Hebrew Basics |The Hebrew Writing System | Lesson 2
Pastor Billy Myron
The Hebrew alphabet contains twenty-two letters. There are no vowels in this alphabet, and there are also no capital letters. Two of these letters (א and ע) orinigally had a guttural pronunciation or glottal stop. In general, we will simply pronounce the vowel that happens to be attached to those two letters.
א Aleph (Guttural, no pronunciation)
ב Beth pronounced “v” as in “vacuum”
ג Gimel pronounced “g” as in “yogurt”
ד Daleth pronounced “th” as in “there”
ה He pronounced “h” as in “hotel”
ו Waw pronounced “w” as in “well”
ז Zayin pronounced “z” as in “Lazarus”
ח Heth pronounced “ch” as in “Bach”
ט Teth pronounced “t” as in “tiny”
י Yodh pronounced “y” as in “yellow”
כ Kaph pronounced “k” as in “king”
ל Lamedh pronounced “l” as in “locust”
מ Mem pronounced “m” as in “mother”
נ Nun pronounced “n” as in “nonsense”
ס Samekh pronounced “s” as in “sound”
ע Ayin (Guttural, no pronunciation)
פ Pe pronounced “ph” as in “philosophy”
צ Tsadhe pronounced “ts” as in “fits”
ק Qoph pronounced “q” as in “unique”
ר Resh pronounced “r” as in “roll”
ש: (the next two are considered to be the same letter)
שׂ Sin pronounced “s” as in “sound”
שׁ Shin pronounced “sh” as in “shine”
ת Taw pronounced “th” as in “thin”
There are no capital letters in the Hebrew alphabet. However, a handful of potential changes to some these letters’ form and pronunciation also need to be learned. We will cover these in the next lesson.