In both biblical and rabbinic Hebrew, the letters י ו ה א can also function as matres lectionis, which is when certain consonants are used to indicate vowels.

There is a trend in Modern Hebrew towards the use of matres lectionis to indicate vowels that have traditionally gone unwritten, a practice known as full spelling.

[6] An example of related early Semitic inscriptions from the area include the tenth-century Gezer calendar over which scholars are divided as to whether its language is Hebrew or Phoenician and whether the script is Proto-Canaanite or paleo-Hebrew.

Following the Babylonian exile of the Kingdom of Judah in the 6th century BCE, Jews began using a form of the Imperial Aramaic alphabet, another offshoot of the same family of scripts, which flourished during the Achaemenid Empire.

After the fall of the Persian Empire in 330 BCE, Jews used both scripts before settling on the square Assyrian form.

To preserve the proper vowel sounds, scholars developed several different sets of vocalization and diacritical symbols called nequdot (נקודות‎‎, literally "points").

These points are normally used only for special purposes, such as Biblical books intended for study, in poetry or when teaching the language to children.

Unlike the Paleo-Hebrew writing script, the modern Hebrew script has five letters that have special final forms,[c] called sofit (Hebrew: סופית, meaning in this context "final" or "ending") form, used only at the end of a word, somewhat as in the Greek or in the Arabic and Mandaic alphabets.

The Zayit Stone,[18] Izbet Sartah ostracon,[19] and one inscription from Kuntillet Ajrud[20] each contain a number of reverse letter orders; such as vav-he, chet-zayin, pe-ayin, etc.

[22] The fact that these chapters follows the pre-exilic pe-ayin order is evidence for them being written shortly after the events described, rather than being later, post-exilic compositions.

pronunciation By analogy with the other dotted/dotless pairs, dotless tav, ת‎, would be expected to be pronounced /θ/ (voiceless dental fricative), and dotless dalet ד‎ as /ð/ (voiced dental fricative), but these were lost among most Jews due to these sounds not existing in the countries where they lived (such as in nearly all of Eastern Europe).

[28] Historically, the consonants ב‎ bet, ג‎ gimmel, ד‎ daleth, כ‎ kaf, פ‎ pe and ת‎ tav each had two sounds: one hard (plosive), and one soft (fricative), depending on the position of the letter and other factors.

The sounds [t͡ʃ], [d͡ʒ], [ʒ], written ⟨צ׳‎⟩, ⟨ג׳‎⟩, ⟨ז׳‎⟩, and [w], non-standardly sometimes transliterated ⟨וו‎⟩, are often found in slang and loanwords that are part of the everyday Hebrew colloquial vocabulary.

Geresh is also the name of a cantillation mark used for Torah recitation, though its visual appearance and function are different in that context.

They were pronounced as fricatives [v ɣ ð x f θ] when preceded by a vowel (commonly indicated with a macron, ḇ ḡ ḏ ḵ p̄ ṯ).

In Modern Hebrew the sounds ḏ and ḡ have reverted to [d] and [ɡ], respectively, and ṯ has become [t], so only the remaining three consonants /b k p/ show variation.

(Sefer Yetzirah, 4:1) The following table contains the pronunciation of the Hebrew letters in reconstructed historical forms and dialects using the International Phonetic Alphabet.

Following the adoption of Greek Hellenistic alphabetic numeration practice, Hebrew letters started being used to denote numbers in the late 2nd century BCE,[33] and performed this arithmetic function for about a thousand years.

Nowadays alphanumeric notation is used only in specific contexts, e.g. denoting dates in the Hebrew calendar, denoting grades of school in Israel, other listings (e.g. שלב א׳, שלב ב׳ – "phase a, phase b"), commonly in Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism) in a practice known as gematria, and often in religious contexts.

C1^ 2^ The sound /χ/ (as ⟨ch⟩ in loch) is often transcribed ⟨ch⟩, inconsistently with the guidelines specified by the Academy of the Hebrew Language: חם /χam/ → "cham"; סכך /sχaχ/ → "schach".

), in modern Hebrew /p/ is always represented by pe in its regular, not final, form פ‎, even when in word-final position, which occurs with loanwords (e.g. שׁוֹפּ /ʃop/ "shop"), foreign names (e.g. פִילִיפּ /ˈfilip/ "Philip") and some slang (e.g. חָרַפּ /χaˈrap/ "slept deeply").

The letters of the Hebrew alphabet have played varied roles in Jewish religious literature over the centuries, primarily in mystical texts.

Some sources in classical rabbinical literature seem to acknowledge the historical provenance of the currently used Hebrew alphabet and deal with them as a mundane subject (the Jerusalem Talmud, for example, records that "the Israelites took for themselves square calligraphy", and that the letters "came with the Israelites from Ashur [Assyria]");[36] others attribute mystical significance to the letters, connecting them with the process of creation or the redemption.

In mystical conceptions, the alphabet is considered eternal, pre-existent to the Earth, and the letters themselves are seen as having holiness and power, sometimes to such an extent that several stories from the Talmud illustrate the idea that they cannot be destroyed.

[37] The idea of the letters' creative power finds its greatest vehicle in the Sefer Yezirah, or Book of Creation, a mystical text of uncertain origin which describes a story of creation highly divergent from that in the Book of Genesis, largely through exposition on the powers of the letters of the alphabet.

[38][39] Another book, the 13th-century Kabbalistic text Sefer HaTemunah, holds that a single letter of unknown pronunciation, held by some to be the four-pronged shin on one side of the teffilin box, is missing from the current alphabet.

The world's flaws, the book teaches, are related to the absence of this letter, the eventual revelation of which will repair the universe.

In the same manner that the letter bet is closed on all sides and only open in front, similarly you are not permitted to inquire into what is before or what was behind, but only from the actual time of Creation.

Extensive instructions about the proper methods of forming the letters are found in Mishnat Soferim, within Mishna Berura of Yisrael Meir Kagan.

These can be used in many markup languages, and they are often used in Wiki to create the Hebrew glyphs compatible with the majority of web browsers.