Talk:Hebrew alphabet

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[edit] Gif files

Suggestion for a week end recreation: It would be nice if somebody could add little gif files with Hebrew characters as a third column. Kwaku

The Deutsch and Polski versions of this entry both have good-looking tables-as-images that could be ported over, but I don't know how to do that. I also suspect that the content of the article is not consistent across the three different languages (the Nederlands version is empty) -- fluent speakers of German and Polish should re-synchronize them. 192.150.186.32 01:15 Apr 4, 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Aleph-bet

I replaced the truly silly

Technically, this should not be called the alphabet (as that is the first two letters of the greek writing system), but the aleph-bet.

with

Hebrew speakers call this alphabet the "aleph-beth".

"Alphabet" is a perfectly ordinary English word denoting a set of things of which the alephbeth is a marvellous example, and its use is therefore completely accurate and useful. This particular alphabet is called the alephbeth by some people, and that fact should also be mentioned. --Lee Daniel Crocker

Just a question, are other alphabets like Latin, Cyrillic, (and I guess, abjad Arabic) called "aleph-beth", "alfa-bet" or something else in modern Hebrew language?

I dunno if this is what you're asking, but afaik, the arabic "alphabet" is called the "alifba" in Arabic. (Incidentally, the Spanish word for "alphabet" is "alfabeta", but is often called "abecede" viz. "ABCs" in English.) Tom e r^TALK 08:23, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

I think he's asking: does and Israeli call the English Alphabet "Ha'Aleph-Bet Anglit" or "Ha'Alphabet?" In English, it is politically correct to refer to it as "the Aleph-Bet," versus calling it "the Hebrew Alphabet" . . . is the same political correctness applied by others in reverse?

--198.203.175.175 20:29, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

I give up. Why is there a macron over the p in alep-bet? Macrons are usually for vowels...what transliteration system uses macrons over consonants, and where is this documented? It's fairly useless to have a transliteration in the content of this article without a reference. Nulbyte 00:22, 2004 Nov 27 (UTC)

It's used instead of an underline to represent the spirants (ie dagesh-less letters - f, v, etc.) by some academics when the letter goes below the line. - Mustafaa 00:25, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I see. What's wrong with IPA? The currently used system seems like an attempt to duplicate features of Hebrew orthography using the Latin alphabet. Combined with the overloaded diacritics (particularly the circumflex) for the vowels, it makes for very confusing transliteration. Something like ʔa:lef-beit seems more reasonable. Most people will be more familiar with IPA than some transliteration scheme only used by academia; heck, most printed dictionaries use IPA or a slightly modified version thereof. Even if not IPA, since the Latin orthography has seperate letters for seperate phonemes in this case, f and p, why not use them? --Nulbyte 05:42, 2004 Nov 27 (UTC)

I can't believe that there isn't even a *link* to actually see the Alephbet... http://www.njop.org/jsAlephbet/sound_main.html That site is pretty good, and if you click on the letter you can hear the sound of the letter.

Also, what the font looks like: אבגדהוזחטיכלמנסעפצקרשת Please note that I don't have the final forms of any of the letters in there, and there are no Dageshim (so no difference between Bet and Vet, or Kaf and Chaf).

[edit] Spacing

Someone just added a lot of spacing in the HTML code. These spacing are added up by Netscape and displayed in front of the table itself. One have to scroll at least two pages down before seeing the table. I guess the same bug don't show in Internet Explorer.

Doesn't show up in Mozilla 0.9.5 either. I can't see anything unusual in the page's source code, either. What version of Netscape are you using?

I am using Netscape communicator version 4.74-20000706 on Mac.

The recent change in this article consistently crashes MS Internet explorer 5 on the Mac.

[edit] Corrections, spelling

Hi everyone, I found at least one problem with the page and corrected it. Spaces before some of the <td>s were turned into <PRE>s by Wiki software thus creating invalid markup. It fixed the extra space problem I've had on IE 5.5/2k and perhaps your problems too. Also, the page uses odd names for letters, adding "h" (e.g. lamedh instead of lamed), I wonder why. --Uriyan

These "odd" names are for the Biblical letters, where D at the end of a syllable was pronounced differently: thus beth, lamedh, etc. The modern survivals include the f sound of aleph. But this "tsadik": is that k right? Shouldn't it just be tsadi?

