Hebrew alphabet

The Hebrew alphabet (Hebrew: אָלֶף־בֵּית עִבְרִי, alefbet ʿIvri), known variously by scholars as the Jewish script, square script, block script, is used in the writing of the Hebrew language, as well as of 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 and was known by Israel's sages as the Ashuri script (Assyrian script), since its origins were alleged to be from Assyria. 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. It does not have case, but five letters 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. As with other abjads, such as the Arabic alphabet, scribes later devised means of indicating vowel sounds by separate vowel points, known in Hebrew as niqqud. In rabbinic Hebrew, the letters א ה ו י are also used as matres lectionis (the use of certain consonants to indicate a vowel) 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.

Noun

A noun (from Latin nōmen, literally meaning "name") is a word that functions as the name of some specific thing or set of things, such as living creatures, objects, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Linguistically, a noun is a member of a large, open part of speech whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition.

Lexical categories (parts of speech) are defined in terms of the ways in which their members combine with other kinds of expressions. The syntactic rules for nouns differ from language to language. In English, nouns are those words which can occur with articles and attributive adjectives and can function as the head of a noun phrase.

History

Word classes (parts of speech) were described by Sanskrit grammarians from at least the 5th century BC. In Yāska's Nirukta, the noun (nāma) is one of the four main categories of words defined.

The Ancient Greek equivalent was ónoma (ὄνομα), referred to by Plato in the Cratylus dialog, and later listed as one of the eight parts of speech in The Art of Grammar, attributed to Dionysius Thrax (2nd century BC). The term used in Latin grammar was nōmen. All of these terms for "noun" were also words meaning "name". The English word noun is derived from the Latin term, through the Anglo-Norman noun.

Biblical Hebrew

Biblical Hebrew (Hebrew: עִבְרִית מִקְרָאִית), also called Classical Hebrew (Hebrew: עִבְרִית קְלַסִּית), is the archaic form of the Hebrew language, a Canaanite Semitic language spoken by the Israelites in the area known as Israel, roughly west of the Jordan River and east of the Mediterranean Sea. The term "Hebrew" was not used for the language in the Bible, which referred to Canaanite or Judahite, but the name was used in Greek and Mishnaic Hebrew texts. Biblical Hebrew is attested from about the 10th century BCE, and persisted through and beyond the Jewish Second Temple period (which in 70 CE ended by Roman destruction). Biblical Hebrew eventually developed into Mishnaic Hebrew, which was spoken until the 2nd century CE. Biblical Hebrew is best-attested in the Hebrew Bible, the collection of Judaic religious and historical texts which reflect various stages of the Hebrew language in its consonantal skeleton, as well as a vocalic system which was added later, in the Middle Ages by the Masoretes. There is also some evidence of regional dialectal variation, including differences between Biblical Hebrew as spoken in the northern Kingdom of Israel and in the southern Kingdom of Judah.

Tiberian Hebrew

Tiberian Hebrew is the canonical pronunciation of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh committed to writing by Masoretic scholars living in the Jewish community of Tiberias in ancient Judea c. 750–950 CE. They wrote in the form of Tiberian vocalization, which employed diacritics added to the Hebrew letters: vowel signs and consonant diacritics (nequdot) and the so-called accents (two related systems of cantillation signs or te'amim). These together with the marginal notes masora magna and masora parva make up the Tiberian apparatus.

Though the written vowels and accents came into use only c. 750 CE, the oral tradition they reflect is many centuries older, with ancient roots. Although not in common use today, the Tiberian pronunciation of Hebrew is considered by textual scholars to be the most exact and proper pronunciation of the language as it preserves all of the original Semitic consonantal and vowel sounds of ancient Hebrew.

Sources

Today's Hebrew grammar books do not teach the Tiberian Hebrew described by the early grammarians. The prevailing view is that of David Qimchi's system of dividing the graphic signs into "short" and "long" vowels. The values assigned to the Tiberian vowel signs reveals a Sephardi tradition of pronunciation (the dual quality of qames (אָ) as /a/, /o/; the pronunciation of simple sheva (אְ) as /ɛ̆/).

Tiberian vocalization

The Tiberian vocalization, Tiberian pointing, or Tiberian niqqud (Hebrew: נִיקוּד טְבֵרִיָנִי) is a system of diacritics (niqqud) devised by the Masoretes of Tiberias to add to the consonantal text of the Hebrew Bible to produce the Masoretic Text. This system soon became used to vocalize other Hebrew texts as well.

The Tiberian vocalization marks vowels and stress, makes fine distinctions of consonant quality and length, and serves as punctuation. While the Tiberian system was devised for Tiberian Hebrew, it has become the dominant system for vocalizing all forms of Hebrew, having long since eclipsed the Babylonian and Palestinian vocalization systems.

Consonant diacritics

The sin dot distinguishes between the two values of ש. A dagesh indicates a consonant is geminate or unspirantized, while a raphe indicates spirantization. The mappiq indicates that ה is consonantal rather than silent in syllable-coda position.

Vowel diacritics

The seven vowel qualities of Tiberian Hebrew are indicated straightforwardly by distinct diacritics: