Hebrew alphabet written from right to left. It has 22 letters, five of which use different forms at the end of a word. In the traditional form, vowels are indicated by the weak consonants Aleph (), He (), Vav (), or Yodh () serving as vowel letters, or "matres lectionis": the letter is combined with a previous vowel and becomes silent, or by imitation of such cases in the spelling of other forms. Also, a system of vowel points to indicate vowels (diacritics), called niqqud, was developed. In modern forms of the alphabet, as in the case of Yiddish and to some
Cursive Hebrew a manuscript of Elias Levita. The accompanying specimen presents Sephardi script. In this flowing cursive alphabet the ligatures appear more often. They occur especially in letters which have a sharp turn to the left (ג, ז, כ, נ, צ, ח), and above all in נ, whose great open bow offers ample space for another letter "(see Figure 2)". The following are the successive stages in the development of each letter: Cursive Hebrew Cursive Hebrew ( ', "Flowing Hebrew Writing", or כתב יד עברי ', "Hebrew Handwriting", often called simply כתב "", "Writing") is a collective designation for several styles of