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55-556: Aleph is the first letter of many Semitic abjads (alphabets). Aleph may also refer to: Aleph These letters are believed to have derived from an Egyptian hieroglyph depicting an ox's head to describe the initial sound of *ʾalp , the West Semitic word for ox (compare Biblical Hebrew אֶלֶף ‎ ʾelef , "ox" ). The Phoenician variant gave rise to the Greek alpha ( Α ), being re-interpreted to express not

110-406: A fatḥah alif + tāʾ = ـَات ‎) Gemination is the doubling of a consonant. Instead of writing the letter twice, Arabic places a W -shaped sign called shaddah , above it. Note that if a vowel occurs between the two consonants the letter will simply be written twice. The diacritic only appears where the consonant at the end of one syllable is identical to the initial consonant of

165-459: A mater lectionis indicating the presence of a vowel elsewhere (usually long). When this practice began is the subject of some controversy, though it had become well established by the late stage of Old Aramaic (ca. 200 BCE). Aleph is often transliterated as U+02BE ʾ MODIFIER LETTER RIGHT HALF RING , based on the Greek spiritus lenis ʼ ; for example, in the transliteration of

220-587: A sign ( fatḥah ) on the consonant plus an ʾalif after it; long ī is written as a sign for short i ( kasrah ) plus a yāʾ ; and long ū as a sign for short u ( ḍammah ) plus a wāw . Briefly, ᵃa = ā ; ⁱy = ī ; and ᵘw = ū . Long ā following a hamzah may be represented by an ʾalif maddah or by a free hamzah followed by an ʾalif (two consecutive ʾalif s are never allowed in Arabic). The table below shows vowels placed above or below

275-486: A hamza followed by a long ā to be written as two alifs , one vertical and one horizontal." (the "horizontal" alif being the maddah sign). The ى ('limited/restricted alif', alif maqṣūrah ), commonly known in Egypt as alif layyinah ( ألف لينة , 'flexible alif'), may appear only at the end of a word. Although it looks different from a regular alif , it represents the same sound /aː/ , often realized as

330-592: A midrash that praises its humility in not demanding to start the Bible. (In Hebrew , the Bible begins with the second letter of the alphabet , bet .) In the story, aleph is rewarded by being allowed to start the Ten Commandments . (In Hebrew , the first word is anoki ( אָנֹכִי ‎), which starts with an aleph.) In the Sefer Yetzirah , the letter aleph is king over breath, formed air in

385-439: A dotted circle replacing a primary consonant letter or a shaddah sign. For clarity in the table, the primary letters on the left used to mark these long vowels are shown only in their isolated form. Most consonants do connect to the left with ʾalif , wāw and yāʾ written then with their medial or final form. Additionally, the letter yāʾ in the last row may connect to the letter on its left, and then will use

440-461: A lapidary Aramaic form that realizes it as a combination of a V-shape and a straight stroke attached to the apex, much like a Latin K; a cursive Aramaic form he calls the "elaborated X-form", essentially the same tradition as the Hebrew reflex ; and an extremely cursive form of two crossed oblique lines, much like a simple Latin X. Hebrew spelling: אָלֶף ‎ In Modern Israeli Hebrew ,

495-402: A letter, or with a carrier, when it becomes a diacritic . For the writing rule of each form, check Hamza . The hamzat al-waṣl ( هَمْزَةُ ٱلْوَصْلِ , ' hamza of connection') is a variant of the letter hamza ( ء ) resembling part of the letter ṣād ( ص ) that is rarely placed over the letter ʾalif at the beginning of the word ( ٱ ). It indicates that the ʾalif

550-537: A letter, since they distinguish between letters that represent different sounds. For example, the Arabic letters ب b , ت t , and ث th have the same basic shape, but with one dot added below, two dots added above, and three dots added above respectively. The letter ن n also has the same form in initial and medial forms, with one dot added above, though it is somewhat different in its isolated and final forms. Historically, they were often omitted, in

605-411: A mappiq or dagesh appears are Genesis 43:26, Leviticus 23:17, Job 33:21 and Ezra 8:18.) In Modern Hebrew, the frequency of the usage of alef, out of all the letters, is 4.94%. Aleph is sometimes used as a mater lectionis to denote a vowel, usually /a/ . That use is more common in words of Aramaic and Arabic origin, in foreign names, and some other borrowed words. Aleph is the subject of

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660-413: A medial or initial form. Use the table of primary letters to look at their actual glyph and joining types. In unvocalized text (one in which the short vowels are not marked), the long vowels are represented by the vowel in question: ʾalif mamdūdah/maqṣūrah , wāw , or yāʾ . Long vowels written in the middle of a word of unvocalized text are treated like consonants with a sukūn (see below) in