Yes, the proper name of the letter is tsadi, not tsadiq. It is commonly called that because the next letter is qoph, so that the two sounds elided when reciting the alphabet and the q sound stuck. The other difference you allude is based on the fact that six letters (bet, gimel, dalet, kaf, peh, and tav) fricate at the end of a syllable. Gimel and daled have lost this in modern spoken Hebrew, while the tav is now pronounced "s" at the end of a syllable (really, when it doesn't carry the dagesh, but that's too complicated to get into) in the Ashkenazi dialect. Danny

[edit] Sentence

I moved here a sentence from Hebrew and also added a few things. --Uriyan

[edit] Phonology

I've added some notes on the variant pronunciations, and on Ancient Hebrew values, because I think they're useful here under the alphabet. I know it duplicates material covered under Hebrew phonology, but I think that article is very hard to understand and needs much overhauling and simplification before it's useful. We can put the details of dageshes and schwas and accents into the phonology article, but the alphabet needs basic on pronunciation. Gritchka 14:14 25 Jul 2003 (UTC)~

-- Note about phonetics: in modern hebrew, the /kh/ sound, for the letters 'xet' or at least 'xaf' is not guttural, but palatal, close to 'k' and 'g', properly, xet is guttural, while 'xaf' palatal. Most european hebrew speakers pronounce both as the palatal sound, which is close to the dutch 'g' for example.

Anyone know anything about nikkud, the vowel markings (which are briefly mentioned in the text. There is text on Top that is missing the nikkud but I don't know how to display them. Hyacinth 17:07, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

The nikkud is not strictly part of the alphabet - The Tiberian Nikkud was introduced in the 12th century AFAIK and is quite worthy of its own article. Jeru 19:50, 2 Feb 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Yod

It says yod represents /y/ ... Are you trying to confuse us, or does the Hebrew abjud have vowels?

Yod is a consonant that sometimes assumes the role of an em qri'ah or in Latin, Mater Lectonis. Having that said, Kesuari, please sign your name after a contribution (Three times ~, or four to include the date and time). It makes life easier for everyone :) - Jeru 12:10, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Alphabet vs. script

Regarding the recent mini-edit-war:

There seems to be a confusion here between the Hebrew alphabet (set of letters), and the script used nowadays for writing Hebrew, which scholars usually call the "Jewish script" - to distinguish it from the original "Hebrew script" (see below).

The 22-letter alphabet was borrowed by the Hebrews during the 12th or 11th century BCE from the Phoenicians and the Canaanites, which were probably the first to use an alphabetic writing system. Initially, the Phoenician script was used for writing Hebrew, but later (around the 9th century BCE), a distinct Hebrew variant of this script emerged.

The Arameans started using the Pheonician alphabet (and script) around the same time the Hebrews did. But a distinct Aramaic script evolved only in the mid-8th century BCE. A variant of this script was adopted much later (end of the 3rd century BCE) by the Jews, and generally replaced the Hebrew script for writing Hebrew. This variant evolved into the Jewish script, which is the script used today for Hebrew.

Source (in Hebrew): Prof. Joseph Naveh's book Early History of the Alphabet (1989, Magnes Press, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, ISBN 965-223-708-6)

-- uriber 22:38, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)

You are right, I interpretted the new insertion as being about the script rather than the alphabet. I would also have given Naveh as a citation if it came to that. The article needs work to make this distinction more transparent. --Zero 01:02, 27 Feb 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Hebrew pointing

This is my first comment on Wikipedia, so please excuse me if I don't understand the culture yet.

I woud suggest a change to the comment about the history of the development of the vowel sounds. The most serious problem (in my opinion) is that I don't know of any evidence that the people who created any of the pointing systems (and there were at least three) were "rabbis". The usual term to identify them is "Masorete" which derives from the Hebrew word root M.S.R which means "transmit". The fully vocalized Hebrew Biblical text is referred to as the "Masorah".

It is possible, perhaps even likely, that many of the Masoretes were Karaites rather than rabbinic Jews, therefore the term "rabbi" becomes even more problematic. Of course they couldn't have been Karaites if the time period stipulated is correct (there having been no Karaites before the 8th century or so).

The time period identified in the article (5th, 6th century) may be right, but I'd like to know on what evidence. From my studies, I believe that the pointing systems grew gradually beginning as early as the second century (CE) and as a result of the spread of the Alexandrian school of grammatical analysis. I suspect that the first systems were created by the Christians who were working with Syriac texts, particularly homilies. The Jews, steeped in an ancient tradition of oral transmission probably only gradually perceived the necessity to document the vocalization of the Biblical text. As far as I know, the earliest vocalized mss of the Bible date to the early 9th century.

Hope this is useful for someone.

