Talk:Hebrew alphabet

The name 'Hebrew alphabet' in Hebrew in the box on the right

The vocalization is wrong. The xiriq is NOT properly centered in the letter resh, but goes under the downstroke. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.12.97.111 (talk) 14:21, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

tzere in Modern hebrew

This aleges that tzere in modern hebrew is "correctly pronounced as EI" that is incorrect, sure it is in the anglosized synogogue "sephardic hebrew" they teach in America. but in israel its only dipthongized in some words that are remnants of the ashkenazi pronunciation,even then not everyone does. Also "ei" shouldn't be considered more "correct" as dipthongized vowels are alien to hebrew, ei only exist in Ashkenazi (and Ashkenazi influenced) Hebrew —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.72.241.66 (talk) 21:52, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree. It is often pronounced as [ej] in Israeli Hebrew, but it is not correct in the normative sense and not consistent in the spoken language. See Asher Laufer, Chapters in Phonetics and Phonetic Transcription, §17.3.1-17.3.2 (the book is in Hebrew). --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 15:07, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

"Names" of letters with geresh

There are no names for letters with geresh representing non-Hebrew sounds. I heard "Tshadik" a couple of times as a joke, but i've never heard "Jimel", "Zhayin", or "Thav". It looks totally made up. I'm removing those names. Please correct me if i'm wrong. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 18:33, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

You are quite correct.

You are wrong. =) You can put them back, because they are correct. 'jimel' is a more common name than 'zhayin' or 'thav', and they are not formally taught as part of the alefbet in schools, but those are the names they are called when dictated out loud.Jesszahav (talk) 04:56, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Nonsense. Amir is 100% correct. There are no such letter names.

Please provide sources before inserting into the article. Dan ☺ 22:16, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Literal meaning of letters

Aharon, could you please state your source for the information under Literal meaning of letters? Regarding the meanings of the letters' names, I believe there is some confusion between their original meanings and etymology on the one hand and the meanings that these names (or words similar to them) acquired later on the other hand. I believe e.g. that the name "Aleph" originated from the old Hebrew word "aluph", meaning ox, and not from "elef", meaning "one thousand". The letter's old form depicted the head of an ox, as you can see in the table. Please be careful to avoid pseudoscientific language comparison between ancient and modern Hebrew. Dan Pelleg (talk) 13:51, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

The table was becoming much too wide, I split the table, and the history section into a new article called, History of the Hebrew alphabet Epson291 (talk) 21:59, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Good idea - only you've just copied the information from here into the new article, information which is unsourced and at least partly wrong. Dan Pelleg (talk) 22:31, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

I copied this discussion (and the letters, to the new talk page) Epson291 (talk) 06:21, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

This is incorrect. That assumes Hebrew was derived from Phonecian. Aleph its self is constructed of two yuds and a vuv. The gemattria of this number is 26, and it's used to represent the name of G*d. Each letter has an intentional shape. CheskiChips (talk) 14:49, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't know all of them, but I do know that the name of Hebrew Letter Beyt derives from the Hebrew word Bayit(בַּיִת) meaning "house" according to the Ancient Hebrew Research Center. I found a few of them there, but there might be more somewhere on that site. Of course, I've been to this site, and, unfortunately, the dictionary that they have there is very limited, but considering how humble the owner of that site is, you might be able to persuade him to make some updates to it, so long as you provide adequete sources. Scholars love their sources.AurumSpiral1235813 (talk) 20:55, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Messed up dots in letters

If you notice in the part where it shows the diferenced between shin and sin, pe and fe bet vet...... All the dots are aligned too far to the left. It seems to be a format error because i checked the source code, but thoughti'd bring it up. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.173.121.231 (talk) 21:13, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

List of Incorrect/Unsubstantiated

Why in 'History' are Rabbi's who dedicate their entire lives to this not considered "Contemporary Scholars"?

The evidence that letters were resultant from some proto language are unsubstantiated. Evidences include allusion in various Talmud passages with the importance of each precise letter. Later Sefer Yetzirah discusses the importance of the letters in shape. Various kabbalistic teachings are entirely based on the shape of letters, and for that matter the pronunciations. It should not be taken entirely lightly. Theologically Assyria decended of the same family, there's no reason to assume the two weren't always identical.

Pronunciation: yod also is identical to 'ee' and 'ih'. The combination of these two is its self a dipthong creating the modern "y" sound. Aleph-Yod is equivalent to the modern letter "I".

