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Course 5 · Lesson 2.1

The Hebrew alphabet, reading right to left, and the vowel points

11 minute read

Lessons in this course

Course 5 outline

Module 1: What the Languages Are and What This Course Can Do

  1. The languages of the Bible: Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek
  2. What an introduction can and cannot do: no fluency, and why
  3. Biblical Hebrew in brief: history, script and sound
  4. Koine Greek in brief: history, script and sound

Module 2: Hebrew Fundamentals

  1. The Hebrew alphabet, reading right to left, and the vowel points
  2. Roots, nouns, gender, number and the construct chain
  3. Hebrew verbs: perfect, imperfect and the seven stems in outline
  4. A core Hebrew vocabulary and how to learn it

Module 3: Greek Fundamentals

  1. The Greek alphabet, accents and breathing marks
  2. Nouns, cases and the definite article
  3. Greek verbs: tense, aspect, voice and mood in outline
  4. A core Greek vocabulary and how to learn it

Module 4: The Texts: Masoretic, Septuagint and New Testament Manuscripts

  1. The Masoretic Text and the codices that preserve it
  2. The Septuagint and where translators consult it
  3. Greek New Testament manuscripts and printed editions
  4. How variants are recorded in footnotes and critical editions

Module 5: How Translations Are Made

  1. Formal and dynamic equivalence, and the middle positions
  2. Who translates: committees, churches and traditions of translation
  3. Hard cases: idioms, word play, gender and untranslatable words
  4. Reading a translation’s preface to learn its principles

Module 6: Tools for the Reader

  1. Interlinear Bibles: what they show and what they hide
  2. Lexicons and concordances: how to read an entry
  3. How to do a word study, step by step
  4. Common word study errors and how to avoid them

Module 7: Evaluating Translation Differences

  1. Locating the Hebrew or Greek words behind a verse
  2. Types of translation differences: text, grammar, word meaning and style
  3. A worked example from the Old Testament
  4. A worked example from the New Testament
  5. Knowing your limits, and when to ask a specialist

All courses

Program / Course 5: Biblical Languages / Lesson 2.1

What you will learn

  • Name the twenty two letters of the Hebrew alphabet in order and say which have final forms.
  • Explain why Hebrew is read from right to left and what that does to the order of a printed line.
  • Recognize the main vowel points and the dagesh, and say what each does.
  • Sound out a simple pointed Hebrew word slowly, while knowing that this is not fluent reading.

The big idea

The Hebrew alphabet has twenty two letters, all of them consonants, written from right to left. Five letters have a special form at the end of a word. Vowels in printed Bibles appear as small dots and dashes under, over or beside the consonants, added by the Masoretes. A small dot called the dagesh changes the sound of some letters. A student who learns the letter names and the main vowel signs can sound out words. This is a first step, and it does not give the ability to read Hebrew.

Key terms

Aleph bet
The Hebrew alphabet, named from its first two letters, aleph and bet.
Final form
A different shape that five letters take when they come at the end of a word: kaf, mem, nun, pe and tsade.
Vowel points (niqqud)
Marks placed around the consonants to show vowels, added by Jewish scribes in the early Middle Ages.
Dagesh
A dot inside a letter. In some letters it makes the sound hard, and in others it doubles the consonant.
Shewa
A sign of two vertical dots under a consonant. It marks either a very short vowel sound or the absence of a vowel.
Guttural letters
The letters aleph, he, chet and ayin, which are made in the throat and affect the vowels near them.
Mater lectionis
A consonant letter used also to mark a vowel, such as yod and waw.

Background

Printed Hebrew uses what is called the square script, which came into use for Hebrew after the exile. Hebrew is read from right to left. For an English reader this feels reversed, but it is natural after a little practice. A book in Hebrew opens from what an English reader would call the back, and the first page is on the right.

This lesson names the letters and signs in English letters, because the aim is to learn them by sound and name. Many good beginner books and websites show the shapes. A student should write each letter by hand a few times, since the shapes are easy to confuse until they are learned. The lesson does not claim to teach reading, which takes much longer practice.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: The letters in order

The letters, in the traditional order, are aleph, bet, gimel, dalet, he, waw (or vav), zayin, chet, tet, yod, kaf, lamed, mem, nun, samekh, ayin, pe, tsade, qof, resh, shin (or sin) and tav. Sin and shin share one shape and are told apart by a dot. The letters also serve as numbers, the first ten counting from one to ten.

Most letters have a close English sound. Bet is like b, gimel like g, dalet like d, zayin like z, yod like y, lamed like l, mem like m, nun like n, samekh like s, resh like r, shin like sh and tav like t. Tsade sounds like ts. Chet is a rough sound made in the throat, like the ch in the Scottish word loch. Qof is a k made farther back. Aleph and ayin are throat stops with little sound for English speakers. Learn these by hearing them from a teacher or a recording.

Step 2: Final forms

Five letters change shape at the end of a word: kaf, mem, nun, pe and tsade. The final forms are longer and often drop below the line. They represent the same letters and sounds. The Hebrew word for king, melek, ends with a final kaf, and its first letter is a mem. Read from right to left, the word is spelled mem, lamed, final kaf.

Step 3: Letters that look alike

Several pairs look alike: bet and kaf, dalet and resh, he and chet, waw and zayin, and final nun and waw. A learner should practice the pairs together. The difference may be a small corner or a short stroke. Printed Bibles use a clear font, and handwritten scrolls are harder.

Step 4: The vowel points

The main vowel signs are these. Patach is a short line under a letter and gives a short a sound. Qamets looks like a patach with a small stem and usually gives a long a sound, though in some closed syllables it gives a short o sound. Tsere is two dots side by side under a letter, for a long e sound. Segol is three dots in a triangle, for a short e. Chireq is a single dot under the letter, for i. Cholem is a dot above the letter, for o. Qibbuts is three diagonal dots under the letter, for a short u. Shureq is a waw with a dot beside it, for a long u.

