Table Of Comparative Hebrew Alphabets

Notes:
¹ The cursive "Script" shown in the table above is only representative. The actual form of the written hand varied between Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Sephardic settlements, America, modern Israel, and of course, it varied from individual to individual.

The Hebrew alphabet contains no vowels. Vowels can be added to text by a system of dots and dashes placed either over or under the consonant letters. Hebrew is often written without vowels since a person knowledgeable in the language doesn't usually need them. The dot that appears in the middle of some of the letters is called a dagesh. When Hebrew is written without vowels, the dagesh is not shown either. The use of the dagesh is determined by grammar and does not significantly affect the pronunciation of the letters except for those shown in the table. In each case, the first pronunciation shown in the table is for the letter without the dot, and the second is for the letter with the dot. The letter shin (numerical value 300) is pronounced either like sh or s depending on whether the dot is over the right or left side of the letter respectively. "Rashi" letters are not normally "dotted."

The alef (numerical val. 1) and ayin (numerical val. 70) are not normally pronounced and are shown with no equivalent sound.

² "Rashi" is based on the Sephardic cursive script of the 11th century. Transferred to the typeface of the printing press, this script, like the square (block print), lost much of its beauty. The usual, but incorrect, designations for it are "Rabbinic script" or "Rashi script," because Rashi's commentaries (and others) on the Bible and Talmud—the books which everybody was constantly handling from boyhood to old age—were printed in this typeface. Rashi himself, naturally, wrote in the contemporary Ashkenazic cursive script, also called "Zarphatic." (This note adapted from the CD-ROM Encyclopaedia Judaica article, "Alphabets, Hebrew.")

For more information concerning the Hebrew alphabet, the names of the letters, and their use as numbers, see the site from the Jewish Virtual Library http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/Judaism/alephbet.html

Another fine site, from About.com, also explains the Hebrew alphabet and even has tutorials for learning to read the language. See http://hebrew.about.com/c/esntl.htm

For a brief biography of Rashi, See http://pages.cthome.net/hirsch/rashi.htm