Vuv is more likely "waw", the reason it can use the tones "ooh" and "oh" are the fact that those two sounds as a dipthong are the letter 'w'. This is in use in Mitzrahi Judaism, and some other sects.

Missing in the Dagesh is "Gimel/Jimel" which is in use in many American and Israeli communities. Also Tav/Sav is not the only interpretation, there is also thav/tav which seems more likely. Also missing in Dagesh is Resh / Resh (Gutteral). The modern use is similar to a "w", but the original is a gutteral sound similar to the ayin.

Ayin is not pronounced the same as Aleph. Ayin has a gutteral sound applied to it, a gutteral sound void of tonality almost a controlled rolling grunt.

Sepher Yetzirah also implies that there are defined divisions. Fundamentals. Labials. Palletals. Dentals. Gutterals. and Excess. CheskiChips (talk) 14:47, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Note that there is archaeological evidence that the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet existed before the Aramaic alphabet, e.g. this image, where the fourth letter, a Paleo-Hebrew Aleph () is in principal identical to the Phoenician Aleph (). Note also that you are at least partially misinformed as to pronunciation / spelling habits of native speakers of Modern Hebrew, e.g. the distinction "Gimel/Jimel" is most certainly not made using a dagesh but rather using a geresh. Aleph and Ayin are pronounced identically in Israel's general population (as stated in the article); both pronunciations of Ayin are given in the table under Pronunciation. I would suggest you go ahead and include the information you have to offer under separate entries, such as "The form of Hebrew letters as viewed in the Kabbalah", but please do not confuse traditions and interpretations (which are based on knowledge prior to that obtained through modern scientific methods) with modern, scientifically founded Data. Please be sure to always include verifiable sources to the information you include. Dan Pelleg (talk) 20:30, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your clarification. CheskiChips (talk) 04:38, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Greek letters?

Note that Greek is a daughter language of Phoenician. It might be useful to add the greek letters that apply to the Phoenician letters under the "Names, scripts, values, and transliteration of the letters" in the article. Nschoem 03:04, 20 November 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nschoem (talk • contribs)

It is already found here. We can't put every related script in the table. Epson291 (talk) 07:50, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Pronunciation of names of letters

Where on Wikipedia can I find how the names of the letters are pronounced, in the context of referring to them in English? Not the sound represented by the letters, but the name of the letters themselves, when speaking English, as in "the name of the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet is aleph". Aleph is easy enough but should vav be "vow", "vav" or "wow", shwa "shwa" /ʃwɑ:/ or "shva" /ʃvɑ:/, he "heh" /hɛ/ or "hey" /heɪ/, etc? The information should probably be given both on this page and the one corresponding to each letter. Flapdragon (talk) 18:13, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Name of letter	Aleph	Bet/Vet	Gimel	Dalet	He	Vav	Zayin	Heth	Tet	Yud	Kaph/Khaph
standard pronunciation	/'alef/	/bet/	/'gimel/	/'dalet/	/he/	/vav/	/'zajin/	/ħet/	/tet/	/jod/	/kaf/
colloquial Israeli pronunciation (if differing)				/'daled/	/hej/		/'zain/	/χet/		/jud/
	א	ב	ג	ד	ה	ו	ז	ח	ט	י	כ
											ך
Name of letter	Lamed	Mem	Nun	Samekh	Ayin	Pe/Phe	Tsadi	Quph	Resh	Shin/Sin	Tav
standard pronunciation	/'lamed/	/mem/	/nun/	/'sameχ/	/'ʕajin/	/pe/	/'ʦadi/	/kof/	/reʃ/	/ʃin/	/tav/
colloquial Israeli pronunciation (if differing)					/'ain/	/pej/	/'ʦadik/	/kuf/	/rejʃ/		/taf/
	ל	מ	נ	ס	ע	פ	צ	ק	ר	ש	ת
		ם	ן			ף	ץ

([1]) - Dan Pelleg (talk) 21:10, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

(I suppose, since Yiddish uses ther same alphabet, the Yiddish pronunciations of the lettes' names should also be given, as should the names in any other language which uses it. Dan Pelleg (talk) 21:15, 19 March 2009 (UTC))

