Aleph#Arabic

The name aleph is derived from the West Semitic word for 'ox', as in the Biblical Hebrew word {{tlit|hbo|eleph}} ({{lang|hbo|אֶלֶף}}) 'ox', and the shape of the letter derives from a Proto-Sinaitic glyph that may have been based on an Egyptian hieroglyph, which depicts an ox's head.{{cite web |date=2014-10-31 |title=Meet The Animal That Inspired The Letter A |url=http://www.dictionary.com/e/a/ |access-date=2019-05-05 |work=Everything After Z |publisher=Dictionary.com |archive-date=2019-05-09 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190509022716/https://www.dictionary.com/e/a/ |url-status=live }}

In Modern Standard Arabic, the word {{lang|ar|أليف}} /ʔaliːf/ literally means 'tamed' or 'familiar', derived from the root {{IPA|ʔ-L-F}}, from which the verb {{lang|ar|ألِف}} {{IPA|/ʔalifa/}} means 'to be acquainted with; to be on intimate terms with'.{{cite book|last=Wehr|first=Hans|title=A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic: (Arabic-English)|url=https://archive.org/details/hanswehrdictiona00wehr|url-access=limited|year=1994|publisher=Spoken Language Services|location=Urbana|isbn=0879500034|pages=[https://archive.org/details/hanswehrdictiona00wehr/page/n45 28]–29|edition=4th|author-link=Hans Wehr}} In modern Hebrew, the same root {{IPA|ʔ-L-P}} (alef-lamed-peh) gives {{tlit|he|me’ulaf}}, the passive participle of the verb {{tlit|he|le’alef}}, meaning 'trained' (when referring to pets) or 'tamed' (when referring to wild animals).

{{further|Transliteration of Ancient Egyptian#alef}}

{{Hiero|"Aleph" | A |align=right|era=egypt}}

The Egyptian "vulture" hieroglyph (Gardiner G1), by convention pronounced {{IPA|[a]}}) is also referred to as aleph, on grounds that it has traditionally been taken to represent a glottal stop ({{IPA|[ʔ]}}), although some recent suggestions{{cite book|last1=Lecarme|first1=Jacqueline|last2=Lowenstamm|first2=Jean|last3=Shlonsky|first3=Ur|title=Research in Afroasiatic Grammar: Papers from the Third Conference on Afroasiatic Languages, Sophia Antipolis, France, 1996|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Sg_pdMfJbcwC&pg=PA345|date= 2000|publisher=John Benjamins|isbn=90-272-3709-3|page=345|quote= The "aleps" problem in Old Egyptian The character of Egyptian "aleph" (transcribed Ꜣ) has always been debated by linguists and egyptologists. Even at the present we can claim surely only that Egyptian Ꜣ was often not the same as the Semitic glottal stop ɂ.}}{{cite journal |last=Schneider |first=Thomas |year=2003 |title=Etymologische Methode, die Historizität der Phoneme und das ägyptologische Transkriptionsalphabet |journal=Lingua Aegyptia: Journal of Egyptian Language Studies |issue=11 |pages=187–199}} tend towards an alveolar approximant ({{IPAblink|ɹ}}) sound instead. Despite the name it does not correspond to an aleph in cognate Semitic words, where the single "reed" hieroglyph is found instead.

The phoneme is commonly transliterated by a symbol composed of two half-rings, in Unicode (as of version 5.1, in the Latin Extended-D range) encoded at {{Unichar|A722}} and {{Unichar|A723}}. A fallback representation is the numeral 3, or the Middle English character ȝ Yogh; neither are to be preferred to the genuine Egyptological characters.

{{Infobox grapheme|name=ʾalif ألف|letter=ا|script=Arabic script|type=Abjad|language=Arabic language|phonemes={{IPA link|ʔ}}, {{IPA link|aː}}|alphanumber=1|direction=Right-to-left|fam1=𐤀|fam2=𐡀|fam3=𐢀 ,𐢁‎}}

Written as {{lang|ar|ا}} or 𐪑, spelled as {{lang|ar|ألف}} or 𐪑𐪁𐪐 and transliterated as {{transliteration|ar|ALA|alif}}, it is the first letter in Arabic and North Arabian. Together with Hebrew aleph, Greek alpha and Latin A, it is descended from Phoenician {{transliteration|sem|ʾāleph}}, from a reconstructed Proto-Canaanite {{transliteration|sem|ʾalp}} "ox".

