GlyphA glyph (ɡlɪf) is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A grapheme, or part of a grapheme (such as a diacritic), or sometimes several graphemes in combination (a composed glyph) can be represented by a glyph. In most languages written in any variety of the Latin alphabet except English, the use of diacritics to signify a sound mutation is common.
TransliterationTransliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters (thus trans- + liter-) in predictable ways, such as Greek → , Cyrillic → , Greek → the digraph , Armenian → or Latin → . For instance, for the Modern Greek term "Ελληνική Δημοκρατία", which is usually translated as "Hellenic Republic", the usual transliteration to Latin script is , and the name for Russia in Cyrillic script, "Россия", is usually transliterated as .
DageshThe dagesh () is a diacritic used in the Hebrew alphabet. It was added to the Hebrew orthography at the same time as the Masoretic system of niqqud (vowel points). It takes the form of a dot placed inside a Hebrew letter and has the effect of modifying the sound in one of two ways. An identical mark, called mappiq, has a different phonetic function, and can be applied to different consonants; the same mark is also employed in the vowel shuruk. Dagesh and mappiq symbols are often omitted in writing.
GammaGamma 'gæmə (uppercase , lowercase ; γάμμα gámma) is the third letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 3. In Ancient Greek, the letter gamma represented a voiced velar stop ɡ. In Modern Greek, this letter represents either a voiced velar fricative ɣ or a voiced palatal fricative ʝ (while /g/ in foreign words is instead commonly transcribed as γκ). In the International Phonetic Alphabet and other modern Latin-alphabet based phonetic notations, it represents the voiced velar fricative.
Samaritan scriptThe Samaritan script is used by the Samaritans for religious writings, including the Samaritan Pentateuch, writings in Samaritan Hebrew, and for commentaries and translations in Samaritan Aramaic and occasionally Arabic. Samaritan is a direct descendant of the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet, which was a variety of the Phoenician alphabet. Paleo-Hebrew is the alphabet in which large parts of the Hebrew Bible were originally penned according to the consensus of most scholars, who also believe that these scripts are descendants of the Proto-Sinaitic script.
BegadkefatBegadkefat (also begedkefet) is the name given to a phenomenon of lenition affecting the non-emphatic stop consonants of Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic when they are preceded by a vowel and not geminated. The name is also given to similar cases of spirantization of post-vocalic plosives in other languages; for instance, in the Berber language of Djerba. Celtic languages have a similar system. The name of the phenomenon is made up of these six consonants, mixed with haphazard vowels for the sake of pronunciation: BeGaDKePaT.
GereshGeresh (׳ in Hebrew: or Even-Shoshan Dictionary, 2003; Shoshana Bahat and Mordechay Mishor, Dictionary of Contemporary Hebrew, 2007. ˈɡeʁeʃ, or medieval ˈɡeːɾeːʃ) is a sign in Hebrew writing. It has two meanings. An apostrophe-like sign (also known colloquially as a chupchik) placed after a letter: as a diacritic that modifies the pronunciation of some letters (only in modern Hebrew), as a diacritic that signifies Yiddish origin of a word or suffix, (examples below) as a punctuation mark to denote initialisms or abbreviations, or to denote a single-digit Hebrew numeral A note of cantillation in the reading of the Torah and other Biblical books, taking the form of a curved diagonal stroke placed above a letter.
Emphatic consonantIn Semitic linguistics, an emphatic consonant is an obstruent consonant which originally contrasted with series of both voiced and voiceless obstruents. In specific Semitic languages, the members of this series may be realized as uvularized or pharyngealized, velarized, ejective, or plain voiced or voiceless consonants. It is also used, to a lesser extent, to describe cognate series in other Afro-Asiatic languages, where they are typically realized as ejective, implosive, or pharyngealized consonants.
Gezer calendarThe Gezer calendar is a small limestone tablet with an early Canaanite inscription discovered in 1908 by Irish archaeologist R. A. Stewart Macalister in the ancient city of Gezer, 20 miles west of Jerusalem. It is commonly dated to the 10th century BCE, although the excavation was unstratified and its identification during the excavations was not in a "secure archaeological context", presenting uncertainty around the dating. Scholars are divided as to whether the language is Phoenician or Hebrew and whether the script is Phoenician (or Proto-Canaanite) or paleo-Hebrew.
ShvaShva or, in Biblical Hebrew, shĕwa (שְׁוָא) is a Hebrew niqqud vowel sign written as two vertical dots ( ) beneath a letter. It indicates either the phoneme /ə/ (shva na', mobile shva) or the complete absence of a vowel (/Ø/) (shva nach, resting shva). It is transliterated as , , , (apostrophe), or nothing. Note that use of for shva is questionable: transliterating Modern Hebrew shva nach with is misleading, since it is never actually pronounced [ə] – the vowel [ə] does not exist in Modern Hebrew.
