Talk:History of the Hebrew alphabet
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Literal meaning of letters edit
Aharon, could you please state your source for the information under Literal meaning of letters? Regarding the meanings of the letters' names, I believe there is some confusion between their original meanings and etymology on the one hand and the meanings that these names (or words similar to them) acquired later on the other hand. I believe e.g. that the name "Aleph" originated from the old Hebrew word "aluph", meaning ox, and not from "elef", meaning "one thousand". The letter's old form depicted the head of an ox, as you can see in the table. Please be careful to avoid pseudoscientific language comparison between ancient and modern Hebrew. Dan Pelleg (talk) 13:51, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
- The table was becoming much too wide, I split the table, and the history section into a new article called, History of the Hebrew alphabet Epson291 (talk) 21:59, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
- Good idea - only you've just copied the information from here into the new article, information which is unsourced and at least partly wrong. Dan Pelleg (talk) 22:31, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
"Hey"(הֵא) also means "behold!" according to the Ancient Hebrew Research Center. AurumSpiral1235813 (talk) 19:52, 12 May 2013 (UTC)
| Letter | Literal Meaning |
|---|---|
| alef | n. thousand, myriad (elef) |
| bet, vet | n. house (bayit) |
| gimel | n. camel (gamal) |
| dalet | n. door (delet) |
| he | prefix the definite article (he-) |
| vav | n. hook, peg (vov); prefix and (v-) |
| zayin | n. stabbing weapon (zayin) |
| khet | n. incisor (khat); n. transgression (kheyt) |
| tet | n. clay, mud (teet) |
| yud | n. hand (yad) |
| kaf, khaf | n. palm of hand, spoon (khof), prefix with (k-) |
| lamed | v. learn (lamad); prefix to (l-) |
| mem | n. water (mayim); prefix from (m-) |
| ayin | n. eye (ayin) |
| pei, fei | n. mouth (peh) |
| tsadi(k) | n. righteous (tsaddik) |
| reish | n. head (rōsh) |
| shin, sin | n. tooth (shin); prefix that (sh-) |
I'd suggest to replace "Literal Meaning" with "Etymology of the letter's name". Some of the meanings listed here are chance convergences and are thus potentially misleading and only trivially interesting, and some of the meanings are not of the letters, but of the corresponding one-letter words (such as "ל=to" or "מ=from"), which is something completely different, and the information about which doesn't belong in a listing of the alphabet. Dan Pelleg (talk) 00:41, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
Error in the list? edit
There is a hieroglyphic sign in the table for sayin/zayn that does not corresponds with the sign in the table here: Proto-Sinaitic_script. What sign is it anyway? U7 for hoe/plow? List_of_Egyptian_hieroglyphs. Is there an error in the list? --N3MO (talk) 15:54, 17 May 2020 (UTC)
Other talmudic views? edit
I remember learning, in yeshiva, that both scripts, *Ivri* (Paleo-Hebrew) and *Ashurit*, were in use together until the time of Ezra. Before then, Ivri was used for day-to-day writing, while Ashurit was reserved for holy texts. After Ezra, to the present day, Ashurit was used for everything. But I don't have a source for this. If someone here is knowledgeable enough to know the source, I think it would be a useful addition to the Talmudic Views section. Shamino (talk) 23:38, 6 January 2022 (UTC)