Alif has the highest frequency out of all 28 letters in the Arabic abjad.{{Citation needed|date=July 2024}}

Alif is written in one of the following ways depending on its position in the word:

{{Arabic alphabet shapes|ا}}

{{Main|Hamza}}

{{anchor|hamzat qaṭ‘|hamzat qaṭ`|hamzat qaṭ}}

The Arabic letter was used to render either a long {{IPA|/aː/}} or a glottal stop {{IPA|/ʔ/}}. That led to orthographical confusion and to the introduction of the additional marking {{transliteration|ar|ALA|hamzat qaṭ‘}} {{lang|ar|ﺀ}} to fix the problem. Hamza is not considered a full letter in Arabic orthography: in most cases, it appears on a carrier, either a {{transliteration|ar|ALA|wāw}} ({{lang|ar|ؤ}}), a dotless {{transliteration|ar|ALA|yā’}} ({{lang|ar|ئ}}), or an alif.

{{Arabic alphabet shapes|أ}}

The choice of carrier depends on complicated orthographic rules. Alif {{lang|ar|إ أ}} is generally the carrier if the only adjacent vowel is {{transliteration|ar|ALA|fatḥah}}. It is the only possible carrier if hamza is the first phoneme of a word. Where alif acts as a carrier for hamza, hamza is added above the alif, or, for initial alif-{{transliteration|ar|ALA|kasrah}}, below it and indicates that the letter so modified is indeed a glottal stop, not a long vowel.

{{anchor|hamzat waṣl|hamzat wasl}}

A second type of hamza, {{transliteration|ar|ALA|hamzat waṣl}} ({{lang|ar|همزة وصل}}) whose diacritic is normally omitted outside of sacred texts, occurs only as the initial letter of the definite article and in some related cases. It differs from {{transliteration|ar|ALA|hamzat qaṭ‘}} in that it is elided after a preceding vowel. Alif is always the carrier.

{{Arabic alphabet shapes|ٱ}}

{{anchor|alif maddah|alif madda|Alif maddah|Alif madda}}

The {{transliteration|ar|ALA|alif maddah}} is a double alif, expressing both a glottal stop and a long vowel. Essentially, it is the same as a {{lang|ar|أا}} sequence: {{lang|ar|آ}} (final {{lang|ar|ـآ}}) {{transliteration|ar|ALA|’ā}} {{IPA|/ʔaː/}}, for example in {{lang|ar|آخر}} {{transliteration|ar|ALA|ākhir}} {{IPA|/ʔaːxir/}} {{gloss|last}}.

{{Arabic alphabet shapes|آ}}

"It has become standard for a hamza followed by a long ā to be written as two alifs, one vertical and one horizontal."{{cite book |last=Jones |first=Alan |url=https://archive.org/details/arabicthroughqur00jone |title=Arabic Through The Qur'an |publisher=The Islamic Texts Society |year=2005 |isbn=0946621-68-3 |location=Cambridge |page=[https://archive.org/details/arabicthroughqur00jone/page/n21 4] |url-access=limited}} (the "horizontal" alif being the maddah sign).

{{Anchor|alifmaqsura|alif maqsura|Aifmasqsura|Alif maqsura}}

The ى ('limited/restricted alif', {{transliteration|ar|ALA|alif maqṣūrah}}), commonly known in Egypt as {{transliteration|ar|ALA|alif layyinah}} ({{lang|ar|ألف لينة}}, 'flexible alif'), may appear only at the end of a word. Although it looks different from a regular alif, it represents the same sound {{IPA|/aː/}}, often realized as a short vowel. When it is written, {{transliteration|ar|ALA|alif maqṣūrah}} is indistinguishable from final Persian ye or Arabic {{transliteration|ar|ALA|yā’}} as it is written in Egypt, Sudan and sometimes elsewhere.

The letter is transliterated as {{transliteration|ar|ALA|y}} in Kazakh, representing the vowel /ə/. {{transliteration|ar|ALA|Alif maqsurah}} is transliterated as {{transliteration|ar|ALA|á}} in ALA-LC, {{transliteration|ar|DIN|ā}} in DIN 31635, {{transliteration|ar|ISO|à}} in ISO 233-2, and {{transliteration|ar|ISO|ỳ}} in ISO 233.

In Arabic, alif maqsurah {{lang|ar|ى}} is not used initially or medially, and it is not joinable initially or medially in any font. However, the letter is used initially and medially in the Uyghur Arabic alphabet and the Arabic-based Kyrgyz alphabet, representing the vowel /ɯ/: ({{script/Arabic|ىـ ـىـ}}).

