A consonant alphabet written right to left
Modern Hebrew uses the square script, which developed from the Aramaic alphabet and is also used for Yiddish and Ladino. Like Arabic, it is an abjad: only consonants are written. The word שלום reads shalom, but nothing in its four letters ש ל ו ם marks the a. Readers rely on vocabulary and context, helped by four letters that double as vowel markers: ו for o or u, י for i or e, and ה or א mostly at the end of a word.
Full vowels are shown with niqqud, a set of dots and dashes placed under, above or inside the letters. The second chart shows them on the letter ב. You need niqqud to learn to read, but Israeli newspapers, websites and street signs almost never use it. In Modern Hebrew, pataḥ and qamats both sound like a, and segol and tsere both sound like e, so the system has more signs than spoken vowels.
The five final letters
Five letters change shape when they end a word: כ becomes ך, מ becomes ם, נ becomes ן, פ becomes ף and צ becomes ץ. Four of these drop below the line; final mem ם is a closed square instead. They are not extra letters: sound and alphabetical position stay the same.
Look-alike letters and letters with two sounds
Several groups are easy to confuse at first:
- ב and כ: bet has a small tail sticking out at the bottom right; kaf is rounded.
- ד and ר: dalet has a sharp corner at the top right; resh is curved.
- ה, ח and ת: he has a gap at the top left, ḥet is closed, tav has a small foot at the bottom left.
- ו, ז and ן: zayin has a head that sticks out on both sides; final nun descends below the line.
- ס and ם: samekh is rounded at the bottom; final mem has square corners.
Three letters have two sounds: ב (b or v), כ (k or kh, as in Scottish loch) and פ (p or f). A dot inside the letter, the dagesh, gives the hard sound: בּ is b, ב is v. In unpointed text a useful rule is that at the start of a word they are read b, k and p. Modern Hebrew also merged some sounds: ח and כ without dagesh are pronounced alike, as are ט and ת, ק and כּ, and ו and ב without dagesh. Spelling has to be learned word by word.
Numbers and cursive handwriting
Every letter has a numerical value: א = 1 to י = 10, then כ = 20 up to ק = 100, ר = 200, ש = 300 and ת = 400. These values number chapters and write years in the Hebrew calendar, and they underlie gematria, the interpretation of words through their numerical value. In daily life Israelis write by hand in a cursive script whose shapes differ a lot from print, so learners usually study both. To type whole words on screen, the Hebrew virtual keyboard follows the standard Israeli layout.