Daleth
From Freepedia
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Dalet or Daleth is the fourth letter of many Semitic alphabets, including Phoenician, Hebrew, and Aramaic. It has the sound of English D. The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek delta (Δ), Latin D and the equivalent in the Cyrillic alphabet.
This letter is named daleth, following the Tiberian Hebrew pronunciation, in academic circles, and dalet, following the modern Israeli Hebrew pronunciation, in Israel and by most Jews familiar with Hebrew, although some also use the daleth pronunciation.
Daleth may be both an ancient usage or even an Anglicisation of the letter dalet.
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Phoenician pronunciation
- Main article: Phoenician languages
- Main article: Phoenician alphabet
The Phoenician people and their language no longer exist. The Phoenician language is known only from inscriptions and from occasional glosses in texts written in other languages, so it is not known with certainty and finality exactly how this and other letters were pronounced.
Hebrew pronunciation
- Main article: Hebrew language
- Main article: Hebrew alphabet
- Main article: Jewish languages
ד Dalet or Daleth or Daled is written as דלת and it is the fourth letter of the Hebrew alphabet in the Hebrew language that is used as a living language by the Jewish people that live in modern Israel. It also denotes the number "four" in Hebrew numerals.
The name dalet is related to the Hebrew word delet ("door") or dal ("poor" or "weak").
Outside of Israel, and the Jewish world, many use the pronunciation daleth with a "th". This form corresponds to the Tiberian Hebrew pronunciation.
Consonant
- Main article: Hebrew phonology
There are minor variations to this letter's pronunciation, such as
or:
- דּ dalet /d/
Voiced alveolar plosive consonant
- Main article: Voiced alveolar plosive
The ד like the English D is a voiced alveolar plosive, a type of consonantal sound. Just as in English, there may be subtle varieties of the sound that is created when it is spoken.