==1906 encyclopedia A link to the public domain 1906 Jewish encyclopedia: http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=1308&letter=A

Much of the history of Hebrew alphabet could be imported here. 193.231.116.73 16:55, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Detailed data on each letter

Should probably go on each letter's individual page. Any objections before I do this? Nohat 22:19, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Problems with fonts

I'm having problems reading the fonts in this article. Not the Hebrew font, but the roman transliteration. There's a known problem with certain browsers (notably Internet Explorer) that certain characters are not displayed correctly. This can normally be overcome by using a template such as polytonic for Greek polytonic text, IPA for IPA characters, or unicode for various other characters. None of these work for this article. More specifically, I started adding the unicode template, but did not get very far. It makes some of the characters legible, but there seems to be nothing i can do to make legible the last character of the name of the Hebrew character sometimes called beth. I understand why you might want to have a transliteration rather than (or as well as) the various phonetic transcriptions, but a transliteration is of no use if it can't be viewed on most people's browsers. Could I ask please that someone look into this and maybe adopt a slightly modified transliteration (maybe the unicode combining characters would help). It's perhaps worth pointing out that the article Romanization of Hebrew uses a couple of different transliterations, sanctioned by the UN and the Library of Congress respectively, both of which display perfectly well without any special treatment. rossb 16:18, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

To my best knowledge, we are writing an encyclopedia, so the correctness of the transliteration in the article should be the first priority. Note that a lot of variants for users of outdated or broken software are already provided (in the font-friendly and ISO-8859-1-friendly entries), so let please the academic ones intact.

Another possibility would be complete re-organisation of the presentation and using pictures to work around browser issues, but that seems to be heavy work.

Pjacobi 17:17, 2005 Feb 17 (UTC)

Some more research, and a bit of serendipity, reveal that although the unicode template doesn't seem to work very well, the polytonic template does. See also Template talk:Unicode. So I've started working through the article, adding the polytonic template where needed (it can be replaced with the unicode template if and when the latter is upgraded - see Template talk:Polytonic. At the same time, I'm adding the IPA template to all the IPA transcriptions: this makes the IPA viewable rather than a series of rectangles, so I'm also deleting the SAMPA which thus becomes redundant. rossb 22:17, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The Unicode template has now been updated, and caters adequately with the extended Roman alphabet characters used in the transcriptions in this article, so I've now substituted it for the Polytonic template, which was a temporary expedient. rossb 22:17, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Backwards

Moved anonymous comment from article:

Hebrew goes from right to left. This grid for the alphabet is backwards.

I don't think so. The article is written in English using a LTR script. So it's logical to have the tables in LTR reading order. --Pjacobi 17:03, 2005 Feb 19 (UTC) I don't know, I think it should be right to left with a note explaining as such. You're bound to confuse people no matter which way you go. Valley2city 08:07, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cretans?

cut from the article:

Recent findings point to the direction that the Phoenician alphabet was derived from the ancient Cretans or Minoans (Crete is a Mediterranean island in what is now Greece) who reached the shores of the Middle-East as early as 2,500 ~ 3,000 BC.

what recent finds? this would belong on Phoenician alphabet if it has any basis (which I doubt). dab (ᛏ) 08:07, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Table?

I have noticed that many languages have tables that organize the letters in a clear and efficient manner. Can someone do that with this article? E=MC^2 T@lk

[edit] Transliteration schemes

Does anybody know the formal named of the transliteration schemes used in the article? I presume the "Israeli transliteration" matches that used on eg. Israeli highway signs, but is there a standard or authoritative reference for this scheme?

I also tried asking this on Talk:Romanization of Hebrew, but no answers... I'd like to adopt the scheme in question on Wikitravel. Jpatokal 17:46, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

As far as I'm aware, there is no "formal name" for any transliteration scheme of Hebrew, unlike Pinyin for Chinese, for example. The scheme on Israeli highway signs is quite haphazard. For example: roadsigns say Maaleh Adumim and Yavne, which (poorly) represent the Hebrew pronunciation of the names of these cities. (I say poorly because it should at the very least be Ma'aleh Adumim, but I digress...) At the same time, however, roadsigns also say Jerusalem (Yerushalayim), Shechem (Shkhem), Bethlehem (Bet Lechem) and Jericho (Y'rikho). To echo the sentiment on the wikitravel page wrt to the romanization of Thai, "[Hebrew] romanization is generally a mess, with several incompatible 'standards' and lots of completely nonstandard off-the-cuff attempts."