This is a great start, though it's not clear to me what "standard pronunciation" means in this context, and the table doesn't include English, where of course sounds like [ħ] and [ʕ] are not available. There must be long-established, in fact centuries-old conventions of English pronunciation of Hebrew as a historical and liturgical language. I'm pretty confident of /'alef/, /beθ/, /gɪməl/ and /jɒd/, but I'm too ignorant to know them all. Flapdragon (talk) 21:59, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, "standard pronunciation" should actually read "standard modern Israeli pronunciation", being the standard set by the Academy of the Hebrew Language, taught at Israeli schools etc. I agree, English pronunciation standards belong in such a table too. Dan Pelleg (talk) 22:57, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Overdots for Judeo-Arabic

I remember reading somewhere that sometimes when the Hebrew alphabet was used to write Judeo-Arabic letters were written with overdots similar to those of the Arabic alphabet to represent similar sounds (e.g. ד with three overdots for [ð]). Is there a proper encoding for this on computers, and should information on this be included in this article? Mo-Al (talk) 00:25, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

While on that topic - any chances of someone including a section on the similarities between this and the Arabic Alphabet? Wanyonyi (talk) 11:42, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

The cantillation diacritics could do it, e.g. "segol" for three overdots: ד֒. Dan ☺ 16:38, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

"Standard Israeli" names of the letters

Should the pronunciation of the names of the letters kheth ח as /ħ/ and ayin ע as /ʕ/ really be called "Standard Israeli", and should the pronunciations that equate them with a dagesh-less kaph and with an aleph respectively really be labelled "colloquial Israeli"? I understand that the Oriental pronunciation is theoretically sort-of official according to the Academy of Hebrew, but isn't it more of an exception than a norm even in official discourse? Calling it "colloquial" would suggest that most Israelis are incapable of speaking in any other way than colloquially even in the most official of settings. That's not the way terms such as "standard" and "colloquial" are used, normally.

On the other hand, the Tiberian Hebrew forms of the names of the letters really should be given: unlike mainstream Israeli Hebrew, they really do preserve the original sounds.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 16:18, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

The standard set by the Academy of the Hebrew Language is legally compulsory for Israel's government institutions (including all educational institutions), it is "standard" only in this sense. Clarifying this in the article wouldn't hurt. And adding a (sourced!) column with Tiberian pronunciations is a good idea too, go ahead! Dan ☺ 00:46, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Dialectical (the table)

• Hebrew alphabet#Transliterations and transcriptions of Hebrew letters: Would someone please remember to add the forgotten dialectical pronunciation of ר as /r/ or /ɾ/ (& sometimes /ɹ/). As it is noted for ע & ח. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 21:20, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Done – Dan ☺ 00:51, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Rashi as an ancestral script?

Rashi script is listed as an ancestral script, alongside phoenecian, aramaic etc. I thought it was developed more recently, in Europe, which hardly qualifies it as an ancestral script. In fact, I think it is based on the block script we have now, so really it is a descendant of the block script.128.100.71.45 (talk) 15:31, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, moreover it's still used today for printing biblical commentary, as opposed to the Phoenician etc. Dan ☺ 13:53, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Flawed table of Hebrew letters

In the table of Hebrew letters, the author neglected to list the soft ghimel and dhaleth. The fact that most modern Israelis do not recognize them does not mean they do not exist in Hebrew. The author should correct this; I do not have the tools to do so. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rhayat (talk • contribs) 02:10, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

The markup is a total mess

The markup of this article, I am afraid, is a total mess, especially in the tables. According to the Wikipedia Manual of Style, markup should be kept as simple as possible: Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Keep markup simple. This concerns, among other things, font sizes: Wikipedia:Manual of Style (text formatting)#Font size:

Increased and decreased font size should primarily be produced through automated facilities such as headings or through carefully designed templates.

The hieratic markup severely handicaps the editability. I have now removed a few of the worst markup excesses, such as font-families (which in many occasions caused problems, see above Talk:Hebrew alphabet#Messed up dots in letters) or absolute size definitions. Much work remains to be done. -- machᵗᵃˡᵏ👍 08:52, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks mach for all that work. The only thing I think looked better before is the appearance of the tables at the top of the article, which were aligned – they look messy now and the second box is much too wide. Dan ☺ 20:42, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Incorrect and inconsistent vowel forms

The versions of kamatz and reduced kamatz shown in the first two tables in Hebrew alphabet#Vowel points are not the same as the ones that appear in the Comparison table that follows. The former versions, showing a kamatz as a horizontal line with a dot below instead of a T-like shape, are wholly incorrect. I suppose there might be a historic precedent for that form, but the T shape has been standard for many centuries. Check any of the article's references or the Hebrew Wikipedia article on kamatz. Enoent (talk) 18:40, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

אָ | אֳ

In the traditional typeface for Hebrew serif fonts, the kamats's "foot" is thicker at the bottom, like a drop shape (clearly to see e.g. here). Maybe the uploaders forgot to put on their glasses and assumed it was only their blurred vision that made the bulb seem connected to the bar – Dan ☺ 15:24, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

The Unicode fonts are terrible

The Unicode fonts are terrible: indistinguishable and nearly illegible. Please replace all reference characters with actual images of letters, in the modern serif typeface.