The shewa, two vertical dots under a letter, is either very short vowel sound, like the a in about, or it is silent. Which it is depends on its position in the word. The details of this belong to a full course, and beginners are advised to learn the rules with a teacher.

Step 5: The dagesh and the soft and hard letters

A dot in the middle of a letter is a dagesh. Six letters, bet, gimel, dalet, kaf, pe and tav, have a hard sound with a dagesh and a soft sound without one in traditional pronunciation. Bet with a dagesh is b, and without it is v. In a letter of any other kind, a dagesh doubles the consonant. These distinctions are part of the medieval reading tradition, and the way each community pronounces them differs.

To practice, take the word for word, davar. It has the letters dalet, bet, resh. In a vowelled text, the dalet has a qamets, the bet has a qamets under it, and the resh closes the word. Learn to say it slowly: da var. The word for house, bayit, begins with bet and ends with tav. Short exercises like these help a beginner to connect sound and sign.

  1. Can I say the names of the twenty two letters in order, from memory?
  2. Which letters do I confuse, and what small feature tells them apart?
  3. Which letters have final forms, and where in a word do they appear?
  4. Can I find a patach, a qamets and a tsere in a printed verse?
  5. Is a dot I see inside a letter a dagesh, and does it make the letter hard or double it?
  6. Which pronunciation tradition am I following, and how does it treat qamets and the soft letters?

Examples

The word shalom

The Hebrew word often translated peace is written with four letters: shin, lamed, waw and final mem. A reader who sounds it out slowly from right to left will say sha lom. A learner who has the letters and vowels can check this against a lexicon, which will also say that the word can mean wholeness and welfare.

The word melek

The word for king is written mem, lamed, final kaf. Notice that the first letter on the right is the first letter in the word. The vowels are segol under both mem and lamed. A reader sounds it me lek.

The first word of the Bible

The first word of Genesis is bereshit. It begins with bet, which here carries a shewa, followed by resh with a tsere, aleph, shin with a chireq and tav. A learner can sound out the word and begin to see why students ask how it should be translated. The next lesson sets out the grammar that bears on that question.

Different perspectives

Jewish

Jewish children learn the aleph bet as the first step of reading Scripture, and the letters carry deep significance in Jewish tradition and in mystical writing. The Torah scroll used in worship is written without vowels, and a skilled reader supplies them from memory.

Catholic

Catholic scholars have studied the Hebrew text for centuries, notably Jerome, who learned Hebrew in order to translate the Old Testament into Latin. The Church encourages those who can to study the languages.

Orthodox

Orthodox Christians receive the Old Testament in Greek, and few learn Hebrew for church use. Orthodox scholars of the Bible do study Hebrew for work on the text.

Protestant

Protestant seminaries often include introductory Hebrew in their programs of study, because of the tradition of translating from the Hebrew. Many ministers retain only a limited ability, and they use tools in the way this course describes.

Why it matters

Knowing the letters turns an unreadable shape into a word that can be looked up. A student who can find a word in a lexicon or concordance by its letters is much less dependent on the guesses of others. The skill is modest, but it is real, and it is the first step of tool use.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: Hebrew letters are only symbols for mystical meaning.

Correction: They are the letters of an ordinary alphabet. Jewish tradition has also found symbolic meaning in them, but the first use of a letter is to write a sound.

Misunderstanding: Once I know the letters, I can read Hebrew.

Correction: Sounding out a word is not understanding it. Reading requires vocabulary, grammar and practice.

Misunderstanding: Hebrew has vowel letters like English.

Correction: The alphabet is consonants only. A few consonants also mark vowels, and the vowel points were added later.

Misunderstanding: There is only one correct way to pronounce the dagesh and the vowels.

Correction: Communities and traditions pronounce them differently, and scholars reconstruct the ancient sounds in various ways. A learner should pick one system for study.

Knowledge check

Which direction is Hebrew read, and how many letters does the alphabet have?

Hebrew is read from right to left. The alphabet has twenty two letters, all consonants. Five of them have a different final form at the end of a word. Vowels are not letters but marks placed with the consonants, or in some cases shown by letters used as vowel indicators.

Which five letters have final forms?

The letters kaf, mem, nun, pe and tsade have final forms. These forms are used when the letter comes at the end of a word, and they represent the same sounds as the ordinary forms. The word melek, king, ends with a final kaf and is one example.

What is a dagesh, and what are the two things it can do?

A dagesh is a dot inside a letter. In bet, gimel, dalet, kaf, pe and tav it marks the hard sound, as opposed to the soft sound without it. In other letters it doubles the consonant. Whether a pronunciation tradition keeps all the distinctions varies.

Why are vowel points not part of the oldest Hebrew text?

The early text was written in consonants, and readers supplied the vowels from the language they knew. Jewish scribes called Masoretes added vowel signs in the early Middle Ages to preserve the traditional reading. The signs record a real tradition, but they were added later than the consonants.

Think it through

  1. How does reading from right to left change how you look at a page?
  2. Why might scribes have preferred to leave the consonants untouched and add vowels around them?
  3. What would you need beyond the alphabet to read a Hebrew verse for yourself?
  4. Which part of the lesson was hardest, and how will you practice it?

Independent assignment

Copy and sound out

In your own notebook, write the names of the twenty two letters in order and, for each, a note on its sound and on any similar letter. Using a printed Hebrew Bible, a beginner’s chart or a reference website, copy out Genesis 1:1 by hand, slowly, and write the sound of each word beneath it in English letters. Spend about thirty minutes. Write a short note on which letters were hardest. Do not send this to anyone.

Further study