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With little or no knowledge of Hebrew you can acquire a basic understanding of the language in which the Bible was originally written. This lesson will introduce you to the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Subsequent lessons will introduce you to other aspects of the language, with illustrations from the biblical text.
To speak in any language we use our throat, mouth, nose and lips to produce sounds. Humans can create a great variety of sounds, some soft and flowing, which we call vowels, and others hard and sharp, which we call consonants. Each language has a limited number of distinct sounds that are the building blocks for all the words in that language. Some sounds naturally resemble those in other languages; some are unique.
Spoken languages can be written by using symbols to represent individual sounds and combinations of sounds. Early writing systems that developed in Mesopotamia and Egypt were complicated and cumbersome, requiring the use of several hundred signs to represent individual words and ideas.
The invention of the alphabet provided a simple, efficient writing system. An alphabet is a list of signs—usually fewer than 30—with each sign representing a basic sound in the language. The first alphabet was the Semitic alphabet (sometimes called proto-Sinaitic or proto-Canaanite), which was invented in the land of Canaan at least 3,700 years ago. From this earliest alphabet came all other alphabets in the world, including those of the Semitic family of languages.
Hebrew is one of the Semitic languages (as is Arabic) and uses a form of that early alphabet. The Semitic alphabet had no symbols for vowels, only for consonants. However, to remove ambiguity from pronunciation and meaning a secondary system of vowel notation was developed for Hebrew by about the tenth century C.E. We will examine vowel notation after we learn the signs for the Hebrew alphabet.
But even before these vowel signs were invented, a few Hebrew signs were given double duty—a vowel sound as well as consonant sound. These signs, used as rudimentary vowel markers, are called matres lectionis, literally, “mothers of reading.” For example, the sign for y (
Styles of letters change over time. Americans today have trouble reading some of the letters in the Declaration of Independence. This development occurred in Hebrew as well. The Hebrew letters we will be using are the standard square Aramaic letters introduced after the Babylonian Exile in the sixth century B.C.E. Before that, so-called paleo-Hebrew letters were used. Even people who are very comfortable with the square Aramaic letters have trouble recognizing the earlier paleo-Hebrew letters. The square Aramaic letters, although very old, are still used today—in Bible texts as well as in Israeli newspapers, although a still different cursive form has been developed for handwritten texts, just as in English we have somewhat different letter forms for printed and handwritten texts.
One final guide: Hebrew is read from right to left (and the pages in a Hebrew book go from “back to front” compared to English books).
Learn the Hebrew alphabet by memorizing the signs, the name of the sign and the sound it represents (the chart gives transliterations to approximate the sound in English). The initial sound of the name of each sign is the sound of that letter of the alphabet. In Hebrew, some signs represent two sounds. For example, the same sign represents p and f. But there are only a few signs like this.
Here is a famous verse from Genesis:
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
You can now recognize the consonants and say them, but it is ambiguous how to pronounce these consonants as words. In the next lesson you will learn the vowels, the symbols accompanying the consonants that tell you how to pronounce these words.
Name |
Symbol
|
Pronunciation
|
Aleph |
|
ah
|
Bet |
|
b; after vowel, v
|
Gimel |
|
gate
|
Dalet |
|
d
|
He |
|
h; silent at end of word
|
Vov |
|
v; o or u as vowel
|
Zayin |
|
z
|
Het |
|
ch, as in Scottish loch
|
Tet |
|
t
|
Yod |
|
y; i or e as vowel
|
Kaf |
|
k; after vowel, ch; second form used at end of word
|
Lamed |
|
l
|
Mem |
|
m; second form used at end of word
|
Nun |
|
n; second form used at end of word
|
Samekh |
|
s
|
Ayin |
|
ah
|
Peh |
|
p; after vowel, f; second form used at end of word
|
Tsade |
|
ts; second form used at end of word
|
Qoph |
|
k
|
Resh |
|
r
|
Sin |
|
s
|
Shin |
|
sh
|
Tav |
|
t
|
With little or no knowledge of Hebrew you can acquire a basic understanding of the language in which the Bible was originally written. This lesson will introduce you to the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Subsequent lessons will introduce you to other aspects of the language, with illustrations from the biblical text.
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