | n | n | - |
| Samech | ס | s | s | Sounds like s as in safe. |
| Ayin | ע | - | ʔ | A glottal stop. |
| Pe | פּ | p | p | Sounds like p as in port |
| Pe final | ףּ | p | p | - |
| Fe | פ | f | f | Sounds like f as in fame |
| Fe final | ף | f | f | |
| Tsadi | צ | tz | ʦ | Sounds like the zz in pizza. |
| Tsadi final | ץ | tz | ʦ | - |
| Qof | ק | k | k | Sounds like Kaf in modern Hebrew, but was originally pronounced with pressure in the throat ([q]). |
| Resh | ר | r | ɾ | Sounds like the letter R, but is not pronounced exactly the same as in English. At the beginning or in the middle of a word it is slightly rolled so that its sound is somewhere between the English "R" and the Spanish rolled "R". The tongue bounces off the roof of the mouth just once. (The Ashkenazi pronunciation is [ʁ].) |
| Shin | שׁ
or ש
|
sh | ʃ | Sounds like sh as in ship |
| Sin | שׂ | s | s | Sounds like s as in soon |
| Tav | ת | t | t | Sounds like t as in tomato |
Vowels
In the table below, vowel diacritics are explained in detail. Each line contains the name of the mark, an example of its usage (in combination with a sample consonant, the transliteration used in this wikibook and the IPA equivalent. (Notice that the khataf forms appear only under the gutteral letters א, ה, ח, ע.)
| Diacritic | Name | Transliteration | IPA | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| בָּ | kamatz | a | ə | The short "a" in "again." |
| בַּ | patach | " | " | " |
| עֲ | khataf patach | " | " | " |
| בֵּ | tsere | e | ɛ | The short "e" in "bet." |
| בֶּ | segol | " | " | " |
| אֱ | khataf segol | " | " | " |
| בּוֹ | cholam | o | oː | The long "o" in "stone" (as in American English but without the typical glide off—not, for instance, *[oʊ] or British *[əʊ]). |
| בֹּ | cholam khaser | " | " | " |
| בָּ | kamatz kattan | " | " | " |
| עֳ | khataf kamatz | a | ə | The short "a" in "again." |
| בִּי | chirik malei | i | i | The "i" in "machine" but shorter. |
| בֻּ | kubbutz | u | u | The "oo" in "boo." |
| בּוּ | shuruk | " | " | " |
| לְ | shva | ' | . or ɛˑ | Used as either a stop at the end of a syllable or as the "e" as in "bet" but very short. |
Exercises
Say each line out loud.
אֳ אֲ אֳ אֲ בָּ בָ בַ בַּ בָ בָּ אֲבּ אֲב אֳב אֲבָּא ←
גָ גַ גֶ גָ גֶ אֲג אֱג אֱבּ בֶּג גְאֲב גָבְּגָ ←
Quotes
Links
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