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
Arabic alphabet Arabic alphabet The Arabic alphabet ( ', or ') or Arabic abjad is the Arabic script as it is codified for writing Arabic. It is written from right to left in a cursive style and includes 28 letters. Most letters have contextual letterforms. Originally, the alphabet was an abjad, with only consonants, but it is now considered an "impure abjad". As with other "abjads", such as the Hebrew alphabet, scribes later devised means of indicating vowel sounds by separate vowel diacritics. The basic Arabic alphabet contains 28 letters. Adaptations of the Arabic script for other languages added and removed some