Hebrew Letters: Bet

The second letter of the Hebrew Alphabet is called Bet, pronounced bet, to rhyme with words like met, pet or debt.

  Hebrew audio: Listen to the sound of Bet.

Here is what the Hebrew letter Bet looks like:

Here is how to write Bet with an ordinary pen:



Bet is one of the Hebrew letters that take a dot, called a Dagesh, which changes its pronunciation. With the dot, Bet is pronounced b as in words like Benjamin, Baal or Bathsheba. Without the dot, it is pronounced v as in the words valley or vineyard.

Here are the two versions of Bet:

  with the dot, pronounced b

  without the dot, pronounced v

Since Bet is the second letter of the alphabet, it has the Gematria (numerical value) of 2.

 
Incidentally, the English word Alphabet comes from the two Hebrew letters that we have just met - Alef and Bet. Can you hear how similar they sound - Alef/Bet, Alphabet? This is just one example to show that, thousands of years later, Hebrew has influenced the world’s languages so much that English has adopted the original names of the Hebrew letters! In fact, the names of the first few letters of the Greek alphabet (Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta) come from the names of the first few Hebrew letters Alef, Bet, Gimel, Dalet!

As you are introduced to the other Hebrew letters, you will see that there is a great deal of similarity between the order of the letters in the Hebrew Alphabet, and the order of the letters in the English alphabet. This is no coincidence!

Practise writing Bet in the grid lines below:










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