🚀 go-pugleaf

On Mon, 16 Jun 1997 16:59:43 GMT, in newsgroup soc.culture.jewish, article <33a55484....@news2.qis.net>, JoAnne Schmitz <jschmitz@qis.net.deleteme!> wrote:
: Would someone kindly explain what aleph is?  I thought it was a Hebrew
: letter which is the equivalent of "A."

It is supposed to be an "unvoiced glottal stop" (whatever that is), and is
silent in all modern accents that I know of. In the laws of gittin (writs
of divorce) when one writes a non-Hebrew name, one must insert a semi-vowel
or gutteral to represent the vowels. (Hebrew has vowel marks above or below
the letters, which represent only consanents.) Alef is used to represent
the vowels patach (a as in far) and kamatz (u as in fun, for Ashkenazic
pronounciation, a as in far in Sepharadic).

>From there, Yiddish uses the aleph similarly.

Historically, aleph is akin to the Phoneician letter that later became
the Gree alpha (not the similarity of name), and via Latin, became the
letter "A".

-- 
Micha Berger 201 916-0287        Help free Ron Arad, held by Syria 3828 days!
mi...@aishdas.org                         (16-Oct-86 - 16-Jun-97)
For a mitzvah is a candle, and the Torah its light.
http://aishdas.org -- Orthodox Judaism: Torah, Avodah, Chessed