Hebrew alphabet . The Arabic letters generally (as six of the primary letters can have only two variants) have four forms, according to their place in the word. The same goes with the Mandaic ones, except for three of the 22 letters, which have only one form. In forms of Hebrew older than Modern Hebrew, כ״ף, בי״ת and פ״א can only be read "b", "k" and "p", respectively, at the beginning of a word, while they will have the sole value of "v", "kh" and "f" in a "sofit" (final) position, with few exceptions. In medial positions, both pronunciations are possible. In
Hebrew alphabet diacritics or not. Since the Academy of the Hebrew Language ascertains that א in initial position is not transliterated, the symbol for the glottal stop ʾ is omitted from the transliteration, and only the subsequent vowels are transliterated (whether or not their corresponding vowel diacritics appeared in the text being transliterated), resulting in "im", "em" and "om", respectively. The diacritic geresh – "׳" – is used with some other letters as well (ד׳, ח׳, ט׳, ע׳, ר׳, ת׳), but only to transliterate "from" other languages "to" Hebrew – never to spell Hebrew words; therefore they were not included in this