Aleph
Aleph is the first letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician ʾālep ?, Hebrew ʾālef א, Aramaic ʾālap ?, Syriac ʾālap̄ ܐ, and Arabic alif ا. It also appears as South Arabian ?, and Ge'ez ʾälef አ.
These letters are believed to have derived from an Egyptian hieroglyph depicting an ox's head to describe the initial sound of the West Semitic word for ox, preserved in Biblical Hebrew as Eleph 'ox'. The Phoenician variant gave rise to the Greek alpha, being re-interpreted to express not the glottal consonant but the accompanying vowel, and hence the Latin A and Cyrillic А.
In phonetics, aleph originally represented the onset of a vowel at the glottis. In Semitic languages, this functions as a weak consonant allowing roots with only two true consonants to be conjugated in the manner of a standard three consonant Semitic root. In most Hebrew dialects as well as Syriac, the glottal onset represented by aleph is an absence of a true consonant although a glottal stop, which is a true consonant, typically occurs as an allophone. In Arabic, the alif has the glottal stop pronunciation when occurring initially. In text with diacritical marks, the pronunciation as a glottal stop is usually indicated by a special marking, hamza in Arabic and mappiq in Tiberian Hebrew. Occasionally, the aleph was also used to indicate an initial unstressed vowel before certain consonant clusters, without functioning as a consonant itself, the prosthetic aleph. In later Semitic languages, aleph could sometimes function as a mater lectionis indicating the presence of a vowel elsewhere. The period at which use as a mater lectionis began is the subject of some controversy, though it had become well established by the late stage of Old Aramaic. Aleph is often transliterated as, based on the Greek spiritus lenis ʼ; for example, in the transliteration of the letter name itself, ʾāleph.
Origin
The name aleph is derived from the West Semitic word for "ox", and the shape of the letter derives from a Proto-Sinaitic glyph that may have been based on an Egyptian hieroglyph| Hieroglyph | Proto-Sinaitic | Phoenician | Paleo-Hebrew |
In Modern Standard Arabic, the word أليف literally means 'tamed' or 'familiar', derived from the root, from which the verb ألِف means 'to be acquainted with; to be on intimate terms with'. In modern Hebrew, the same root gives me’ulaf, the passive participle of the verb le’alef, meaning 'trained' or 'tamed' ; the IDF rank of aluf, taken from an Edomite title of nobility, is also cognate.
Ancient Egyptian
The Egyptian "vulture" hieroglyph is also referred to as aleph, on grounds that it has traditionally been taken to represent a glottal stop, although some recent suggestions tend towards an alveolar approximant sound instead. Despite the name it does not correspond to an Aleph in cognate Semitic words, where instead the single "reed" hieroglyph is found instead.The phoneme is commonly transliterated by a symbol composed of two half-rings, in Unicode encoded at U+A722 Ꜣ LATIN CAPITAL LETTER EGYPTOLOGICAL ALEF and U+A723 ꜣ LATIN SMALL LETTER EGYPTOLOGICAL ALEF. A fallback representation is the numeral 3, or the Middle English character ȝ Yogh; neither are to be preferred to the genuine Egyptological characters.
Aramaic
The Aramaic reflex of the letter is conventionally represented with the Hebrew א in typography for convenience, but the actual graphic form varied significantly over the long history and wide geographic extent of the language. Maraqten identifies three different aleph traditions in East Arabian coins: a lapidary Aramaic form that realizes it as a combination of a V-shape and a straight stroke attached to the apex, much like a Latin K; a cursive Aramaic form he calls the "elaborated X-form", essentially the same tradition as the Hebrew reflex; and an extremely cursive form with of two crossed oblique lines, much like a simple Latin X.| Cursive Aramaic | Lapidary Aramaic |
Hebrew
It is written as א and spelled as אָלֶף.In Modern Israeli Hebrew, the letter either represents a glottal stop or indicates a hiatus. It is sometimes silent. The pronunciation varies in different Jewish ethnic divisions.
In gematria, aleph represents the number 1, and when used at the beginning of Hebrew years, it means 1000.
Aleph, along with ayin, resh, he and heth, cannot receive a dagesh.
In Modern Hebrew, the frequency of the usage of alef, out of all the letters, is 4.94%.
