# meaning of Hebrew letters



## Aoyama

Can anyone unlighten me on the meaning of each hebrew letters ?
(Sorry for not being able to write hebrew with this machine)

*aleph        =     ox  (why ?)*
*bet            =    house*
*gimel        =     camel*
*dalet         =    door*
*hé             =     exclamation/window (?)*
*waw         =     stick, hook*
*zayin       =      weapon, penis ( shape of letter?)*
*het            =     thread reel, skein, hank (?)*
*tet            =     gut (?)*
*yod          =     hand*
*kap(h)    =     palm (of the hand)*
*lamed     =     sting, goad (?)*
*mem        =   water*
*nun          =   plant (?)*
*samekh   =   fish  (shape of letter, cursive ?)*
*'ayin        =  eye    (shape of letter, cursive ?)*
*pé            =    mouth (shape of letter, cursive ?)*
*tsadé      =   grass hopper (?)*
*qop         =   monkey*
*resh        = head*
*sin/shin  = tooth*
*taw          =  sign*

  Rav todot lekulam


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## Shlama_98

Although I don't know Hebrew I can share my opinion from an Aramaic point of view since they're the same alphabets.

I'm not too famaliar with all of those signs but some of then make sense, like 'ayn for example really means eye, and that's pretty much how the letter sounds, same thing with others like qop, resh, gimal, and so on, those signs are the actual words for them.


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## Aoyama

> 'ayn for example really means eye, and that's pretty much how the letter sounds, same thing with others like qop, resh, gimal, and so on, those signs are the actual words for them.


That is right, but then, _why_ ?
For *'ayin* the shape of the letter (which becomes here almost an ideogram) ressembles an eye, alright, true for some other letters also.
But what about *aleph,bet, dalet,yod *etc. which are pronounced exactly as or close to the word they are suppose to mean ?
This is true (of course) for Aramaic (very close to Hebrew) and also, to some extent, for Arabic, all of them semitic languages with common roots (Phenician for the alphabet, as we know).


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## Shlama_98

Ok, here's the words I can confirm,

Bet = House
Gimal = Camel
Yod = Hand (Although it's Yad from what I know)
Kap(h) = Palm
Samekh = Fish (We call fish Nuneh in Aramaic but in the case of Hebrew I'm guessing this is similar to the Arabic Samak which means fish)
'ayin = Eye
Qop = Monkey
Resh = Head (But I think it's Rosh in Hebrew)
Shin = Tooth

All the others I'm not too sure about.


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## Shlama_98

Ohh you also asked why, well my best guess is because that's how the letter is pronounced, so if you put the symbol of a house next to it you know the sound is Bet.

Imagine the letter B in English with the symbol of a Bee next to it, or an Eye next to the letter I, this is the same thing....


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## Aoyama

Hand is yad in hebrew, right. So why would yod (jod) be a hand also ...
Head is rosh (akin to raïs in Arabic) ...


> Imagine the letter B in English with the symbol of a Bee next to it, or an Eye next to the letter I, this is the same thing....


Is it ? Not quite, I dare think. Because some of the letters in hebrew have _ideographic meaning_ (a little like chinese characters, which would fit better in a comparison than the latin alphabet).
*dalet* _could_ look like a door (debatable)
*waw* looks like a hook
*zayin *looks like some kind of ax and a ...circumcised penis (actual meaning in modern Hebrew)
*'ayin *(especially in cursive writing) looks like an eye
*samekh *could look as something close to a stylised fish in cursive writing (but, even if it is *samak* in Arabic, it is actually *dag* in hebrew ...)
*pé* ressembles a mouth (the lower part of a face, profile view)
this being said, no latin letter (to my knowledge) can be understood as having ideographic representation.


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## Shlama_98

Aoyama said:


> Is it ? Not quite, I dare think. Because some of the letters in hebrew have _ideographic meaning_ (a little like chinese characters, which would fit better in a comparison than the latin alphabet).
> *dalet* _could_ look like a door (debatable)
> *waw* looks like a hook
> *zayin *looks like some kind of ax and a ...circumcised penis (actual meaning in modern Hebrew)
> *'ayin *(especially in cursive writing) looks like an eye
> *samekh *could look as something close to a stylised fish in cursive writing
> *pé* ressembles a mouth (the lower part of a face, profile view)
> this being said, no latin letter (to my knowledge) can be understood as having ideographic representation.



Possible, if that's the case then it's best looking for the earliest version of the alphabets (Proto-Canaanite) because this is where the these alphabets come from, perhaps these signs played a bigger role then on the letter look, but not so much on the modern ones.


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## Aoyama

> it's best looking for the earliest version of the alphabets (Proto-Canaanite)


Good idea. Where ?


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## Shlama_98

Here you go'


ancientscripts.com/protosinaitic.html


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## Flaminius

The phonetic value of each letter  is determined more by the name of the letter than by its ideographic meaning.  This is the reason, presumably, original pictographic meanings were lost for some of the letters.



> [Sinaitic people] randomly chose pictorial Egyptian glyphs (like ox-head, house, etc), where each sign stood for a consonant. How did they decide which sign get which consonant? A sign is a picture of an object, and the first consonant of the word for this object becomes the sound the sign represents. In short, this is called the acrophonic principle.


http://ancientscripts.com/protosinaitic.html

N.B., Semitic words start with a consonant.


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## Aoyama

The site is very interesting. It gives _some _answers. I learned the word acrophonic  ...


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## shelyn8

aleph = ox because it is the mind of the father, our God/Elohyim, when an ox plows in jewish understanding, he the ox is yoked to a younger ox in the new testament, this is where yeshua/jesus says "take of my yoke and learn of me, my burden is easy, and my burden is light." fathers release seed in order to impregnate in the natural, so an ox symbolizes one with the strenghth to plow the earth, our hearts and then release the seed word to go in and change the heart, into a heart that can be his. In a nut shell that is only one of the hebrew letters that brings us into oneness with the FATHER. AMEN


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