This post is also a video available on YouTube.
In this post we will go through the Hebrew alphabet. The letters of the Hebrew alphabet function primarily as consonants. A few of them sometimes act as vowels as well. But for the most part vowel sounds are written in another way than with letters. We’ll cover the vowels in another video. The letters of the Hebrew alphabet are related to the letters of many other alphabets like English, Spanish, Latin, and Greek. Even the order of the letters is almost the same in each language. For example, the Greek letters alpha, beta, gamma, delta, have the same order as the Hebrew letters aleph, bet, gimmel, dalet.
With each of the letters I’ll say the sound that it makes. Two letters, aleph and ayin, are silent as consonants. Some of the letters have different ways that they can be pronounced. Some of the letters were pronounced differently in Biblical times. One notable example is vav or waw, which made a ‘w’ sound rather than a ‘v’ sound. I’ll use modern Hebrew pronunciation, which is a very common way to read even Biblical Hebrew.
Some of the letters also have different forms. Most importantly, some letters are written differently if they come at the end of a word. These include: kaph, mem, nun, pey, and tsade. In the video I’ll show the final form of such letters on the left and the other form on the right. There’s also something called a dagesh in Hebrew, which can be present or absent in some letters. Such letters are pronounced differently with a dagesh and without a dagesh. These letters are bet, gimmel, dalet, khaf, pey, and tau. But I’m not going to get into that in this video.
Here are the letters of the Hebrew alphabet:
א – aleph
Silent
ב – bet
b,v
ג – , gimmel
g
ד – dalet
d
ה – hey
h
ו – vav
v
ז – zayin
z
ח – chet
kh
ט – tet
t
י – yud
y
כ – kaf
k,kh
ל – lamed
l
מ – mem
m
נ – nun
n
ס – samekh
s
ע – ayin
silent
פ – pey
p,f
צ – tsade
tz
ק – kof
k
ר – resh
r
שׁ – shin
sh
שׂ – sin
s
ת – tav
t
Now let’s try a few simple words putting together the letters we just learned. Remember that in Hebrew words are written from right to left so look for that in the following words:
אב
Av, which means “father”. Aleph-bet. Av.
אם
Em, which means “mother”. Notice the mem in its final form at the end of the word. Aleph-mem. Em.
בן
Ben, which means “son”. Notice the nun in its final form at the end of the word. Bet-nun. Ben.
בת
Bat, which means “daughter”. Bet-tav. Bat.
בית
Bayit, which means “house”. Bet-yud-tav. Bayit.
מים
Mayim, which means “water”. Notice the mem in its final form at the end of the word. Here we can see both forms in one word. Mem-yud-mem. Mayim.
יד
Yad, which means “hand”. Yud-dalet. Yad.
כן
Ken, which means “yes”. Or in the Bible this usually means “thus” or “therefore”. Notice the nun in its final form at the end of the word. Kaf-nun. Ken.
Thanks for reading. Next time we’ll take a look at the Hebrew vowel system.
Todd Decker 