{{Arabic alphabet shapes|ى}}

As a vowel, the letter alif maqsurah can be a carrier with a hamza. The alif maqṣūrah with hamza is thus written as:

{{Arabic alphabet shapes|ئ}}

As a numeral, alif stands for the number one. It may be modified as follows to represent other numbers.{{Citation needed|date=December 2021}}

The Aramaic reflex of the letter is conventionally represented with the Hebrew {{lang|he|א}} in typography for convenience, but the actual graphic form varied significantly over the long history and wide geographic extent of the language. Maraqten identifies three different aleph traditions in East Arabian coins: a lapidary Aramaic form that realizes it as a combination of a V-shape and a straight stroke attached to the apex, much like a Latin K; a cursive Aramaic form he calls the "elaborated X-form", essentially the same tradition as the Hebrew reflex; and an extremely cursive form of two crossed oblique lines, much like a simple Latin X.{{cite journal|last=Maraqten|first=Mohammed|title=Notes on the Aramaic script of some coins from East Arabia|journal=Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy|year=1996|volume=7|issue=2|pages=304–315|doi=10.1111/j.1600-0471.1996.tb00107.x|url=https://www.academia.edu/1556846}}

{{Redirect|א|the Biblical manuscript|Codex Sinaiticus}}

Hebrew spelling: {{script/Hebrew| אָלֶף }}

In Modern Israeli Hebrew, the letter either represents a glottal stop ({{IPAblink|ʔ}}) or indicates a hiatus (the separation of two adjacent vowels into distinct syllables, with no intervening consonant). It is sometimes silent (word-finally always, word-medially sometimes: {{Script/Hebrew|הוּא}} {{IPA|[hu]}} "he", {{Script/Hebrew|רָאשִׁי}} {{IPA|[ʁaˈʃi]}} "main", {{Script/Hebrew|רֹאשׁ}} {{IPA|[ʁoʃ]}} "head", {{Script/Hebrew|רִאשׁוֹן}} {{IPA|[ʁiˈʃon]}} "first"). The pronunciation varies in different Jewish ethnic divisions.

In gematria, aleph represents the number 1, and when used at the beginning of Hebrew years, it means 1000 (e.g. {{Script/Hebrew|א'תשנ"ד}} in numbers would be the Hebrew date 1754, not to be confused with 1754 CE).

Aleph, along with ayin, resh, he and heth, cannot receive a dagesh. (However, there are few very rare examples of the Masoretes adding a dagesh or mappiq to an aleph or resh. The verses of the Hebrew Bible for which an aleph with a mappiq or dagesh appears are Genesis 43:26, Leviticus 23:17, Job 33:21 and Ezra 8:18.)

In Modern Hebrew, the frequency of the usage of alef, out of all the letters, is 4.94%.

Aleph is sometimes used as a mater lectionis to denote a vowel, usually {{IPA|/a/}}. That use is more common in words of Aramaic and Arabic origin, in foreign names, and some other borrowed words.

Aleph is the subject of a midrash that praises its humility in not demanding to start the Bible. (In Hebrew, the Bible begins with the second letter of the alphabet, bet.) In the story, aleph is rewarded by being allowed to start the Ten Commandments. (In Hebrew, the first word is anoki ({{Script/Hebrew|אָנֹכִי}}), which starts with an aleph.)

In the Sefer Yetzirah, the letter aleph is king over breath, formed air in the universe, temperate in the year, and the chest in the soul.

Aleph is also the first letter of the Hebrew word emet ({{Script/Hebrew|אֱמֶת}}), which means truth. In Judaism, it was the letter aleph that was carved into the head of the golem that ultimately gave it life.

Aleph also begins the three words that make up God's name in Exodus, I Am who I Am (in Hebrew, Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh {{lang|he|אהיה אשר אהיה}}), and aleph is an important part of mystical amulets and formulas.

Aleph represents the oneness of God. The letter can be seen as being composed of an upper yud, a lower yud, and a vav leaning on a diagonal. The upper yud represents the hidden and ineffable aspects of God while the lower yud represents God's revelation and presence in the world. The vav ("hook") connects the two realms.

Judaism relates aleph to the element of air, and the Scintillating Intelligence (#11) of the path between Kether and Chokmah in the Tree of the Sephiroth {{Citation needed|date=November 2020}}.

