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
Hebrew alphabet a letter multiplies its value by one thousand, for example, the year 5778 is portrayed as ה׳תשע״ח, where ה represents 5000, and תשע״ח represents 778. The following table lists transliterations and transcriptions of Hebrew letters used in Modern Hebrew. Clarifications: Note: SBL's transliteration system, recommended in its "Handbook of Style", differs slightly from the 2006 "precise" transliteration system of the Academy of the Hebrew Language; for "צ" SBL uses "ṣ" (≠ AHL "ẓ"), and for בג״ד כפ״ת with no dagesh, SBL uses the same symbols as for with dagesh (i.e. "b", "g", "d", "k", "f", "t"). In transliterations of modern