Hebrew Alphabet

Hebrew is an ancient language (according to our beliefs Hebrew history goes back to the creation of the World) and historically after the Jews were settled around the world Hebrew phonetics have been changed.

Today it is impossible to know for sure how the original Hebrew exactly sounded like. Currently there are several major phonetic groups: Ashkenazi, Sephardic, Yemenite (and a number of other ones). Modern Hebrew focuses on a compromise phonetic model and we follow Modern Hebrew one, giving, however, a reference to historical dialects.

Some Hebrew letters have special dot inside - 'dagesh' (דגש), this refers to the exact ways alphabet letters can sound. Other dots and symbols outside letters are desined to express vowels and syllables correctly. Both are part of the 'nikud' (ניקוד) system.

In Modern Hebrew described above symbols are omitted according to 'ktiv haser' (כתיב חסר) spelling system. Reading words without such symbols should come at the expense of language skills and word knowledge. This can only be achieved by practicing. However, they are great for learning purposes and present in our vocabulary.

Below you can see the list of Hebrew letters with 'dagesh' and other dot symbols.

As you can see above, in Modern Hebrew some letters express same or nearly the same sound. This should not affect reading, but can be challenging while spelling words. Don't worry, it's all trainable and learnable, the main thing is only a practice.