715-470: A numeral, alif stands for the number one. It may be modified as follows to represent other numbers. The Aramaic reflex of the letter is conventionally represented with the Hebrew א in typography for convenience, but the actual graphic form varied significantly over the long history and wide geographic extent of the language. Maraqten identifies three different aleph traditions in East Arabian coins:

770-679: A short vowel. When it is written, alif maqṣūrah is indistinguishable from final Persian ye or Arabic yā’ as it is written in Egypt, Sudan and sometimes elsewhere. The letter is transliterated as y in Kazakh , representing the vowel / ə /. Alif maqsurah is transliterated as á in ALA-LC , ā in DIN 31635 , à in ISO 233-2, and ỳ in ISO 233 . In Arabic, alif maqsurah ى

825-691: A symbol composed of two half-rings, in Unicode (as of version 5.1, in the Latin Extended-D range) encoded at U+A722 Ꜣ LATIN CAPITAL LETTER EGYPTOLOGICAL ALEF and U+A723 ꜣ LATIN SMALL LETTER EGYPTOLOGICAL ALEF . A fallback representation is the numeral 3 , or the Middle English character ȝ Yogh ; neither are to be preferred to the genuine Egyptological characters. Written as ا or 𐪑, spelled as ألف or 𐪑𐪁𐪐 and transliterated as alif , it

880-414: A text that has full diacritics. Here also, the table shows long vowel letters only in isolated form for clarity. Combinations وا and يا are always pronounced wā and yā respectively. The exception is the suffix ـوا۟ in verb endings where ʾalif is silent, resulting in ū or aw . In addition, when transliterating names and loanwords, Arabic language speakers write out most or all

935-505: A writing style called rasm . Both printed and written Arabic are cursive , with most letters within a word directly joined to adjacent letters. There are two main collating sequences ('alphabetical orderings') for the Arabic alphabet: Hija'i , and Abjadi . The Hija'i order ( هِجَائِيّ Hijāʾiyy /hid͡ʒaːʔijj/ ) is the more common order and it is used when sorting lists of words and names, such as in phonebooks, classroom lists, and dictionaries. The ordering groups letters by

990-402: Is also referred to as aleph , on grounds that it has traditionally been taken to represent a glottal stop ( [ʔ] ), although some recent suggestions tend towards an alveolar approximant ( [ ɹ ] ) sound instead. Despite the name it does not correspond to an aleph in cognate Semitic words, where the single "reed" hieroglyph is found instead. The phoneme is commonly transliterated by

1045-412: Is an important part of mystical amulets and formulas. Aleph represents the oneness of God. The letter can be seen as being composed of an upper yud , a lower yud, and a vav leaning on a diagonal. The upper yud represents the hidden and ineffable aspects of God while the lower yud represents God's revelation and presence in the world. The vav ("hook") connects the two realms. Judaism relates aleph to

1100-535: Is commonly used to represent the word Allāh . The only ligature within the primary range of Arabic script in Unicode (U+06xx) is lām + alif . This is the only one compulsory for fonts and word-processing. Other ranges are for compatibility to older standards and contain other ligatures, which are optional. Note: Unicode also has in its Presentation Form B FExx range a code for this ligature. If your browser and font are configured correctly for Arabic,

1155-520: Is considered an impure abjad . The basic Arabic alphabet contains 28 letters . Forms using the Arabic script to write other languages added and removed letters: for example ⟨پ⟩ is often used to represent /p/ in adaptations of the Arabic script. Unlike Greek -derived alphabets, Arabic has no distinct upper and lower case letterforms. Many letters look similar but are distinguished from one another by dots ( ʾiʿjām ) above or below their central part ( rasm ). These dots are an integral part of

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1210-420: Is generally the carrier if the only adjacent vowel is fatḥah . It is the only possible carrier if hamza is the first phoneme of a word. Where alif acts as a carrier for hamza, hamza is added above the alif, or, for initial alif- kasrah , below it and indicates that the letter so modified is indeed a glottal stop, not a long vowel. A second type of hamza, hamzat waṣl ( همزة وصل ) whose diacritic

1265-536: Is installed on a computer (Iranian Sans is supported by Wikimedia web-fonts), the word will appear without diacritics. An attempt to show them on the faulty fonts without automatically adding the gemination mark and the superscript alif, although may not display as desired on all browsers, is by adding the U+200d (Zero width joiner) after the first or second lām Users of Arabic usually write long vowels but omit short ones, so readers must utilize their knowledge of

