NiqqudIn Hebrew orthography, niqqud or nikud ( or ) is a system of diacritical signs used to represent vowels or distinguish between alternative pronunciations of letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Several such diacritical systems were developed in the Early Middle Ages. The most widespread system, and the only one still used to a significant degree today, was created by the Masoretes of Tiberias in the second half of the first millennium AD in the Land of Israel (see Masoretic Text, Tiberian Hebrew).
Waw (letter)Waw ( "hook") is the sixth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician wāw , Aramaic waw , Hebrew vav ו, Syriac waw ܘ and Arabic wāw و (sixth in abjadi order; 27th in modern Arabic order). It represents the consonant w in classical Hebrew, and v in modern Hebrew, as well as the vowels u and o. In text with niqqud, a dot is added to the left or on top of the letter to indicate, respectively, the two vowel pronunciations. It is the origin of Greek Ϝ (digamma) and Υ (upsilon), Cyrillic У, Latin F and V and later Y, and the derived Latin- or Roman-alphabet letters U, and W.
AlephAleph (or alef or alif, transliterated ʾ) is the first letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician 𐤀, Hebrew א, Aramaic 𐡀, Syriac ܐ, Arabic ʾ ا, and North Arabian 𐪑. It also appears as South Arabian 𐩱 and Ge'ez አ. These letters are believed to have derived from an Egyptian hieroglyph depicting an ox's head to describe the initial sound of *ʾalp, the West Semitic word for ox (compare Biblical Hebrew ʾelef, "ox"). The Phoenician variant gave rise to the Greek alpha (Α), being re-interpreted to express not the glottal consonant but the accompanying vowel, and hence the Latin A and Cyrillic А.
Hebrew diacriticsHebrew orthography includes three types of diacritics: Niqqud in Hebrew is the way to indicate vowels, which are omitted in modern orthography, using a set of ancillary glyphs. Since the vowels can be understood from surrounding letters, context can help readers read the correct pronunciations of several letters of the Hebrew alphabet (the rafe sign and other rare glyphs are also listed as part of the niqqud system but are not in common use); geresh and gershayim, two diacritics that are not considered a part of niqqud, each of which has several functions (e.
Arabic scriptThe Arabic script is the writing system used for Arabic and several other languages of Asia and Africa. It is the second-most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world (after the Latin alphabet), the second-most widely used writing system in the world by number of countries using it or a script directly derived from it, and the third-most by number of users (after the Latin and Chinese scripts). The script was first used to write texts in Arabic, most notably the Quran, the holy book of Islam.
Bet (letter)Bet, Beth, Beh, or Vet is the second letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician bēt , Hebrew bēt ב, Aramaic bēṯ , Syriac bēṯ ܒ, and Arabic ب. Its sound value is the voiced bilabial stop ⟨b⟩ or the voiced labiodental fricative ⟨v⟩. The letter's name means "house" in various Semitic languages (Arabic bayt, Akkadian bītu, bētu, Hebrew: bayīṯ, Phoenician bēt etc.; ultimately all from Proto-Semitic *bayt-), and appears to derive from an Egyptian hieroglyph of a house by acrophony.
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.
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.
Arabic diacriticsArabic script has numerous diacritics, which include consonant pointing known as ALA (إِعْجَام), and supplementary diacritics known as ALA (تَشْكِيل). The latter include the vowel marks termed ALA (حَرَكَات; singular: حَرَكَة, ALA). The Arabic script is a modified abjad, where short consonants and long vowels are represented by letters but short vowels and consonant length are not generally indicated in writing. ALA is optional to represent missing vowels and consonant length.
Shin (letter)Shin (also spelled Šin (DIN) or Sheen) is the twenty-first letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician šīn , Hebrew šīn ש, Aramaic šīn , Syriac šīn ܫ, and Arabic sin س. Its sound value is a voiceless sibilant, ʃ or s. The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek Sigma () (which in turn gave Latin S and Cyrillic С), and the letter Sha in the Glagolitic and Cyrillic scripts (, ). The South Arabian and Ethiopian letter Śawt is also cognate.
