Hebrew/Aleph-Bet/11

 Aleph-Bet Lesson 11 —     Review

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We have finally completed the Hebrew alphabet course! Let's review what you learned in this level:

Letters
Here, each consonant is shown in its own box. Each line contains the name of the letter in English, the actual letter, the transliteration used throughout the book and the IPA equivalent.

Niqqud
The symbols are arranged by pronunciation.

Letters that sound the same
Traditional Hebrew had many phonemes that don't exist today. Most of these sounds are called by linguists "pharyngealised", that is, to produce them you need to "voice" (use your vocal cords) while sticking the root of your tongue to the pharynx. Many European Jews found it impossible to make such sounds, so they replaced them with regular consonants, all of which were already existent in Hebrew. For instance:

Kaf used to be a regular "k" sound (k). Qof used to be a pharyngealised "k" sound (q). Eventually Qof was pronounced the same as the regular "k".

As a result of this merging, many sounds have two letters to represent them. To prevent confusion, here are all the common sounds:


 * Aleph and ‘Ayn  both make the glottal stop (’).
 * Vet and Vav  both make the "v" sound (v).
 * At the end of a word, Aleph and He  both make the "a" sound (a).
 * Ħet and Khaf  both make the "kh" sound (χ).
 * Tet and Tav  both make the "t" sound (t).
 * Kaf and Qof  both make the "k" sound (k).
 * Samekh and Sin  both make the "s" sound (s).

Letters that look the same
Many letters in Hebrew are based on other letters. One could almost call them diacritics. For example:


 * Resh
 * Yod
 * Vav

Many inexperienced readers tend to confuse these letters.


 * Zayin
 * Vav
 * Nun Sofit
 * Mem Sofit
 * Samekh
 * He
 * Ħet
 * Tav
 * Kaf
 * Bet
 * Gimmel
 * Nun
 * Dalet
 * Resh
 * Kaf Sofit

Foreign transliteration
The fact that there are multiple letters for the same sounds, creates a problem. What letters would you use for foreign words, using the Hebrew alphabet? Can you use any of them?

The answer is no. While Tet and Tav, for instance, sound the same, and supposedly we could use both of them, only Tet can be used for the "t" sound. This is because in foreign transliterations Tav might represent the "th" sound ( plimuth Plymouth).

European Languages

 * A &mdash; Aleph
 * V &mdash; Vav in the beginning of syllables; Vet anywhere else
 * Ch, kh, h &mdash; Khaf in German and Greek; Ħet  anywhere else
 * T &mdash; Tet
 * Th &mdash; Tav, Thav
 * S &mdash; Samekh
 * Sh &mdash; Shin
 * Ts, tz, z &mdash; Tsadi
 * K &mdash; Qof
 * Any form of R &mdash; Resh
 * Tch (as in "chair") &mdash; Tchadi
 * Zh, j, s (as in "pleasure") &mdash; Zhayin
 * J, dzh (as in "jam") &mdash; Jimmel

Arabic
These transliterations apply only to words of Arabic origin:
 * T &mdash; Tav
 * Th &mdash; Thav
 * Dj &mdash; Jimmel
 * Ħ &mdash; Ħet
 * Kh &mdash; Khet
 * Dh &mdash; Dhal
 * S' &mdash; Tsadi
 * D' &mdash; Dadi
 * T' &mdash; Tet
 * Dh' &mdash; Dhet
 * Gh &mdash; Ghayin
 * Q &mdash; Qof
 * K &mdash; Kaf

Niqqud
When writing foreign words, always use the vowel letters Aleph, Vav and.

There are many exceptions regarding Aleph, but don't take the risk.

For example: based on the former table, Tokaj (a town in Hungary famous for its wine) would never be written with Kaf and Tav (then it would be Thokhaj), but rather with Qof and Tet, respectively. But what niqqud would be used?

There are some rules:


 * Never use ħataf forms.
 * "O" is always written with ħolam malei.
 * "U" is always shuruq, never qubbuts.
 * As stated before, always use vowel letters, or in other words, malei forms . It doesn't matter whether the word is written with niqqud or without.
 * Write the "e" without using any vowel letter (this might cause confusion between "e" and "ְ" but this is something you'd have to guess).
 * You can use either Qamats or Pataħ for "a", Segol or Tsere for "e".

Then the word Tokaj would be written.

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