Of course Roman signs say Jerusalem and Jericho. These signs are not for Hebrew speakers, but Europeans. Ok, maybe it should be Herusolymae (or however it's spelt in Latin). But presumably the majority of roman-reading tourists in israel are english-speaking. --Taejo 11:33, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Compounding the problem is that there is no "standard pronunciation" of Hebrew, so attempts at romanization are going to end up being a matter of politics at least as much as one of linguistics. Consistent transliteration schemes are of two basic types: obscenely messy because obsessive attention to details of vowel length gradations, accentuation and consonantal representation, or basically romanizations of perceived "general Israeli pronunciation", which is woefully inadequate for representing the actual phonemes used by many Israelis--primarily because the people who are doing the romanizing don't have ears sufficiently attuned to hear nuances of prounciation...e.g., the failure to differentiate correctly between /he/, /ḥeþ/ and /xaf/, or between /ʔalef/ and /ʿayin/...if they choose to represent these phonemes at all...both of which are pronounced in the speech of all Israeli Hebrew speakers, even if many fail to differentiate between them correctly. (Many Ashkenazim, especially older Ashkenazim do not differentiate between them.) In a bizarre happenstance, both Ashkenazi and most dialects of Sfaradi and Mizrachi Hebrew have always differentiated between /tav/ and /þav/ (or Ashkenazic /sav/), and many Israelis still do...yet representing the difference between them survives on Israeli highway signs only in names that are recognized English names (e.g. Bethlehem). Refer back to my comparison to Thai in the previous paragraph. :-/ Tomer ^TALK 02:21, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

Ḥazáq ubarúx (chazak u-varuch, hazak u'varukh, etc. (or yasher koiech, if you prefer)) Tomer for an excellent description of the mess! :] -- Olve 05:35, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I prefer chazaq uvarukh. Please don't say "koyekh" around me...my present sinus infection makes my head hurt bad enough. :-/ Tomer ^TALK 05:45, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

Tomer, what you say above is not quite right. Most Israelis simply do not distinguish alef and ayin; it's not that they sometimes "fail to differentiate between them correctly". (From a linguistic standpoint, what speakers "should" do is not relevant.) Similarly, for most Hebrew speakers there are only five vowels, so English representation is very easy. What you are referring to above are different choices in whether to do transliteration or transcription, and in the latter case, which pronunciation to use. I seriously doubt that the problems are due to anyone's incompetence. True, there are non-linguistic schemes that are ambiguous; Thai has the same problem. But this again is not due to incompetence but a deliberate (although imo misguided) decision to favor simplicity over lack of ambiguity. Benwing 05:47, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

I can't imagine (sarcastically) why you'd choose to comment on something I said 4 months ago, and to call it "not quite right". If the biggest problem you can come up with regarding what I said is the inappropriately prescriptive use of the word "correctly", I think I'm doing a-okay. I do happen to distinguish quite clearly between alef and `ayin (as well as between tav and thav, go figure), but my distinction between /ɛ/ and /e/, for example, is determined by the position of the vowel in the word, identically in accordance with the rules of my first native language. (shelohi anglit) The problems with Thai are actually not the best analogy, since simplicity-favoring ends up making one who knows thai (not me, but I know peeps who do) wondering exactly what the original meanings are--in fact, the simplicity over thoroughness sometimes leads to bizarre and sometimes outrageously hilarious possibilities...apparently. The problem with transliterating Hebrew, even Israeli Hebrew, however, are based on the fact that pronunciation sometimes varies widely from one individual to the next, based entirely upon where their grandparents lived. There is a more fundamental problem tho, that I think you and I are doing our best to avoid overtly butting heads on, and that is the fact that the auxiliary articles that treat the Hebrew language do not restrict themselves exclusively to Modern Israeli Hebrew as prescribed (there's that word again) by the Aqademiya. (And no, my qof doesn't sound at all like my kaf. Go figure :-p) Anyways, your point is well-taken. I didn't mean by my comment to imply incompetence, rather that for many Israelis alef and `ayin are allophonic at best, if not homophonous. I don't consider it "incompetence", I consider it instead, to use a nice Yiddish word, a "shande". Tomer ^TALK 08:22, August 8, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Another version of the table

I've added a second version of the table of characters in large type, using serif fonts, as there's quite a bit of difference between the serif and sans versions, and many users would be familiar only with the serif style, and would find the sans look confusing. By the way I've done this in a rather crude way, just specifying a couple of fonts, and others may be able to suggest a more elegant approach, or add other fonts that may be useful on particlar browsers. rossb 10:45, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] "TZADIQ" as a pronunciation of צ

Do we really want to include "tzadiq" as a pronunciation of צ? This name of the letter is used almost exclusively by charedim, who use it as a parallel of zedeq, which they prefer to use as their puerile and puritanical pronunciation of ז (zayin), lest, ch"v, anyone should think A LETTER OF THE ALEFBET MEANS "PENIS"!!! OH NO! My point is, is it the policy of Wikipedia to cater to the opinion of a minority position within the Orthodox community? (And note, I'm not even pointing out that the "Orthodox" community is itself, an almost miniscule minority...) (That's my own personal POV, since I happen to find myself in the majority w/in that minority...:-p) Tomer ^TALK 07:30, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)

