aleph
Sign in to saveAleph (or alef or alif, transliterated ʾ) is the first letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician ʾālep , Hebrew ʾālef , Aramaic ʾālap , Syriac ʾālap̄ , Arabic ʾalif , and North Arabian . It also appears as South Arabian and Ge'ez ʾälef .
Key facts
- Semitic letter.letname
- Aleph
- Semitic letter.nextlink
- Bet (letter)
- Semitic letter.nextletter
- Bet
- Semitic letter.arrowleft
-
- Semitic letter.archar
- ا
- Semitic letter.sychar
- ܐ
- Semitic letter.hechar
- א
- Semitic letter.smchar
- ࠀ
- Semitic letter.amchar
- 𐡀
- Semitic letter.nbchar
- 𐢁𐢀
- Semitic letter.nachar
- 𐪑
- Semitic letter.sachar
- 𐩱
- Semitic letter.gechar
- አ
- Semitic letter.ugchar
- 𐎀
- Semitic letter.phchar
- 𐤀
- Semitic letter.grchar
- Α
- Semitic letter.lachar
- A, Ɑ
- Semitic letter.cychar
- А, Ѧ, Ѫ, Ӏ
via Wikipedia infobox
Article
21 sectionsContents
- Origin
- {{anchor|Egyptian}} Ancient Egyptian
- Arabic ʾalif
- Arabic variants
- Alif mahmūza: {{big|أ}} and {{big|إ}}
- Alif mamdūda: {{big|آ}}
- Alif maqṣūrah: {{big|ى}}
- Numeral
- Aramaic
- Hebrew alef
- Rabbinic Judaism
- Yiddish
- Syriac ʾalaph/olaf
- South Arabian/Ge'ez
- Other uses
- Mathematics
- Politics
- Religion
- Character encodings
- See also
- References
Aleph (or alef or alif, transliterated ʾ) is the first letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician ʾālep , Hebrew ʾālef , Aramaic ʾālap , Syriac ʾālap̄ , Arabic ʾalif , and North Arabian . It also appears as South Arabian and Ge'ez ʾälef .
These letters are believed to have derived from an Egyptian hieroglyph depicting the head of an ox to describe the initial sound of , the West Semitic word for "ox" (compare Biblical Hebrew , ). The Phoenician variant gave rise to the Greek alpha (), being reinterpreted to express not the glottal consonant but the accompanying vowel, and hence the Latin A and Cyrillic А and possibly the Armenian letter Ա.