1320-505: Is normally omitted outside of sacred texts, occurs only as the initial letter of the definite article and in some related cases. It differs from hamzat qaṭ‘ in that it is elided after a preceding vowel. Alif is always the carrier. The alif maddah is a double alif, expressing both a glottal stop and a long vowel. Essentially, it is the same as a أا sequence: آ (final ـآ ) ’ā /ʔaː/ , for example in آخر ākhir /ʔaːxir/ 'last'. "It has become standard for

1375-538: Is not pronounced as a glottal stop (written as the hamza ), but that the word is connected to the previous word (like liaison in French ). Outside of vocalised liturgical texts, the waṣla is usually not written. e.g. Abdullah عَبْدُ ٱلله can be written with hamzat al-wasl on the first letter of the word ٱلله but it is mostly written without it عَبْدُ الله . The following are not individual letters, but rather different contextual variants of some of

1430-537: Is not used initially or medially, and it is not joinable initially or medially in any font. However, the letter is used initially and medially in the Uyghur Arabic alphabet and the Arabic-based Kyrgyz alphabet , representing the vowel / ɯ /: ( ىـ ـىـ ‎ ). As a vowel, the letter alif maqsurah can be a carrier with a hamza . The alif maqṣūrah with hamza is thus written as: As

1485-401: Is pronounced no/na (again west/east), rather than the full form eno/ana . The letter occurs very regularly at the end of words, where it represents the long final vowels o/a or e . In the middle of the word, the letter represents either a glottal stop between vowels (but West Syriac pronunciation often makes it a palatal approximant ), a long i/e (less commonly o/a ) or is silent. In

1540-560: Is the addition of a final -n   to a noun or adjective . The vowel before it indicates grammatical case . In written Arabic nunation is indicated by doubling the vowel diacritic at the end of the word; e.g. شُكْرًا šukr an [ʃukran] "thank you". The use of ligature in Arabic is common. There is one compulsory ligature, that for lām ل + alif ا, which exists in two forms. All other ligatures, of which there are many, are optional. A more complex ligature that combines as many as seven distinct components

1595-459: Is the first letter in Arabic and North Arabian . Together with Hebrew aleph, Greek Α and Latin A , it is descended from Phoenician ʾāleph , from a reconstructed Proto-Canaanite ʾalp "ox". Alif has the highest frequency out of all 28 letters in the Arabic abjad . Alif is also the most used letter in Arabic. Alif is written in one of the following ways depending on its position in

1650-456: Is the special code for glyph for the ligature Allāh ("God"), U+FDF2 ARABIC LIGATURE ALLAH ISOLATED FORM: This is a work-around for the shortcomings of most text processors, which are incapable of displaying the correct vowel marks for the word Allāh in the Quran . Because Arabic script is used to write other texts rather than Quran only, rendering lām + lām + hā’ as

1705-588: The Ancient South Arabian alphabet , 𐩱 appears as the seventeenth letter of the South Arabian abjad. The letter is used to render a glottal stop /ʔ/ . In the Ge'ez alphabet , ʾälef አ appears as the thirteenth letter of its abjad. This letter is also used to render a glottal stop /ʔ/ . In set theory , the Hebrew aleph glyph is used as the symbol to denote the aleph numbers , which represent

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1760-502: The Arabic abjad , is the Arabic script as specifically codified for writing the Arabic language. It is written from right-to-left in a cursive style, and includes 28 letters, of which most have contextual letterforms. Unlike the Latin alphabet , the script has no concept of letter case . The Arabic alphabet is considered an abjad , with only consonants required to be written; due to its optional use of diacritics to notate vowels, it

1815-534: The Syriac alphabet , the first letter is ܐ , Classical Syriac : ܐܵܠܲܦ , alap (in eastern dialects) or olaph (in western dialects). It is used in word-initial position to mark a word beginning with a vowel, but some words beginning with i or u do not need its help, and sometimes, an initial alap/olaph is elided . For example, when the Syriac first-person singular pronoun ܐܸܢܵܐ is in enclitic positions, it

1870-532: The aleph is an absence of a true consonant, a glottal stop ( [ ʔ ] ), the sound found in the catch in uh - oh . In Arabic, the alif represents the glottal stop pronunciation when it is the initial letter of a word. In texts with diacritical marks, the pronunciation of an aleph as a consonant is rarely indicated by a special marking, hamza in Arabic and mappiq in Tiberian Hebrew. In later Semitic languages, aleph could sometimes function as