Well, it's still one pronunciation, and reasonably common, if only in a particular community. Jayjg ^(talk) 16:56, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Agree with Jay here: It is widespread enough both in Hebrew and Yiddish (tsadek) that it should be mentioned. Mentioning and condoning are also not the same thing... :) Olve 06:12, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

"...if only in a particular community"??! Does this explain the origin of a certain vulgar term? If so, there are many words in many gentile languages that deserve to have their etymologies more fully explained. I know nothing about Hebrew, so I may be completely off base here, but I am quite interested in etymology and there does seem to be a great number of words in many languages whose etymology suddenly becomes very "dubious" when it comes to Hebrew, as though one were afraid to discover something about the tower of Babel. -- 130.94.162.61 14:30, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

to answer your penile question: a zayin (ז) looks like a penis, and became common vernacular (slang) for the male member. Contrary, or maybe not, a Sofer S"TM would tell you that a zayin represents a sword.

--198.203.175.175 20:41, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Third section

The third section, The alephbeth by letter, was a long list of bullet points, and I've turned it into a table.

I hope this is somewhat easier to read, although it is rather wide... -- ALoan (Talk) 19:07, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I've done some more formatting of the table: it's not quite so wide, and will now fit at least into a 1280 x 1024 display! rossb 10:33, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks! Further ideas for width reduction: line break before "-friendly" over two; comma separated items on new lines... -- ALoan (Talk) 14:29, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Het, Tet vs. Heth, Teth

User:Ross Burgess, why did you consider it important to change the article to show "Ḥet" instead of "Ḥeth"? (I'll conserve my strongly held opposing opinions until I receive a response, provided it arrives within the next week, after which, I'll be rving your, IMHO, fallacious edit...) Tomer ^TALK 10:35, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)

I didn't (consciously) make this change, other than reverting myself when I had inadvertantly changed Tet back to Teth. The changes to this and other letters were made by User:Uriber who would be better placed to answer this. rossb 10:46, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well said, and I apologize for the inadvertently misplaced accusation. User:Uriber, the question now goes to you. Tomer ^TALK 11:34, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)

I suspect Uriber favors the commonly spoken Hebrew of Israel over the academic/Yemenite/Baghdadi forms. Jayjg ^(talk) 16:57, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I used the letter names used by the Unicode standard. They have the advantages that they are easy to read, and reflect the way most modern Hebrew speakers pronounce the letter names. Using "th" for unstressed tav is an archaic practice, which I see no reason to uphold. -- uriber 17:49, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Personally, I resent my speech being characterized as "archaic"... I only just turned 33... Tomer ^TALK 00:10, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)

Using "t" (and not "th") to romanize tav (with or without dagesh) is also consistant with two of the major standards for Romanization of Hebrew. -- uriber 17:58, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

So noted. Tomer ^TALK 00:10, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)

Personally, I'm unconvinced by the argument that we should follow Israeli practice in this respect. The usual rule for Wikipedia is to follow the usage generally adopted in English. Clearly those in English-speaking countries who have any knowledge of Hebrew fall into three camps: those who are familiar with Israeli Hebrew (probably a minority), British and American Jews, who would generally use the Ashkenazi pronunciations such as "Alef, Beis, ..." but not necessarily read or write Hebrew in any form of romanization, and those (including many Christians, especially clergy) who have learned Hebrew for biblical studies, or have picked up a smattering for general interest, and are probably famililar with transliterations such as "aleph, beth, ...", with or without diacriticals, breathing marks, etc. The third approach has historically been mainly reflected in reference works in English, and I would hesitantly (not being an expert here) propose it as being the most suitable for Wikipedia. rossb 06:00, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] ISO 259-2

I obtained a copy of ISO-259-2 ("Transliteration of Hebrew characters into Latin characters - Part 2: Simplified transliteration"). Unfortunately, I cannot incorporate a significant portion of the standard into the article, as it is strictly protected by copyright. However, here are some interesting facts:

This standard is not identical to any of the transliterations presented in the article.
This standard, like those I mentioned above, specifies "t" as the transliteration of "ת" (both with and without dagesh).
Annex B to the standard, "Names of Hebrew characters" (which is considered "informative") specifies, for each letter, its "transliterated name", "French name", and "English name". For ח and ט, these are (repsictively):
- ḥeyt ; hêt ; chet
- ṭeyt ; thêt ; tet

Notice that "t" is used for the final ת in the "English names". Interestingly, "th" is used for ט in the "French name".