In Yiddish,{{cite book|last=Weinreich|first=Uriel|date=1992|title=College Yiddish|location=New York|publisher=YIVO Institute for Jewish Research|pages=25–8|author-link=Uriel Weinreich}} aleph is used for several orthographic purposes in native words, usually with different diacritical marks borrowed from Hebrew niqqud:

• With no diacritics, aleph is silent; it is written at the beginning of words before vowels spelled with the letter vov or yud. For instance, oykh 'also' is spelled {{lang|yi|rtl=yes|אויך}}. The digraph {{lang|yi|rtl=yes|וי}} represents the initial diphthong [{{IPA|oj}}], but that digraph is not permitted at the beginning of a word in Yiddish orthography, so it is preceded by a silent aleph. Some publications use a silent aleph adjacent to such vowels in the middle of a word as well when necessary to avoid ambiguity.
• An aleph with the diacritic pasekh, {{lang|yi|rtl=yes|אַ}}, represents the vowel {{IPAblink|a}} in standard Yiddish.
• An aleph with the diacritic komets, {{lang|yi|rtl=yes|אָ}}, represents the vowel {{IPAblink|ɔ}} in standard Yiddish.

Loanwords from Hebrew or Aramaic in Yiddish are spelled as they are in their language of origin.

File:Syriac letter shapes Alaph.PNG

In the Syriac alphabet, the first letter is {{lang|syr|ܐ}}, {{langx|syc|ܐܵܠܲܦ}}, alap (in eastern dialects) or olaph (in western dialects). It is used in word-initial position to mark a word beginning with a vowel, but some words beginning with i or u do not need its help, and sometimes, an initial alap/olaph is elided. For example, when the Syriac first-person singular pronoun {{lang|syc|ܐܸܢܵܐ}} is in enclitic positions, it is pronounced no/na (again west/east), rather than the full form eno/ana. The letter occurs very regularly at the end of words, where it represents the long final vowels o/a or e. In the middle of the word, the letter represents either a glottal stop between vowels (but West Syriac pronunciation often makes it a palatal approximant), a long i/e (less commonly o/a) or is silent.

In the Ancient South Arabian alphabet, 𐩱 appears as the seventeenth letter of the South Arabian abjad. The letter is used to render a glottal stop {{IPA|/ʔ/}}.

In the Ge'ez alphabet, ʾälef አ appears as the thirteenth letter of its abjad. This letter is also used to render a glottal stop {{IPA|/ʔ/}}.

In set theory, the Hebrew aleph glyph is used as the symbol to denote the aleph numbers, which represent the cardinality of infinite sets. This notation was introduced by mathematician Georg Cantor. In older mathematics books, the letter aleph is often printed upside down by accident, partly because a Monotype matrix for aleph was mistakenly constructed the wrong way up.{{citation|mr=0553111 |last1=Swanson |first1=Ellen |first2=Arlene Ann |last2=O'Sean |first3=Antoinette Tingley |last3=Schleyer |title=Mathematics into type. Copy editing and proofreading of mathematics for editorial assistants and authors |edition=updated |publisher=American Mathematical Society |place= Providence, R.I. |year=1999 |orig-year= 1979 |isbn=0-8218-0053-1 |page=16 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pL3vAAAAIAAJ&q=aleph}}

The Mapai political party in Israel used an aleph as its election symbol, and featured it prominently in its campaign posters.{{cite web | last=Weitz | first=Carmel Sapir | title=Symbols of the Mapai Party | website=The Jerusalem Post | date=2018-07-12 | url=https://www.jpost.com/magazine/symbols-of-the-mapai-party-562347 | access-date=2024-03-06 | archive-date=2023-03-20 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230320162638/https://www.jpost.com/magazine/symbols-of-the-mapai-party-562347 | url-status=live }}

Guru Nanak, regarded as the founder of Sikhism, used the aleph to represent the oneness of God.{{citation needed|date=March 2025}}

{{charmap

|05D0|name1=Hebrew Letter Alef

|0627|name2=Arabic Letter Alef

|0710|name3=Syriac Letter Alaph

|0800|name4=Samaritan Letter Alaf

|10380|name5=Ugaritic Letter Alpa

|10900|name6=Phoenician Letter Alf

|10840|name7=Imperial Aramaic Letter Aleph

|10AC0|name8=Manichaean Letter Aleph

|2135|name9=Alef symbol

}}

• ʾ
• Al-
• Aleph number
• Arabic yāʼ
• Hamzah

• {{cite web|title=The Letter Aleph (א) |url=https://hebrewtoday.com/alphabet/the-letter-alef-%d7%90/ |website=Hebrew Today |access-date=2019-05-05}}

{{Commons category|Aleph (letter)}}

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{{Northwest Semitic abjad}}

Category:Phoenician alphabet

Alef

Alef

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