| Vowels.... There are none. Well, not exactly.
In Hebrew text vowel sounds are not normally included. We
need to use nikud (dots and lines attached to the letters) to learn how
words sound.
Here is an example of the letter aleph the first letter of the
Hebrew alephbet. Aleph is a silent letter. It takes the sound of the nikud that is attached to it.
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So, this is an aleph blee (without) nikud.
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The following nikud makes the sound "ah"
:
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So, since aleph is silent, the following makes the sound
ah:
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The second letter of the Hebrew alephbet is bet:
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Again, with the appropriate nikud it makes the sound bah:
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Now you are ready for your first Hebrew word;
We remind you, that Hebrew is read from right to left:
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pronounced "abah", which means "father". With your newly
acquired knowledge of Hebrew, you can now read your first full sentence:
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Guess how this would be pronounced!
Surprisingly enough - "abah bah"! Which means "father is
coming" or "father came". This is about as far as you can go with two letters
and one vowel sound. To get more complex stuff you'll just have to move on
to lesson no.2
Exercise:
Use the keyboard below to write the translation of "Father
is coming" in Hebrew, without nikud.
Hebrew Keyboard
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