The Hebrew alphabet for beginners: 22 letters, their sounds and the nikud vowels

Read right to left, and expect no capital letters

Hebrew runs from right to left, so the first letter of a word sits on the right edge of the line. There is no upper and lower case: א is always א. Printed Hebrew (the square script you see in songs and newspapers) is what you should learn first; the cursive handwriting Israelis use daily is a separate, later step.

Five letters change shape at the end of a word: כ→ך, מ→ם, נ→ן, פ→ף, צ→ץ. They sound the same; only the shape stretches downward.

The 22 letters and the sound each one makes

Say each sound out loud as you read. The letters marked with a dagesh dot (בּ כּ פּ) harden: b, k, p — without it they soften to v, kh, f.

• א alef — silent carrier of a vowel
• ב bet — b / v
• ג gimel — g as in go
• ד dalet — d
• ה he — h, and silent at the end of a word
• ו vav — v, or the vowels o / u
• ז zayin — z
• ח khet — throaty kh
• ט tet — t
• י yod — y, or the vowel i
• כ kaf — k / kh (final ך)
• ל lamed — l
• מ mem — m (final ם)
• נ nun — n (final ן)
• ס samekh — s
• ע ayin — silent in modern Israeli Hebrew
• פ pe — p / f (final ף)
• צ tsadi — ts as in cats (final ץ)
• ק kuf — k
• ר resh — a soft French-style r
• ש shin — sh, or s when the dot is on the left (שׂ)
• ת tav — t

Six vowel sounds cover almost everything

Nikud looks like dozens of marks but modern Israeli pronunciation collapses them into five vowels plus one silent one.

• a — patach ַ and kamatz ָ (בַּ = ba)
• e — segol ֶ and tsere ֵ (בֶּ = be)
• i — chirik ִ, often with yod (בִּי = bi)
• o — cholam ֹ or וֹ (בּוֹ = bo)
• u — kubutz ֻ or shuruk וּ (בּוּ = bu)
• shva ְ — usually no vowel at all, a quick break (בְּ = b')

Practise on a real line, not on flashcards

Take the opening of Yerushalayim Shel Zahav: אֲוִיר הָרִים צָלוּל כַּיַּיִן — avir harim tzalul kayayin, "mountain air clear as wine". Read it letter by letter with the nikud, then play the song and follow the highlighted words. Recognising a letter inside a melody you already hum is what makes it stick; drilling the alphabet in isolation is what makes people quit in week two.

On Shir-ly every song shows the Hebrew with nikud, a Latin transliteration and a line translation, so you can check yourself instantly and turn the transliteration off as soon as you stop needing it.

Frequently asked questions