1925-579: The cantillation signs . In the Arabic handwriting of everyday use, in general publications, and on street signs, short vowels are typically not written. On the other hand, copies of the Qur’ān cannot be endorsed by the religious institutes that review them unless the diacritics are included. Children's books, elementary school texts, and Arabic-language grammars in general will include diacritics to some degree. These are known as " vocalized " texts. Short vowels may be written with diacritics placed above or below

1980-607: The cardinality of infinite sets. This notation was introduced by mathematician Georg Cantor . In older mathematics books, the letter aleph is often printed upside down by accident, partly because a Monotype matrix for aleph was mistakenly constructed the wrong way up. The Mapai political party in Israel used an aleph as its election symbol, and featured it prominently in its campaign posters. ʾ b g d h w z ḥ Arabic alphabet The Arabic alphabet , or

2035-417: The glottal consonant but the accompanying vowel , and hence the Latin A and Cyrillic А . Phonetically , aleph originally represented the onset of a vowel at the glottis . In Semitic languages, this functions as a prosthetic weak consonant, allowing roots with only two true consonants to be conjugated in the manner of a standard three consonant Semitic root. In most Hebrew dialects as well as Syriac,

2090-564: The Abjadi order to sort alphabetically; instead, the newer Hija'i order is used wherein letters are partially grouped together by similarity of shape. The Hija'i order is never used as numerals. Other hijāʾī order used to be used in the Maghreb but now it is considered obsolete, the sequence is: In Abu Muhammad al-Hasan al-Hamdani 's encyclopedia الإكليل من أخبار اليمن وأنساب حمير Kitāb al-Iklīl min akhbār al-Yaman wa-ansāb Ḥimyar ,

2145-699: The Arabic letters. ( تَاءْ مَرْبُوطَة ) used in final position, often for denoting singular feminine noun/word or to make the noun/word feminine, it has two pronunciations rules; often unpronounced or pronounced /h/ as in مدرسة madrasa [madrasa] / madrasah [madrasah] "school" and pronounced /t/ in construct state as in مدرسة سارة madrasatu sāra "Sara's school". In rare irregular noun/word cases, it appears to denote masculine singular nouns as in أسامة ʾusāma , or some masculine plural noun forms as in بَقَّالَة baqqāla plural of بَقَّال baqqāl . plural nouns: āt (a preceding letter followed by

2200-456: The consonant that precedes them in the syllable, called ḥarakāt . All Arabic vowels, long and short, follow a consonant; in Arabic, words like "Ali" or "alif", for example, start with a consonant: ‘Aliyy , alif . ــِـ ‎ In the fully vocalized Arabic text found in texts such as the Quran, a long ā following a consonant other than a hamzah is written with a short

2255-655: The element of air, and the Scintillating Intelligence (#11) of the path between Kether and Chokmah in the Tree of the Sephiroth . In Yiddish , aleph is used for several orthographic purposes in native words, usually with different diacritical marks borrowed from Hebrew niqqud : Loanwords from Hebrew or Aramaic in Yiddish are spelled as they are in their language of origin. [REDACTED] In

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2310-472: The end. This is commonly vocalized as follows: Another vocalization is: This can be vocalized as: The Arabic alphabet is always cursive and letters vary in shape depending on their position within a word. Letters can exhibit up to four distinct forms corresponding to an initial, medial (middle), final, or isolated position ( IMFI ). While some letters show considerable variations, others remain almost identical across all four positions. Generally, letters in

2365-415: The following syllable. (The generic term for such diacritical signs is ḥarakāt ), e. g. , درس darasa (with full diacritics: دَرَسَ ) is a Form I verb meaning to study , whereas درّس darrasa (with full diacritics: دَرَّسَ ) is the corresponding Form II verb, with the middle r consonant doubled, meaning to teach . ــّـ ‎ Nunation ( Arabic : تنوين tanwīn )

2420-621: The graphical similarity of the glyphs' shapes. The original Abjadi order ( أَبْجَدِيّ ʾabjadiyy /ʔabd͡ʒadijj/ ) derives from that used by the Phoenician alphabet , and is therefore reminiscent of the orderings of other alphabets, such as those in Hebrew and Greek . With this ordering, letters are also used as numbers known as abjad numerals , possessing the same numerological codes as in Hebrew gematria and Greek isopsephy . Modern dictionaries and other reference books do not use

2475-487: The language in order to supply the missing vowels. However, in the education system and particularly in classes on Arabic grammar these vowels are used since they are crucial to the grammar. An Arabic sentence can have a completely different meaning by a subtle change of the vowels. This is why in an important text such as the Qur’ān the three basic vowel signs are mandated, like the Arabic diacritics and other types of marks, like

