Hebrew Letters: Samech

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The next letter of the Hebrew Alphabet is called Samech, pronounced sa-mech, where the ch sound is pronounced like the Scottish loch or the German Bach.

  Hebrew audio: Listen to the sound of Samech.

Here is what the Hebrew letter Samech looks like:

Here is how to write Samech:



 
Samech is pronounced with a s sound, like the words Selah, serpent or slave.

Incidentally, if you are thinking that Samech looks exactly like the Greek letter Sigma, only pointing to the left instead of the right, then you are exactly correct. This is not a coincidence. The Greek language took the Hebrew letters and wrote many of them the wrong way round, because they preferred to write from left to right instead of right to left. For example, the Hebrew letter Resh looks like the English r, but it is facing the other way. English copied the Greek letter, just as Greek copied the Hebrew letters! The world began with Hebrew!

Samech has the Gematria (numerical value) of 60.

Practise writing Samech in the grid lines below:










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