Paleo-Hebrew alphabet Paleo-Hebrew alphabet The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet (Hebrew: ), also spelt Palaeo-Hebrew alphabet, is a variant of the Phoenician alphabet. Like the Phoenician alphabet, the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet contains 22 letters, all of which are consonants, and is described as an abjad. The term was coined by Solomon Birnbaum in 1954; he wrote, "To apply the term Phoenician to the script of the Hebrews is hardly suitable". Still, the script is nearly identical to the Phoenician script. Archeological evidence of the use of the script by the Israelites for writing the Hebrew language dates to around the 10th century BCE. The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet
Hebrew alphabet indicated by the "dagesh". In Modern Hebrew the sounds ḏ and ḡ have reverted to and , respectively, and ṯ has become , so only the remaining three consonants show variation. "resh" may have also been a "doubled" letter, making the list "BeGeD KePoReT". (Sefer Yetzirah, 4:1) The following table contains the pronunciation of the Hebrew letters in reconstructed historical forms and dialects using the . The apostrophe-looking symbol after some letters is not a yud but a geresh. It is used for loanwords with non-native Hebrew sounds. The dot in the middle of some of the letters, called a