The most confusion comes about from the similarities between Vav, Yod,Final Nun (ן,י,ו); Dalet,Zayin (ז,ד); and Final Kaf and Resh (ר,ך). The table of different styles (e.g., Rashi) is somewhat useful, however, the fact remains that for most people, the default font of Hebrew -- with which they are most familiar -- is the modern serif typeface, such as the one in the image in the infobox at the upper right hand corner of the page:

example of the modern serif typeface

Saywhat2012 (talk) 21:20, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

With what tools is it generally formed?

I have been attempting to write in a similar alphabet but find that the ballpoint pen is just not up for the task, with what sort of writing utensils is this generally written with? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hawjam (talk • contribs) 22:53, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

The vowel sound represented by Patach

Is the vowel in "bus" really a good English analogue for the vowel sound represented by the niqqud Patach? I'd think it was closer to the "a" in "far" or "fall", as the article on Patach itself seems to indicate. Kevin Nelson (talk) 06:36, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

PE and TSADI issue

Final PE and TSADI seem to be mistaken for normal PE and TSADI. Can someone who knows Hebrew confirm that and correct it as I am only 99.9% sure about this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.76.29.48 (talk) 07:02, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

Hebrew alphabet vs. Hebrew script

Despite the fact that Hebrew script redirects here, this article is predominantly about the alphabet/abjad used specifically to write the Hebrew language, paying significantly less attention to the other languages written with the Hebrew script, such as the Yiddish language. I would recommend that someone with the appropriate knowledge replace the redirect with a separate article that addresses the Hebrew script from a common point of view, in a similar fashion to the article on the Cyrillic script. —Gordon P. Hemsley→✉ 13:39, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

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Final forms

I've updated the page to reflect that Paleo-Hebrew has no 'final forms' like the modern Ashuri script does. The original phrasing seemed to suggest that both scripts used finals. I trust no-one will have any objection. 50.107.129.248 (talk) 16:56, 20 October 2017 (UTC) B.A.

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Phoenician glyphs not properly rendered in the table under Hebrew_alphabet#Stylistic_variants

I tryed every pre-installed font on Windows(TM) to render the glyphs of the Phoenician alphabet, to no avail. Could someone substitute images for the characters? FlavianusEP (talk) 18:07, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

Order of letters

The order in which letters of the Hebrew alphabet are listed is the same everywhere and taken as read. Shouldn't the History section say something about when the ordering was first established, even if that means saying that it is no-longer known? --DStanB (talk) 10:51, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

@DStanB: You raise a good point. Further, the order is not quite the same everywhere. Within the Hebrew Bible there is occasional variation between letters "ayin" (16th) and "pe" (17th), revealed particularly across the acrostic poetry. For example, within Lamentations, chapters two, three and four are ordered pe–ayin whereas chapter 1 is ayin–pe. And this variation also occurs across the acrostic psalms. So a short section or sub-section about this ordering topic would seem to be useful. Not least it would act as a link-point for the current repetition across the WP articles for the individual chapters of Lamentations. Feline Hymnic (talk) 14:15, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

I've just started a small subsection "Order" about this. It could benefit from the attention of someone who knows the Hebrew alphabet better than I do. Feline Hymnic (talk) 20:51, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Yiddish vowel examples

@Dan Pelleg: I just revised an old contribution you made regarding vowels in Yiddish. Please have a look and let me know whether I've garbled the original intent of your contribution. Ibadibam (talk) 01:58, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

it’s still good ☺ Dan ☺ 18:55, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks! Ibadibam (talk) 22:25, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

Phoenician/Proto-Hebrew alephbet visual aid

Can someone please find any one of thousands of better representations of the primitive Semitic alphabet? The modern, "gothic" bold/black square letters shown are both misleading and inaccurate to any inscriptions or ancient texts found. ~pablo david — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2603:3023:802:1A00:A94D:3B2F:BBE8:EF5C (talk) 12:18, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

To which specific element are you referring? Is it the image File:Paleo-hebrew_alphabet.jpg? Ibadibam (talk) 17:52, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

