The First Basics

The first thing to understand about reading Hebrew is that unlike reading English, Hebrew is read from the right-hand side of the page to the left. You may find this a little difficult or awkward to begin with but it is something you will soon get used to.

When reading or writing English, you do so with the 26 character English-language Alphabet which is made up of 21 consonants and five vowels.

The name Alphabet originally comes from the first two characters of the Greek Alphabet, Alpha and Beta. In Hebrew however, the first two characters are Aleph and Bet (Beyt), hence in Hebrew, the equivalent to the English alphabet is the Alephbet.

The Alephbet contains 22 characters, all of which are consonants.

If you imagine trying to speak English without using vowels, it should quickly become obvious that without including vowels, every language would be impossible.

You might therefore wonder how anyone can use Hebrew without vowels.

The point however is that Hebrew does include vowels, it is just that they are not separate written letters.

Instead, vowels are formed by the addition of dashes and/or dots beneath the consonants in some written Hebrew. These vowel points are known as 'nikkud' in the singular and 'nikkudot' when used in the plural.

Note that I suggested that 'nikkud' are used in some written Hebrew.

This is because whilst they are included in prayer books, biblical text, grammar books and books written for children, they are not included in publications such as novels, magazines, newspapers and the like.

This is because anyone who has learned to read and speak Hebrew will already know how to assume the presence of vowels in written script without them actually being present.

As you can see in the sample above, the inclusion or omission of nikkud makes a considerable difference to the appearance of written Hebrew script.

The vowel inclusion or omission is one of the reasons why learning to read Hebrew is sometimes seen as difficult. However, as suggested earlier, all it needs is a little practice and you will soon pick it up.

If this fact makes learning to read Hebrew a little more difficult, there are a couple of 'positives' that counterbalance this.

The first is that unlike English, the way each letter or character is pronounced never changes. For example, whereas in English, the two 'c's' would be sounded differently in a word like 'circle' (the first 'c' sounds like an 's', whereas the second is more like a 'k'), this does not happen in Hebrew.

Secondly, whereas in English, the balance in a word between consonants and vowels is irregular, it is always regular in Hebrew.

As an example, whilst a an English word like 'awkward' is made up of one vowel followed by three consonants, another vowel and finally two more consonants, the pattern in Hebrew is always far more consistent.

In Hebrew, a vowel always follows a consonant except for the final one, which may or may not be followed by a vowel.

For instance, the Hebrew word for 'king' is 'melek'. The pattern of the word is therefore CVCVC (constant - vowel - consonant - vowel - consonant), emphasizing the regularity.

Furthermore, this regularity is carried over to other similar words, so 'His king' is 'meleko' (CVCVCV) whilst 'the king' is 'hamelek'.

In both of these examples, you can see that the pattern is entirely regular, a word construction pattern with which you will quickly become familiar.

Introduction to Reading Hebrew
The first basics
The Hebrew AlephBet
The Letters of the AlephBet
Aleph
Bet (Beyt)
Gimmel
Dalet
Hey
Vav
Zayin
Chet
Tet
Yod
Kaf
Lamed
Mem
Nun
Samekh
Ayin
Pey (Fey)
Tsade (Tsadik)
Qof
Resh
Shin
Tav
The Significance of the Alephbet
The Basics of Hebrew Verbs
The Hebrew Verb Subject
The Hebrew Verb Object
Hebrew Verb Tenses
Hebrew Verb Voices and Moods
Hebrew Verb Participles
The Infinite Verb Version
Hebrew Nouns
Hebrew Noun Constructs
Using Prefixes With Nouns
Hebrew Pronouns
Hebrew Plural Nouns
Hebrew Adjectives
Identifying Hebrew Questions
Adverbs, Prepositions and Conjunctions
Hebrew Reading Conclusion