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
Paleo-Hebrew alphabet use the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet. During the 3rd century BCE, Jews began to use a stylized, "square" form of the Aramaic alphabet that was used by the Persian Empire (which in turn was adopted from the Assyrians), while the Samaritans continued to use a form of the Paleo-Hebrew script, called the Samaritan script. After the fall of the Persian Empire, Jews used both scripts before settling on the Assyrian form. For a limited time thereafter, the use of the Paleo-Hebrew script among Jews was retained only to write the Tetragrammaton. The independent Hebrew script evolved by developing numerous cursive features, the