I'm not saying that we should use this standard throughout the article. I'm merely bringing it as yet another authority which uses "t" for ת. -- uriber 21:16, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You could (could you?) add it to the table as another transliteration. -- ALoan (Talk) 22:16, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Doing so would make this (admittedly minority) speaker much happier. Çaj kašer vesaméaç! Tomer ^TALK 03:27, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)

As I wote above, I'm pretty sure I am not allowed to add the standard wholesale into the table due to copyrigght issues. The ISO knows my name, address, and CC number, and I don't want to get into trouble with them :-)

However, what I did is to use ISO-259-2 to transliterate a public domain Hebrew text (which I believe I'm allowed to do). The result can be found at User:Uriber/ISO-259-2 sample. If anyone wants to use this transliteration in order to "reconstruct" the standard and add the result to the table, they are most welcome to do so, as far as I'm concerned. -- uriber 10:07, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I don't think adding "teth" and "ḥeth" as variant pronunciations of the letter names qualifies as a violation of copyright law, which is all I was addressing. Tomer ^TALK 10:47, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)

Actually, as I wrote above, this standard does not use "teth" or "ḥeth". Also, this standard does not deal with pronunciation, but with transliteration . And i don't think giving two isolated examples from a standard is a good idea, anyway. -- uriber 10:54, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure that adding a column to that table providing the ISO transliterations of each letter amounts to copying a "substantial part" of the standard - if so, surely using the letters in your translation is just as bad. -- ALoan (Talk) 11:13, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I disagree. The standard pretty much consists of just two tables (one for consonants and on of vowels). There is a short, generic, preface explaining what "transliteration", "transcription", and "romanization" are, and general guidelines for their usage (this part is not specific to Hebrew). So the ISO transliterations of each letter are, as far as I can tell the standard, and providing them all in a list or table is nothing else than copying the standard.

Using the standard, on the other hand, is something completely different. After all, the point of having a standard is being able to use it, and I'm pretty sure ISO aren't requesting royalties for doing that.

If there's a lawyer around here which can assure me I'm wrong, I'll be happy to add the column -- uriber 11:28, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Silent vs. glottal stop

As an Ashkenazic Jew, I know people who pronounce א and ע as glottal stops, not silent—those who distinguish in pronunciation between malach ("sailor") and mal`ach ("messenger, angel"), for instance. This is particularly the case in formal settings such as the public reading of the Torah and prayer, as opposed to casual addition of Hebrew words into English conversation. I'm a bit unsure about how to add the multiple pronunciations, though, since it looks like there's some fancy IPA thing going on with the tildes in the Israeli columns. Do I just use commas or something? —Simetrical (talk) 20:37, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Abugida?

Is Hebrew considered an abugida?

No. It's an abjad. —Simetrical (talk) 01:52, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Cursive?

Should we include the cursive version of the Alef-Bet? --Leifern 19:20, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes! Great idea. Karyana De'Igreta Ihu Leihavei Parvanka (Talmudic proverb: 'Let he who reads out the letter be its executor'. ;) Piano man 00:01, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Biblical Hebrew pronunciation and romanization

An active discussion of Biblical Hebrew pronunciation and romanization as presented in this article started on a user talk page. I invited the participants to continue here and I'm placing my comments here.

The best place to present salient (so-called "encyclopedic") facts about Biblical Hebrew pronunciation is in article "Biblical Hebrew". The best place to present salient facts about romanization of Hebrew is in article "Romanization of Hebrew", an article which records what I know about the topic. For Biblical Hebrew, consider the romanization used by the Society of Biblical Literature. It's similar to the one used by Gilgamesh. It has the advantages that it has been adopted by a prominent scholarly society, it's published both online and in print, and it has helpful usage notes. --Hoziron 12:19, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

In essence, then, you're saying that none of this really belongs here and it should be moved (where it's not already elsewhere)? Well, I don't mind that, but it doesn't really address the issue, does it? The question is, should the academic consensus as to the Biblical-era pronunciation be used, or should an alleged oral tradition (which kind of tradition we know tends to get corrupted)? I say "alleged" because I actually hadn't even ever heard that the pronunciation was supposed to be an oral tradition of the actual phonology—I had been under the impression that it was only meant to represent the correct traditional morphology (which it doesn't even do for all words, if for any; see here for a compelling argument that the last syllable of the Biblical pronunciation of Yerushalayim was /em/, not /ajım/).

As for "finding an older scheme that can be empirically attested and not outrage Haredi Wikipedians", that standard is unreasonable on three counts. First of all, age isn't necessarily relevant in any way to validity. Second of all, nothing historical can be empirical. Third of all, Haredi Wikipedians can go stuff it if they don't supply good reasons for their objections. I haven't seen the justifications for the reconstructions of Hebrew, but I have seen the justifications for reconstructed Ancient Greek, and there are some very clever ways of figuring this stuff out.

