Hebrew Letters: Alef

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The first letter of the Hebrew Alphabet is called Alef, pronounced a-lef, similar to the eleph in the word elephant.

  Hebrew audio: Listen to the sound of Alef.

Here is what the Hebrew letter Alef looks like:

Here is how to write Alef with an ordinary pen:



 
Alef does not have a particular sound of its own, but instead carries the sound of the vowel below or after it. If Alef comes part way through a word, it is pronounced by stopping temporarily and starting again, in a similar way to the English words re-educate or re-do, where there is a slight pause after the initial e sounds. For this reason, Alef is referred to as a guttural letter, meaning that it is pronounced from the throat. Alef, along with the other gutturals, has a number of special properties. We will learn more about the Hebrew gutturals in future lessons.

Hebrew has a method of representing letters as numbers. This is called the Gematria. In this system, each Hebrew letter has a numerical equivalent, so that numbers can be written using Hebrew letters. Alef has the Gematria (numerical value) of 1, since it is the first letter of the Hebrew Alphabet.

Practise writing Alef in the grid lines below:








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