ח Het [xet]

I'm not aware of any word in Hebrew Audio Bible where ח would be pronounced not as velar but as uvular fricative. So at least in ancient Hebrew it's always [x]. Perhaps I only know Askenasim and no Sephardim. Can [χ] get removed?--Vollbracht (talk) 13:12, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

done according to Hebrew Audio Bible, Mechon Mamre --Vollbracht (talk) 13:38, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

@Vollbracht: I'm no expert on the matter, but please take a look at refs in Modern Hebrew phonology#Consonants. Ideally, these two pages and Help:IPA/Hebrew should be kept in sync. No such user (talk) 15:53, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Thank you! In fact, now I judge my edit as a mistake. I'll undo it.--Vollbracht (talk) 21:37, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Cantillation link

Someone in 2019 made a disambiguation page out of Cantillation with a rationale, but obviously didn't think to fix the previous usages. The previous page was moved to Hebrew cantillation.

Within this page there are at least two links to Cantillation that ought to be Hebrew cantillation, I think. Could someone knowledgeable check and update these? Shenme (talk) 06:34, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Done. There were several of these. In most cases the phrase "cantillation marks" was there, and I just extended the link to comprise both words, because there's a redirect at that term. Largoplazo (talk) 11:38, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 13 August 2022

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) – robertsky (talk) 18:28, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

---

Hebrew alphabet → Hebrew script – It is an abjad not an alphabet. AleksiB 1945 (talk) 13:56, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

• STRONGLY OPPOSE --"Abjad" in this meaning is a neologism which didn't exist until the 1990s. For centuries before that, and still often after that, people spoke of a "consonantal alphabet" if any greater precision was needed. If the titles of the "Arabic alphabet" article etc. doesn't change, then the title of this article should not change. There's some discussion of this issue at Talk:Arabic alphabet, where a move for that article was basically rejected (though not a formal proposal with template). AnonMoos (talk) 22:05, 13 August 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose Stop making these proposals on every abjad page. Zhomron (talk) 02:04, 14 August 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose. Would prefer to see all these proposed moves in one place. Can an admin do that? Walrasiad (talk) 13:46, 14 August 2022 (UTC)
• Comment. The fact that somebody a few decades ago gave distinctive names to subsets of what had been called alphabets all along doesn't mean they aren't still widely known as alphabets. While the terms are useful, he hardly had the power to declare abjads and abugidas to be non-alphabets as opposed to subsets of the set of alphabets. As for what people are actually naming the Hebrew writing system these days, for what it's worth, the Google ngrams chart is here. "Hebrew abjad" isn't found at all in Google's corpus. Largoplazo (talk) 22:31, 14 August 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose per ngrams. "Abjad" is a neologism, as others have said, and "Hebrew alphabet" has been around forever. Srnec (talk) 16:15, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Pronunciation of sofit letters

It might be more helpful if the pronunciation examples given for the sofit forms contained that consonant at the end of the word, rather than at the beginning, as they now do. For example, for the letter /mɛm/, use "m as in Tom", rather than "m as in mother". Thomprod (talk) 19:02, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

Holam vowel sound

I pronounce as in login, not joke. 2.96.206.170 (talk) 00:37, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Possible external link

According to a comment in the EL section, Previous contributors to this article have expressed a preference for refraining from adding additional links; see also Wikipedia:External links and Wikipedia:Spam. If you would like to propose additional links, please first discuss on the article’s talk page and achieve consensus as a courtesy to previous/fellow contributors, so I'm heeding this and humbly proposing to add a link to this quiz tool, which can be used to aid the memorization of Hebrew letters. 82.43.190.243 (talk) 20:39, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

there is a very strange line break in the fourth paragraph

the line break in question is separating the two words of matres lectionis, I would fix it but i do not know what is causing the line break and i did attempt to guess what was breaking it unsuccessfully, this could just be the device im reading it on but as of writing i lack the resources to verify that thesis. If someone could either reprehend my issue or reprimand the article's formatting that would be phenomenal.`

Caucasianhamburger (talk) 13:55, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't see a line break between the two words in my browser (Chrome on Windows 10). Largoplazo (talk) 20:20, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

@Caucasianhamburger: I changed the template on the Hebrew letters in the paragraph. Does it look right now? 82.43.190.243 (talk) 00:20, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

thank you, it looks better now, and i am on a chromebook running google chrome

Caucasianhamburger (talk) 13:19, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Poor pronunciation example?