Aleph is sometimes used as a mater lectionis to denote a vowel, usually. That use is more common in words of Aramaic and Arabic origin, in foreign names, and some other borrowed words.
Rabbinic Judaism
Aleph is the subject of a midrash that praises its humility in not demanding to start the Bible. In the story, aleph is rewarded by being allowed to start the Ten Commandments.In the Sefer Yetzirah, the letter aleph is king over breath, formed air in the universe, temperate in the year, and the chest in the soul.
Aleph is also the first letter of the Hebrew word emet, which means truth. In Jewish mythology, it was the letter aleph that was carved into the head of the golem that ultimately gave it life.
Aleph also begins the three words that make up God's mystical name in Exodus, I Am who I Am, and aleph is an important part of mystical amulets and formulas.
Aleph, in Jewish mysticism, represents the oneness of God. The letter can be seen as being composed of an upper yud, a lower yud, and a vav leaning on a diagonal. The upper yud represents the hidden and ineffable aspects of God while the lower yud represents God's revelation and presence in the world. The vav connects the two realms.
Jewish mysticism relates aleph to the element of air, the Fool of the major arcana of the tarot deck, and the Scintillating Intelligence of the path between Kether and Chokmah in the Tree of the Sephiroth.
Yiddish
In Yiddish, aleph is used for several orthographic purposes in native words, usually with different diacritical marks borrowed from Hebrew niqqud:- With no diacritics, aleph is silent; it is written at the beginning of words before vowels spelled with the letter vov or yud. For instance, oykh 'also' is spelled אויך. The digraph וי represents the initial diphthong , but that digraph is not permitted at the beginning of a word in Yiddish orthography, so it is preceded by a silent aleph. Some publications use a silent aleph adjacent to such vowels in the middle of a word as well when necessary to avoid ambiguity.
- An aleph with the diacritic pasekh, אַ, represents the vowel in standard Yiddish.
- An aleph with the diacritic komets, אָ, represents the vowel in standard Yiddish.
Syriac Alaph/Olaf
| Alaph |
| Madnḫaya Alap |
| Serṭo Olaph |
| Esṭrangela Alap |
In the Syriac alphabet, the first letter is ܐ, ܐܵܠܲܦ, alap or olaph. It is used in word-initial position to mark a word beginning with a vowel, but some words beginning with i or u do not need its help, and sometimes, an initial alap/olaph is elided. For example, when the Syriac first-person singular pronoun ܐܵܢܵܐ is in enclitic positions, it is pronounced no/na, rather than the full form eno/ana. The letter occurs very regularly at the end of words, where it represents the long final vowels o/a or e. In the middle of the word, the letter represents either a glottal stop between vowels, a long i/e or is silent.
South Arabian/Ge'ez
In the Ancient South Arabian alphabet, ? appears as the seventeenth letter of the South Arabian abjad. The letter is used to render a glottal stop.In the Ge'ez alphabet, ʾälef አ appears as the thirteenth letter of its abjad. This letter is also used to render a glottal stop.
Arabic
Written as ا, spelled as ألف and transliterated as alif, it is the first letter in Arabic. Together with Hebrew aleph, Greek alpha and Latin A, it is descended from Phoenician ʾāleph, from a reconstructed Proto-Canaanite ʾalp "ox".Alif is written in one of the following ways depending on its position in the word:
Arabic variants
Alif with hamza: and
The Arabic letter was used to render either a long or a glottal stop. That led to orthographical confusion and to the introduction of the additional letter hamzat qaṭ‘ ﺀ. Hamza is not considered a full letter in Arabic orthography: in most cases, it appears on a carrier, either a wāw, a dotless yā’, or an alif. The choice of carrier depends on complicated orthographic rules. Alif إ أ is generally the carrier if the only adjacent vowel is fatḥah. It is the only possible carrier if hamza is the first phoneme of a word. Where alif acts as a carrier for hamza, hamza is added above the alif, or, for initial alif-kasrah, below it and indicates that the letter so modified is indeed a glottal stop, not a long vowel.A second type of hamza, hamzat waṣl, occurs only as the initial letter of the definite article and in some related cases. It differs from hamzat qaṭ‘ in that it is elided after a preceding vowel. Again, alif is always the carrier.