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Hebrew: Hebrew Alphabet
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Learning to Read Hebrew is a comprehensive Hebrew study course to teach all aspects of Hebrew reading. Learn the Hebrew alphabet and how to combine the letters to form words and phrases.
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The Aleph Bet, the Hebrew Alphabet, has 22 letters (five of which appear in a different form at the end of a word) which are all consonants. Hebrew is written from right to left. During the years a system of vowels called nikud were added, but these are mostly seen in school books and prayer books. Newspapers, signs, magazines and most other printed materials in Israel today do not use nikud.
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During the exile to Babylon (6th century BCE), the Hebrews started to use the Aramaic language and script, using Old Hebrew mostly in the religious writing. In later periods, Old Hebrew was sometimes inscribed on coins as a tool for Hebrew nationalism. The Old Hebrew alphabet ceased to be used at all by the 1st century CE.
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The Hebrew and Yiddish languages use a different alphabet than English. The picture below illustrates the Hebrew alphabet, in Hebrew alphabetical order. Note that Hebrew is written from right to left, rather than left to right as in English, so Alef is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet and Tav is the last. The Hebrew alphabet is often called the "alefbet," because of its first two letters.
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Hebrew is written from right to left. The Hebrew alphabet of twenty-two letters (five of which have a different form when they appear at the end of a word) consists entirely of consonants. Thus the word shabbat (sabbath) appears as the Hebrew equivalents of "sh", "b", and "t" - written from right to left. The lack of vowels meant it was hard to know how to pronounce a word by seeing how it was written. About the 8th century a system developed for indicating vowels through the use of small dots and dashes placed above and below the consonants. Vowels are used today in school books and prayer books, but they are not used in newspapers, magazines, or general books.
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The Hebrew language is normally written in the Hebrew alphabet. Due to publishing difficulties, and the unfamiliarity of many readers with the alphabet, there are many ways of transcribing Hebrew into Roman letters. The only method which is strictly accurate is the International Phonetic Alphabet. It is used (in a simplified ASCII form) in the section concerned with Phonology, to describe the sounds of the Hebrew language. However, the IPA is quite obscure and redundant when it comes to transcribing the words of a single language to a general audience. Therefore the system that this article will feature will try to restore the sound of Hebrew, and at least some orthographic peculiarities.
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Hebrew Alphabet