The academic consensus is not in favor of the Masoretic tradition for ancient Hebrew. If we're going to present one pronunciation key in an article (and no reason we can't have lots in Biblical Hebrew, with explanations), it should be the most widely-accepted among experts in the field. —Simetrical (talk) 05:32, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

You began by asking about transliteration, but it appears you have been talking about pronunciation all along. Please refer to column "Biblical" in the pronunciation table "Hebrew_alphabet#Numerical_value_and_pronunciation", as well as section "Hebrew_alphabet#Ancient_Hebrew". Isn't that what you're aiming at? If you want to present the ongoing debate and search for evidence and methods for ancient Hebrew pronunciation, please go ahead, but I don't think this is the place. If you're just arguing for discarding the Masoretic text and Tiberian vocalization, I don't get it and I don't see how that would make Wikipedia better. --Hoziron 12:29, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Oh, dear. I was in fact thinking of pronunciation all along! Hah. Well, now that that's cleared up, my point was that a traditional pronunciation of the letters should not occupy a column labeled reconstructed. The reconstructed Biblical Hebrew pronunciation should be as, for instance, the pronunciation given at Biblical_Hebrew#Phonology. If the current Reconstructed Biblical column were moved over and relabeled Traditional Masoretic, and the current Reconstructed Biblical column got replaced by the chart from Biblical Hebrew or some similarly attributed source, I'd have no problems.

Yes, I realize that's not what I had said before. Well, I miswrote. ;) —Simetrical (talk) 06:27, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

OK, thanks. That's a good idea. Whatever we put in the Reconstructed Biblical column, I hope we'll cite sources and explain in articles such as Biblical Hebrew.

In fact, the pronunciation table doesn't need columns for Masoretic or Tiberian unless there is a consensus on how to reconstruct the pronunciation of the Masoretes. The Masoretic text and Tiberian vocalization notate orthography and morphology rather than pronunciation as such. They are more relevant to the transliteration table.

If you're interested, there is a brief article on Hebrew phonology that needs to be rewritten entirely or even deleted. Today, only the articles Hebrew language and Beth (letter) link to it. The challenge is that Hebrew has been used practically everywhere in human history and habitation, mostly without the benefit of telephones, tape recorders, or the International Phonetic Alphabet. Ancient Hebrew poetry and prosody don't even provide evidence of pronunciation through rhyme or rigid meter.

--Hoziron 16:10, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Hebrew naming conventions

Urgent: see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Hebrew) to add your opinions about this important matter. Thank you. IZAK 17:57, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] List of "pictures" and dotted ש in the HTML table

I have a couple of questions:

1) On the list of the "pictures" in Roots of the Hebrew Alphabet I notice four are missing:

ח Ħet - enclosure, fence
ט Tˁet - serpent
נ Nun - fish
ש Šin - tooth

Is there a reason for that?

2) In the table of HTML characters only שׁ and שׂ are shown for the sin-dot and shin-dot. Is there a reason why the dot-less ש is not in the table?

I am just barely this side of clueless about any use of Hebrew outside of a very limited area so if I've missed something I'd appreciate having my ignorance trimmed a bit.--◀Puck^talk▶ 10:21, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

I guess I'll add a third question.

3) Wasn't resh also considered one of the double letters? It is mentioned in Sefer Yetzirah 4:1, and according to a note in the probably obsolete translation by Isidor Kalisch "the ancient Jews in Palestine... pronounced it partly aspirated and partly unaspirated."--◀Puck^talk▶ 17:43, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

I updated the Roots of the Hebrew Alphabet section to complete the list of pictures. I'm still not very happy with how it looks. It's kind of sloppy. I also added some references. I would prefer something a bit more scholarly, but I used what I could find because if I referred to my own collections of books I'd have had to cite Aleister Crowley or Frater Achad. Not really appropriate for this particular article. Mathers is pushing it, but he does seem be in accord with the two external sites I listed.--◀Puck^talk▶ 21:07, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

AFAIK, nobody claims נ has anything to do with דג except for catching them...the word you're looking for is fishhook. Tom e r ^talk 01:56, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

I claim no expertise other than that of an interested layman. As I said, I'm not satisfied with it as it is. However, I did give references for what I did, which up to this point no one else had done. I'm offering this table. If no one improves it or objects I will add it to the article in a few days. It is based on the three sources I referred to. None of them strikes me as particularly authoritative, but they beat using nothing. Also, the Phoenician alphabet article follows this pretty closely as well. I would prefer to see sources other than what I suspect is a front for a Messianic (Christian) organization, another that identifies itself as "not Christian, Messianic nor Rabbinic," whatever that means, and a the founder of an occult secret society, but if this article is going to address the symbolism of the Hebrew characters it need to cite some source. I'm doing the best I can. Anyone who wants to replace it with something better has my blessing.