2530-498: The letter either represents a glottal stop ( [ ʔ ] ) or indicates a hiatus (the separation of two adjacent vowels into distinct syllables , with no intervening consonant ). It is sometimes silent (word-finally always, word-medially sometimes: הוּא ‎ [hu] "he", רָאשִׁי ‎ [ʁaˈʃi] "main", רֹאשׁ ‎ [ʁoʃ] "head", רִאשׁוֹן ‎ [ʁiˈʃon] "first"). The pronunciation varies in different Jewish ethnic divisions . In gematria , aleph represents

2585-547: The letter name itself, ʾāleph . The name aleph is derived from the West Semitic word for " ox " (as in the Biblical Hebrew word Eleph (אֶלֶף) 'ox' ), and the shape of the letter derives from a Proto-Sinaitic glyph that may have been based on an Egyptian hieroglyph , which depicts an ox's head. In Modern Standard Arabic , the word أليف /ʔaliːf/ literally means 'tamed' or 'familiar', derived from

2640-456: The letter sequence is: The Abjadi order is not a simple correspondence with the earlier north Semitic alphabetic order, as it has a position corresponding to the Aramaic letter samek 𐡎‎ , which has no cognate letter in the Arabic alphabet historically. The loss of sameḵ was compensated for by: The six other letters that do not correspond to any north Semitic letter are placed at

2695-491: The ligature displayed above should be identical to this one, U+FEFB ARABIC LIGATURE LAM WITH ALEF ISOLATED FORM: Note: Unicode also has in its Presentation Form B U+FExx range a code for this ligature. If your browser and font are configured correctly for Arabic, the ligature displayed above should be identical to this one: Another ligature in the Unicode Presentation Form A range U+FB50 to U+FDxx

2750-547: The number 1, and when used at the beginning of Hebrew years , it means 1000 (e.g. א'תשנ"ד ‎ in numbers would be the Hebrew date 1754, not to be confused with 1754 CE). Aleph, along with ayin , resh , he and heth , cannot receive a dagesh . (However, there are few very rare examples of the Masoretes adding a dagesh or mappiq to an aleph or resh. The verses of the Hebrew Bible for which an aleph with

2805-438: The previous ligature is considered faulty. This simplified style is often preferred for clarity, especially in non-Arabic languages, but may not be considered appropriate in situations where a more elaborate style of calligraphy is preferred. – SIL International If one of a number of the fonts (Noto Naskh Arabic, mry_KacstQurn, KacstOne, Nadeem, DejaVu Sans, Harmattan, Scheherazade, Lateef, Iranian Sans, Baghdad, DecoType Naskh)

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2860-414: The root ʔ-L-F , from which the verb ألِف /ʔalifa/ means 'to be acquainted with; to be on intimate terms with'. In modern Hebrew, the same root ʔ-L-P (alef-lamed-peh) gives me’ulaf , the passive participle of the verb le’alef , meaning 'trained' (when referring to pets) or 'tamed' (when referring to wild animals). The Egyptian " vulture " hieroglyph ( Gardiner G1 ), by convention pronounced [a] )

2915-551: The same word are linked together on both sides by short horizontal lines, but six letters ( و ,ز ,ر ,ذ ,د ,ا ) can only be linked to their preceding letter. In addition, some letter combinations are written as ligatures (special shapes), notably lām-alif لا , which is the only mandatory ligature (the unligated combination ل‍‌‍ا is considered difficult to read). Order (used in medial and final positions as an unlinked letter) Notes The Hamza / ʔ / (glottal stop) can be written either alone, as if it were

2970-480: The universe, temperate in the year, and the chest in the soul. Aleph is also the first letter of the Hebrew word emet ( אֶמֶת ‎), which means truth . In Judaism, it was the letter aleph that was carved into the head of the golem that ultimately gave it life. Aleph also begins the three words that make up God's name in Exodus , I Am who I Am (in Hebrew , Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh אהיה אשר אהיה ), and aleph

3025-491: The word: The Arabic letter was used to render either a long /aː/ or a glottal stop /ʔ/ . That led to orthographical confusion and to the introduction of the additional marking hamzat qaṭ‘ ﺀ to fix the problem. Hamza is not considered a full letter in Arabic orthography: in most cases, it appears on a carrier, either a wāw ( ؤ ), a dotless yā’ ( ئ ), or an alif. The choice of carrier depends on complicated orthographic rules. Alif إ أ

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