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Hebrew-101: Some Letters and Vowels (Lesson 1)
At the beginning we just going
to do a lot of learning. Before you start understanding the language
structure, some ground should be prepared. We'll start with learning Hebrew
letters and vocalization marks (unlike English, those are not exactly
letters.) If you "can follow the prayer", like many people do, then you
probably can skip this part.
Hebrew letters
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As you probably know, Hebrew
writing goes right to left
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Hebrew alphabet consists of 22
letters.
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Vowels didn't exist in the ancient Hebrew /
Phoenician script. The alphabet though couldn't evolve because "not a single
letter in the Scripture could be either added or removed".
With the time vocalization marks (also called
diacritics) came to existance, which are written
above/below/inside the normal letters, thus avoiding changing the letters
themselves. Torah (and other) scrolls are usually written without any
diacritics; printed prayer books usually contain them. In books and newspapers
printed in Israel, in 99% of the text vocalization marks are not
used.
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Hebrew term for the vocalization marks is "nekudot" ((literally "dots"), or "nikkud" (vocalization,
literally "dotting").
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Correction to the above: :) Theoretically, most vowels do not "have their own
letter"; but in the real life we don't write with the diacritics either. When
you write without diacritics, some minimal necessary subset of vowels is
actually written with letters. We'll discuss this topic in details later on.
Let's start with the consonants existing in
English also:
|
Letter |
Letter Name |
Pronunciation |
1 |
![](/images/hebgifs/g.gif) |
ghimel |
g (as in get) |
2 |
![](/images/hebgifs/d.gif) |
dalet |
d |
3 |
![](/images/hebgifs/w.gif) |
vav |
v |
4 |
![](/images/hebgifs/z.gif) |
zayin [zaayyin] |
z (as in zebra) |
5 |
![](/images/hebgifs/tet.gif) |
tet |
t |
6 |
![](/images/hebgifs/t.gif) |
tav |
t |
7 |
![](/images/hebgifs/y.gif) |
yud (yod) |
y (as in yet) |
8 |
![](/images/hebgifs/l.gif) |
lamed |
l |
9 |
![](/images/hebgifs/m.gif) |
mem |
m |
10 |
![](/images/hebgifs/n.gif) |
noon |
n |
11 |
![](/images/hebgifs/smk.gif) |
samech |
s |
12 |
![](/images/hebgifs/q.gif) |
kuf (kof) |
k |
13 |
![](/images/hebgifs/r.gif) |
reish (resh) |
r (as in German or French) |
Happy number of 13 is probably enough for the first lesson. We
also need to give some more details on the above.
(Lamed) sounds softer than
English "L", it's closer to L in languages like Spanish, French, German, or
Arabic.
(Vav) - used to be W ages ago; it's evolved into V, but for foreign words it's
also used for W: וושינגטון (Washington),
שווארמה (shawarma).
To start reading, you'll need at least some basic vocalization
marks. Here are some of them:
|
Vocalization Mark |
Name |
Pronunciation |
1 |
![](/images/hebgifs/ptx.gif) |
patach |
a (as in father) |
2 |
![](/images/hebgifs/qmtz.gif) |
kamatz |
a (as in father) |
3 |
![](/images/hebgifs/sgl.gif) |
segol |
e (as in bed) |
4 |
![](/images/hebgifs/e.gif) |
tzeire (tzereh) |
e (as in bed) |
And again, looks like some explanations are needed right away.
Firstly, why would we need two E and two A?
In the ancient (around 6-10 centuries CE, that's when the
vocalization scheme took place) the A's and E's differed by their length.
Kamatz and Tzeire stood for longer vowels, Patach and Segol were short ones.
Vowel length
In modern Hebrew spoken in Israel, there is no long
and short vowels. Kamatz and Patach are pronounced totally the same.
Tzeire almost never differs from Segol. "Short" and "long" sounds of I
and O are always exactly the same.
Distinguishing between the
(rather theoretically) short and long vowels is rather important for
learning classical Hebrew grammar than for the spoken language. |
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The only long vowel which can differ from its short
counterpart is Tzeire - some Israelis would pronounce it "Yiddish way", like
a diphthong EY.
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Besides long and short vowels, there are reduced or
ultra-short vowels. They are always stressless, rather variations of a
zero-vowel, second-class citizens among the vowels. In most cases though,
their "reduction" is as theoretical as the length of other vowels.
Vocabulary
To apply what we've just learned, let's try to read couple
of words. For now just memorize the words, and in a few lessons I'll try to
make the learning process somewhat more entertaining.
Hebrew |
Transliteration |
Translation |
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yad |
arm, hand, handle |
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mas |
tax |
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nes |
miracle |
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vetek |
seniority (e.g. at work) |
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tal |
dew |
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lamed |
name of the letter ל |
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zaz |
moving |
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