The Hebrew alphabet has 22 letters, all consonants, written from right to left. Five letters take a special final (sofit) form when they end a word. The chart below gives every letter with its name, romanization, IPA, and closest English sound in modern Israeli pronunciation — the Hebrew you will actually hear in Israel today.
Alphabetical (alef-bet) order. Five letters take a different form at the end of a word, shown in the Final column. Six letters (ב, ג, ד, כ, פ, ת) historically changed sound with a dagesh dot; in modern Israeli Hebrew only ב, כ, and פ still alternate (b/v, k/kh, p/f).
| Letter | Name | Final form | Romanization | IPA | Sounds like |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| א | alef | ʾ / silent | /ʔ/ | silent, or the catch in the middle of "uh-oh" | |
| ב | bet / vet | b / v | /b/, /v/ | b in "book" with dagesh (בּ); v in "vine" without | |
| ג | gimel | g | /ɡ/ | g in "go" | |
| ד | dalet | d | /d/ | d in "door" | |
| ה | he | h | /h/ | h in "hat"; usually silent at the end of a word | |
| ו | vav | v / o / u | /v/ | v in "vine"; also spells the vowels o and u | |
| ז | zayin | z | /z/ | z in "zoo" | |
| ח | chet | ch / ḥ | /χ/ | ch in Scottish "loch" — never ch in "chair" | |
| ט | tet | t | /t/ | t in "top" | |
| י | yod | y | /j/ | y in "yes"; also spells the vowels i and e | |
| כ | kaf / khaf | ך | k / kh | /k/, /χ/ | k in "kite" with dagesh (כּ); ch in "loch" without |
| ל | lamed | l | /l/ | l in "lamp" | |
| מ | mem | ם | m | /m/ | m in "map" |
| נ | nun | ן | n | /n/ | n in "note" |
| ס | samekh | s | /s/ | s in "sun" | |
| ע | ayin | ʿ | /ʔ/ | mostly silent in Israeli Hebrew — a light glottal catch; a deep throat sound in Mizrahi tradition | |
| פ | pe / fe | ף | p / f | /p/, /f/ | p in "pet" with dagesh (פּ); f in "fun" without |
| צ | tsadi | ץ | ts | /ts/ | ts in "cats", even at the start of a word |
| ק | qof | k / q | /k/ | k in "kite" — identical to kaf with dagesh today | |
| ר | resh | r | /ʁ/ | guttural r, like French "rue" | |
| ש | shin / sin | sh / s | /ʃ/, /s/ | sh in "ship" with the dot on the right (שׁ); s in "sun" with it on the left (שׂ) | |
| ת | tav | t | /t/ | t in "top" |
Six letters — ב, ג, ד, כ, פ, ת — are known by the mnemonic begadkefat. In classical Hebrew each had two sounds: hard with a dagesh (a dot in the letter's belly) and soft without. Modern Israeli Hebrew keeps the alternation for only three of them: ב is b or v, כ is k or kh, פ is p or f. That is why the same letter is p in פיל (pil, elephant) but f in ספר (sefer, book). ג, ד, and ת are now always g, d, and t.
Several historically distinct sounds have merged in mainstream Israeli pronunciation: ח and soft כ are both the raspy /χ/ of "loch", ק and hard כ are both k, א and ע are both silent or a light glottal stop, and ט sounds exactly like ת. The spelling preserves the older distinctions, which is why Hebrew spelling has to be memorized word by word. The r sound (ר) is guttural — closer to French or German r than to English.
Hebrew normally writes no vowels at all. A system of dots and dashes called niqqud, devised by the Masoretes around the 8th century, can mark every vowel precisely — but it appears only in children's books, poetry, prayer books, and dictionaries. Everyday text relies on context plus the helper letters ו and י, which stand in for o/u and i/e. Learners typically start with niqqud and shed it as their vocabulary grows.
Hebrew was first written around the 10th century BC in the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet, a variant of the Phoenician script — the same ancestor that produced Greek and, through it, Latin. Early inscriptions like the Gezer calendar and the Siloam tunnel inscription use those older letterforms, which look nothing like the Hebrew of today.
The square script now in use (Ktav Ashuri, "Assyrian writing") was adopted from Imperial Aramaic during and after the Babylonian exile in the 6th-5th centuries BC; the Dead Sea Scrolls are largely written in an early form of it. The five final letters began as scribal end-of-word flourishes that hardened into rules. Between the 7th and 10th centuries AD, the Masoretes of Tiberias added the niqqud vowel points to lock in the exact pronunciation of the biblical text.
For centuries the alphabet also wrote the languages of the Jewish diaspora — Yiddish (Germanic) and Ladino (Romance) both use Hebrew letters. With the revival of spoken Hebrew driven by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda in the late 19th century, the 22-letter alphabet returned to full everyday use, and it now writes everything from street signs to software.
22, and every one of them is a consonant. Five letters (כ, מ, נ, פ, צ) have a second form used only at the end of a word — ך, ם, ן, ף, ץ — which brings the number of distinct glyphs to 27. Vowels are not letters but optional dot-and-dash marks called niqqud.
They are the same letters with the same sounds — only the shape changes at the end of a word. The forms arose naturally in ancient handwriting: scribes let the last stroke of a word trail downward, and those flourishes became fixed spelling rules (ך, ם, ן, ף, ץ). Think of them like a cursive letter that looks different when nothing follows it. Writing שלום with a regular מ at the end is simply a spelling error.
Hebrew words are built on consonant roots slotted into a limited set of patterns, so context usually leaves only one sensible reading — the way English speakers can read "bldng" as "building". The letters ו and י also serve as vowel hints for o/u and i/e. When precision matters — scripture, poetry, children's books, dictionaries — the niqqud marks spell out every vowel.
Yes — they are siblings. Both descend from the Phoenician-Aramaic script family, both run right to left, and both write consonants while treating vowels as optional marks. Hebrew kept the original 22-letter inventory; Arabic reshaped its letters into a fully cursive script of 28. The kinship shows in cognate letter names: alef/alif, bet/ba, ayin/ʿayn.
Yes — in the traditional gematria system, א through ט are 1-9, י through צ are 10-90, and ק through ת are 100-400. Hebrew dates, Bible chapters, and outline numbering still use letters this way. The numbers 15 and 16 are written ט״ו (9+6) and ט״ז (9+7) instead of the expected yod combinations, to avoid spelling a divine name.