Hebrew › Introduction to Hebrew › The Alphabet · אלפבית עברי
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The Alphabet
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Notes on Alphabet[edit | edit source]Type of writing system: abjad Direction of writing: right to left in horizontal lines. Number of letters: 22 consonants, plus final letters and diacritics Used to write: Hebrew, Judeo-Arabic, Ladino, Yiddish and many other Jewish languages. Some letters (kaf, mem, nun, fe and tzadi) have a final form (sofit), which is used when they appear at the end of a word. There are no separate numerals in Hebrew, instead standard western numerals (1, 2, 3, etc) are used. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Consonants[edit | edit source]Most Hebrew consonants will present absolutely no problem to speakers of English or Romance languages as they are clear and do not vary. These consonants are:
There are four consonants in Hebrew in which their pronunciation varies. This variation cannot be identified from the text in "unpointed" spelling, but instead must be realized through context. These consonants are:
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Notes on Consonants[edit | edit source]Three of these consonants use a geresh to render sounds that are not native to Hebrew, but are used in the language as foreign words are adopted. They are:
Difficult Consonants Some Hebrew consonants will be difficult for the English speaker to pronounce. They are:
The /χ/ sound is not used in the English language. However, you may be familiar with the words Chaim, chutzpah, loch, Chanukah, achtung, or loch that all have the same sound. The letter is pronounced as a strong h in the back of your throat. Consonants that Sound-alike There are four pairs of consonants which sound alike and often present problems for the speller new to the language. They are:
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Vowels[edit | edit source]
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Notes on Vowels[edit | edit source]The letters of the Hebrew alphabet are consonantal. Vowels are mostly indicated by markings placed below or above these consonants. In Israel, Modern Hebrew texts are printed without these vowel markings which are often reserved for children's books, poetry, and liturgical pieces. That means that the correct pronunciation of every word must be learned and subsequently read from context. At first, this may seem near impossible. However, if you apply this practice to English you will soon realize it is indeed possible to read in such a way. Dn't gv p nw!
There are only five vowel sounds in Modern Hebrew and they are all pronounced fully like Italian. They are: a like in far, e like in less, o like in more, ee like in free, and oo like in food. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Semi-consonants also Acting as Vowels[edit | edit source]Alef (א) which can represent “a”, “i”, or “o” (as in “ראש” and “ראשון”)[edit | edit source]Heh (ה) which can represent “a” or “e”, but only at the end of a word (as in "אתה")[edit | edit source]Vav (ו) which can represent “o” or “u” (as in "שלום")[edit | edit source]Yod (י) which can represent “i” (as in "שיר")[edit | edit source] |
Final Letters[edit | edit source]In Hebrew, five letters appear differently when they occur at the end of a word. They are:
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Punctuation
[edit | edit source]Modern Israeli Hebrew uses the same punctuation as English, though Biblical Hebrew has only a colon to represent the end of a sentence.
Numerals
[edit | edit source]Israeli Hebrew, which is the subject of this book, uses the regular 0-9 characters to represent numbers. Very rarely it uses the old representation, the use of letters as numerals, called Gematria.