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
Samaritan Hebrew Samaritan alphabet is close to the script that appears on many Ancient Hebrew coins and inscriptions. By contrast, all other varieties of Hebrew, as written by Jews, employ the later 'square' Hebrew alphabet, which is in fact a variation of the Aramaic alphabet that Jews began using in the Babylonian captivity following the exile of the Kingdom of Judah in the 6th century BCE. During the 3rd century BCE, Jews began to use this stylized "square" form of the script used by the Achaemenid Empire for Imperial Aramaic, its chancellery script while the Samaritans continued to use the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet,