Seven Facts about Hebrew Writing

 

1. Modern Hebrew is written from right to left using the Hebrew alphabet, which is an abjad, or consonant-only script of 22 letters.

2. The ancient paleo-Hebrew alphabet is similar to those used for Canaanite and Phoenician.

3. Modern scripts are based on the "square" letter form, known as Ashurit (Assyrian), which was developed from the Aramaic script.

4. A cursive Hebrew script is used in handwriting: the letters tend to be more circular in form when written in cursive, and sometimes vary markedly from their printed equivalents.

5. The medieval version of the cursive script forms the basis of another style, known as Rashi script.

6. When necessary, vowels are indicated by diacritic marks above or below the letter representing the syllabic onset, or by use of matres lectionis, which are consonantal letters used as vowels.

7. Further diacritics are used to indicate variations in the pronunciation of the consonants (e.g. bet/vet, shin/sin) and, in some contexts, to indicate the punctuation, accentuation and musical rendition of Biblical text.

More: http://www.omniglot.com/writing/hebrew.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_language

Seven Facts about Hebrew Writing

E-H Dictionary

English How pronounced Hebrew

Writing

Ktivah

כתיבה

Ancient

Atik

עתיק

Circular

Agol

עגול

Square Meruba

מרובע

Vowels

T’nu’ot

תנועות

Pronunciation

Bitui

ביטוי

Script

Ktav

כתב

 

Learn Hebrew Online

 

 

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4 Responses to Seven Facts about Hebrew Writing

  1. Jacob Farm says:

    excellent Hebrew reference page

    • Madani says:

      Oh my god. You found my cat malka sitting on a moto-scooter!Woah it is a small small world ideend.Only in israel, my friend.You should check out my blog ive posted many many many pictures of Malka in my flickrwidget.among many other things.

  2. Jillian says:

    Wow, thank you. Second hit on Google for T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM and you provided a pfreect answer I’d forgotten a $ on the class variable while trying to unset it woops!Cheers!

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