Glyph	ancient-hebrew.org	qumran.com	Mathers
א	The head of a bull	Ox	Ox
ב	The floor plan of a tent	House	House
ג	The lower leg and foot	Camel	Camel
ד	The tent door	Door	Door
ה	A man with arms extended	Window	Window
ו	A peg or nail	Hook	Peg, nail
ז	A mattock	Weapon	Weapon, sword
ח	A wall	Fence	Enclosure, fence
ט	A basket	Snake	Serpent
י	A arm and hand	Hand	Hand
כ	The palm of the hand	Bent Hand	Palm of the hand
ל	A shepherds staff	Ox-goad	Ox-goad
מ	Ripples of Water	Water	Water
נ	A plant shoot	Fish	Fish
ס	A hand holding a staff	Prop	Prop, support
ע	An eye	Eye	Eye
פ	A mouth	Mouth	Mouth
צ	A man lying down	Fish-hook	Fishing-hook
ק	The rising and setting sun	Back of the Head	Back of the head
ר	The head of a man	Head	Head
ש	Teeth	Tooth	Tooth
ת	A cross of sticks	Cross	Sign of the cross

--◀Puck^talk▶ 05:22, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

I'd say there's a problem with the naming of this section. I don't know what I'd prefer. Maybe something like "Possible Linguistic Origins." There are many who believe that Hebrew is the original toungue – particularly in the realm of Sofrus. Myself, I've never seen any arguements for the evolution of language other than putting pictures, sounds, languages, and so forth side-by-side and saying "gee these are so similar, they were in the same region, we know such-and-so people predate so-and-so and so, this must have come from that." But, then again, I find I have the same problems with archeology. Overall, no matter my personal opinion, I'd say that there's a problem with its title being too POV.

--198.203.175.175 20:26, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] How do you write this name in Hebrew?

This Name 'Nayef' نايف Pronounced like 'Na-yif'

ניף maybe. It's just a guess, I'm not a Hebrew speaker.--◀Puck^talk▶ 22:39, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Actually it's נאיף, as in he:נאיף חוואתמה (Nayef or Niaf Hawatmeh). Questions like this can go to Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language. --Hoziron 04:19, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New 10th century BCE ref

Changed 9th century to 10th century (although it could have been earlier again). See reference http://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/articles/2006/03/17/news/local/archaelogyfind0317. I tried to add to article using the new suggested "^[1]" tags, but the link hasn't been added to wherever it is meant to go at the bottom of the article. If someone knows how it should be done, please fix. Thanks. ^ross ^nixon 02:07, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] offtopic

The Kabbalistic stuff is offtopic in the Linguistic origins section, isn't it? --Yms 05:41, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Handwritten alphabet

I've noticed that the Hebrew alphabet as it's written by hand varies quite a bit from the printed version. I can't seem to find any information on it anywhere on the English Wikipedia though. Can anyone either point me in the right direction or add some of the relevant information to this article? Thanks :) :: Salvo (talk) 00:56, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

It just takes some work to find and scan them. Handwritten letters can be found in some other encyclopedias, but we can't take it from them directly because of copyright issue. You can find the handwritten letters in separate Hebrew Wikipedia articles. See he:אלפבית עברי, in the middle of the article you will find a row of letters with links to their respective articles. In each article you will see a row of blue letters of various typefaces and scripts. The handwritten letter is second from left.

BTW, the forth letter from left in each article is the famous "Rashi script". --Yms 07:36, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Question

What happened to the link paleo-hebrew alphabet?

Note: disregard previous message. paleo-hebrew alphabet and Phoenician alphabet are nearly equivalent. The links should probably be modified or a disambiguation link should probably be made in some of the peripheral related links to this subject (in related subject headings). [[User:]]

[edit] Request for Brush Stroke Info

I've now found plenty of sites that show the letters, and some that show a simplified form to be written with a pen/pencil, but not one that shows the proper way to write these with a brush (stroke order, brush position, etc.). Coming from Japanese, I can make some educated guesses, but it seems odd to write letters left-to-right while writing the entire word right-to-left. And, given the difficulty of unlearning bad writing habits once they're ingrained, I don't want to start until I'm sure of the technique.

Does anyone know where to find this information, or, having the knowledge, could put it up somewhere (Wikipedia or elsewhere)? I would think that brush strokes would be important information, especially given how many very similar letters appear in the Hebrew alphabet. (In Japanese, often letters that seem similar in print are written in distinct directions, e.g. Shi and Tsu in Katakana.) Kilyle 23:01, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

[1] Thanks to Yahoo "write hebrew stroke" how much searching did you do exactly? Hazelorb 07:18, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Eh, maybe the word "brush" was throwing it off. I did do some searching before I posted here, though. And (eventually) I did find a decent site listed on Omniglot.com, too, so that was nice. Thanks for the help! Kilyle 14:34, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

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