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måndag 28 mars 2016

Hebrew

Hebrew Alphabet

The Hebrew alphabet (Hebrew: אָלֶף־בֵּית עִבְרִי[a], alefbet ʿIvri ), known variously by scholars as the Jewish script, square script, block script, or more historically, the Aramaic alphabet, is used in the writing of the Hebrew language, as well as other Jewish languages, most notably Yiddish, Ladino, and Judeo-Arabic. There have been two script forms in use. The original old Hebrew script is known as the paleo-Hebrew script (which has been largely preserved, in an altered form, in the Samaritan script), while the present "square" form of the Hebrew alphabet is a stylized form of the Aramaic script. Various "styles" (in current terms, "fonts") of representation of the letters exist. There is also a cursive Hebrew script, which has also varied over time and place.
The Hebrew alphabet has 22 letters, of which five have different forms when used at the end of a word. Hebrew is written from right to left. Originally, the alphabet was an abjad consisting only of consonants. Like other abjads, such as the Arabic alphabet, means were later devised to indicate vowels by separate vowel points, known in Hebrew as niqqud. In rabbinic Hebrew, the letters א ה ו י are also used as matres lectionis to represent vowels. When used to write Yiddish, the writing system is a true alphabet (except for borrowed Hebrew words). In modern usage of the alphabet, as in the case of Yiddish (except that ע replaces ה) and to some extent modern Israeli Hebrew, vowels may be indicated. Today, the trend is toward full spelling with these letters acting as true vowels.

 Before the adoption of the present script, Hebrew was written by the ancient Israelites, both Jews and Samaritans, using the paleo-Hebrew alphabet.

  • The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet (Hebrew: הכתב העברי הקדום‎) is an abjad offshoot of the ancient Semitic alphabet and closely related to the Phoenician alphabet from which it descends. It dates to the 10th century BCE or earlier. It was used as the main vehicle for writing the Hebrew language by the Israelites, who would later split into Jews and Samaritans. It began to fall out of use by the Jews in the 5th century BCE when they adopted the Aramaic alphabet as their writing system for Hebrew, from which the present Jewish "square-script" Hebrew alphabet descends. The Samaritans, who now number less than one thousand people, continue to use a derivative of the Old Hebrew alphabet, known as the Samaritan alphabet.


During the 3rd century BCE, Jews began to use a stylized form of the Aramaic alphabet,[1] while the Samaritans continued to use a form of the paleo-Hebrew script, called the Samaritan script. The present "square script" Hebrew alphabet is a stylized version of the Aramaic alphabet which was adopted from that used by the Persian Empire (which in turn was adopted from the Arameans). After the fall of the Persian Empire, Jews used both scripts before settling on the Aramaic form. For a limited time thereafter, the use of the paleo-Hebrew script among Jews was retained only to write the Tetragrammaton, but soon that custom was also abandoned.

History

According to contemporary scholars, the original Hebrew script developed alongside others used in the region during the late second and first millennia BCE. It is closely related to the Phoenician script, which itself probably gave rise to the use of alphabetic writing in Greece (Greek alphabet). A distinct Hebrew variant, called the paleo-Hebrew alphabet, emerged by the 10th century BCE,[2] an example of which is represented in the Gezer calendar. It was commonly used in the ancient Israelite kingdoms of Israel and Judah.

Following the exile of the Kingdom of Judah in the 6th century BCE, in the Babylonian exile, Jews adopted the Aramaic script, which was another offshoot of the same family of scripts, evolved into the Jewish, or "square" script, that is still in use today and known as the "Hebrew alphabet". The Samaritan script, used in writing Samaritan Hebrew, is descended directly from the paleo-Hebrew script.
The Hebrew alphabet was later adapted and used for writing languages of the Jewish diaspora – such as Karaim, Judæo-Arabic, Ladino, Yiddish, etc. The Hebrew alphabet came again into everyday use with the rebirth of the Hebrew language as a spoken language in the 18th and 19th centuries.


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