‎I don't speak Hebrw, but it doesn't make sense to suggest "t as in tool" for [θ]. This is the case in a table for תָו /sɔv/, /sɔf/ /θav/ t as in tool Espensj (talk) 08:11, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

IPA for ע‎ (ayin)

In the alphabet table of the Pronunciation section, I see "[o]~[ō]" as the sound value given for ע‎ (ayin). Isn't that a typo? Compare e.g. with the pronunciation key page indicating [ʔ] as ayin's modern Israeli phonetic value.

Would someone competent check it out? Thank you. Javítgató (talk) 09:37, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

Pbly a character mischoice / encoding glitch. Contradicts even the approximation in the far right cell of the same row: "When ʔ, as in button [ˈbʌʔn̩] or clipboard [ˌklɪʔ⁠ˈbɔɹd]. When ʕ, no English equivalent."

So please revise it, thanks in advance. Javítgató (talk) 11:44, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

Pronunciation of alef

The previous description of the pronunciation of alef (a as in father) was useless, but the new version "When ʔ, as in button [ˈbʌʔn̩] or clipboard [ˌklɪʔ⁠ˈbɔɹd]" is not better. Although some English speakers pronounce button as /ˈbʌʔn̩/ (which is called "t-glottalisation"), the t is pronounced and there is no glottal stop in both standard British and standard US pronunciations: /ˈbʌtn/, /ˈbətn/, or similar. Check a dictionary. The second example, clipboard is a possibility but the given IPA omits the p for some reason despite it being always pronounced. About the closest English gets to a glottal stop is the cut between the p and the b, so /ˈklɪpʔbɔrd/, /ˈklɪpʔboʊrd/ are imperfect but perhaps close enough to give someone the idea if they aren't familiar with glottal stops. But really all this is saying is that alef used as a glottal stop is pronounced as a glottal stop (using IPA to explain IPA is a flawed idea). This omits that on a great many occasions it is pronounced as a vowel, as in the table here, and that in the absence of nikkud you just have to know the word. Zero^talk 05:21, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

I (the person responsible for that change) agree with you 80%. I was just trying to make quick work of it by copying the unhelpful guidance already given for ayin. However their pronunciation as a glottal stop is reflected in the right-hand column should match.

The sound actually matches the glottal stop that English words that "start" with a vowel actually start with when spoken in isolation or at the beginning of an utterance (given that the column header says "European", I can note, for example, that this is true as well in, for example, German), but that's pointless to explain to the average English speaker because it isn't phonemic and the non-linguistically informed among us aren't aware of it. For English speakers who are aware that "Baal" has two syllables, it would be useful to explain that it's what comes between the two consonants. I'm just tossing out ideas here. Another option would be "no equivalent English phoneme, basically silent".

I disagree with "This omits that on a great many occasions it is pronounced as a vowel". As I noted in one of my edit summaries, that's no more true than it would be to say "On a great many occasions bet is pronounced as [b] + vowel." The convention is that the letters represent consonants, that vowels aren't written (except when pointing is used), and that some of the consonants may stand as matres lectionis. Largoplazo (talk) 10:33, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

Since we aren't trying to write an academic treatise, but rather an article accessible to a reader who knows little or nothing about Hebrew pronunciation, "consonants may stand as matres lectionis" is true but suboptimal. If we click on mater lectionis, we read "consonants that are used to indicate a vowel", so the simplest thing is to shortcut the technical language and acknowledge that sometimes alef in a word indicates a vowel. It isn't about nikkud, which was a late invention to document pronunciation that already existed. Zero^talk 02:12, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

... so the simplest thing is to shortcut the technical language and acknowledge that sometimes alef in a word indicates a vowel is simple but pointlessly inaccurate for the same reason as, as I've already pointed out, we don't say that "sometimes bet is pronounced like [b] plus a vowel, that gimel is sometimes pronounced like [g] plus a vowel" etc. The comparable thing to do, if keeping it simple is the goal, is to say it's silent. There's no more reason to account for vowels explicitly when they follow aleph than there is when they follow a consonant familiar to English speakers, and it's confusing to do so. Just saying that aleph is silent will give the impression to a reader who doesn't understand that the vowels are unwritten that אמרתם is pronounced [mʁtm], which, of course, isn't true, but giving the impression that it's pronounced [amʁtm] is less helpful than that, as the explicit mention of the vowel only for the aleph implies that it is the only vowel in the word. Largoplazo (talk) 04:39, 4 March 2024 (UTC)