# Hebrew: final letters



## rushalaim

Hebrew just has five final forms of letters (Caph, Mem, Nun, Pey, Tsadey). Greek and Arabic also have final forms of letters. I read that ancient manuscripts were written without any gap between words in order to preserve expensive parchments or papyri, thus final forms of letters were invented to distinguish words one from another. So, why only five letters not all 22 letters have final forms?


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## amikama

rushalaim said:


> I read that ancient manuscripts were written without any gap between words in order to preserve expensive parchments or papyri, thus final forms of letters were invented to distinguish words one from another.


This theory is probably wrong.



> So, why only five letters not all 22 letters have final forms?


Originally the Hebrew alphabet had no final forms at all - every letter had only one form. The final forms of the letters כ נ פ צ were actually their _original_ form, that is, they were written ך ן ף ץ regardless of their place in the word (e.g. ץבע סףר etc...). The non-final forms were formed later by bending the lower part of the letter to ease writing the word. They were not bent at the end of word since there was no letter next to them, so their form at the end of word didn't change. Moreover, these four letters were the only letters with a lower part, so only these letters were bent while writing them in the middle of word. And that's why כ נ פ צ have two forms, non-final and final.

As for the letter מ, apparently there were two variants of this letter, closed one ם and open one מ, and both of them appeared anywhere in the word (גםר, עולמ). At some stage the closed variant ם appeared more and more in the end of word, until it became the "final" form of the letter while the open variant became the "non-final" form.

(Source)


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## rushalaim

amikama said:


> This theory is probably wrong.
> 
> 
> Originally the Hebrew alphabet had no final forms at all - every letter had only one form. The final forms of the letters כ נ פ צ were actually their _original_ form, that is, they were written ך ן ף ץ regardless of their place in the word (e.g. ץבע סףר etc...). The non-final forms were formed later by bending the lower part of the letter to ease writing the word. They were not bent at the end of word since there was no letter next to them, so their form at the end of word didn't change. Moreover, these four letters were the only letters with a lower part, so only these letters were bent while writing them in the middle of word. And that's why כ נ פ צ have two forms, non-final and final.
> 
> As for the letter מ, apparently there were two variants of this letter, closed one ם and open one מ, and both of them appeared anywhere in the word (גםר, עולמ). At some stage the closed variant ם appeared more and more in the end of word, until it became the "final" form of the letter while the open variant became the "non-final" form.
> 
> (Source)


Do you have archaelogy approval of your theory? The Dead Sea Scrolls have five final forms of letters. The Phoenicial-script of Canaan (the predecessor of Aramaic-script aka. modern Hebrew-script) don't have any final forms of letters at all because Phoenicians separated words with a dot between. By the way, the Greek-script also didn't have any final form of letters (but modern Greek has).


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## amikama

rushalaim said:


> Do you have archaelogy approval of your theory?


The theory isn't mine. But I consider the Academy of the Hebrew Language as a reliable source. That's all I can say right now.


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## berndf

rushalaim said:


> By the way, the Greek-script also didn't have any final form of letters


... yet they didn't use word separators. By contrast, the Aramaic script used spacing as word separators already very early. This includes Hebrew text written with Aramaic characters.


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## rushalaim

berndf said:


> ... yet they didn't use word separators. By contrast, the Aramaic script used spacing as word separators already very early. This includes Hebrew text written with Aramaic characters.


דכירןלטבמנחמהישועשהדהומנחמהשם
There is Jewish-Christians' synagogue of Susya Aramaic-inscription with final forms of letters but without any gap between words or word separators.
https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8450/7906874144_9053b39fc4_z.jpg


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## berndf

That is a relatively late inscription (Byzantine era). At this time continuous writing was wide spread in West Semitic writing systems, I guess under Greek influence. You find this also, e.g., in Neo-Punic which was usually written without any word separators. Also, there has always been a tendency to omit word separators in short in inscriptions.

If you look at the Imperial Aramaic origin of the Hebrew Aramaic letters, you will easily see that the "stretched" forms ך ן ף ץ are the original ones and the "bent" forms כ נ פ צ are the innovation, as @amikama's source explains.


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## rushalaim

berndf said:


> That is a relatively late inscription (Byzantine era). At this time continuous writing was wide spread in West Semitic writing systems, I guess under Greek influence. You find this also, e.g., in Neo-Punic which was usually written without any word separators. Also, there has always been a tendency to omit word separators in short in inscriptions.
> 
> If you look at the Imperial Aramaic origin of the Hebrew Aramaic letters, you will easily see that the "stretched" forms ך ן ף ץ are the original ones and the "bent" forms כ נ פ צ are the innovation, as @amikama's source explains.


Why did you left Mem-sofit? Mem is not "stretched". I don't know about so-called "Imperial Aramaic" or "Hebrew Aramaic". But I can see the Phoenician-script without any final form of letters, without any gap between words and with a dot between words. That inscription is 11th B.C.
https://www.ancient-origins.net/sit...lic/Part-of-the-inscription.jpg?itok=4Uqmo851


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## berndf

rushalaim said:


> Why did you left Mem-sofit?


Because it has a different story, as @amikama explained.


rushalaim said:


> I don't know about so-called "Imperial Aramaic" or "Hebrew Aramaic".


The Aramaic letters used for writing Hebrew (the writing system he are discussing here) developed out of the Imperial Aramaic script.

It replaced an earlier writing system for Hebrew called Paleo-Hebrew, which developed directly out of Phoenician and not indirectly via Aramaic letter shapes.

Have a look at the Qumran scrolls. They contain scrolls written in both systems.


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## fdb

rushalaim said:


> Why did you left Mem-sofit? Mem is not "stretched". I don't know about so-called "Imperial Aramaic" or "Hebrew Aramaic". But I can see the Phoenician-script without any final form of letters, without any gap between words and with a dot between words. That inscription is 11th B.C.
> https://www.ancient-origins.net/sit...lic/Part-of-the-inscription.jpg?itok=4Uqmo851



I don't see any dots.


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## rushalaim

fdb said:


> I don't see any dots.


https://www.ancient-origins.net/sit...lic/Part-of-the-inscription.jpg?itok=4Uqmo851
I can see dots there: ואל dot מלכ dot במלכמ dot וסכנ dot בסנמ dot ותנא dot נחנת dot


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## berndf

rushalaim said:


> I can see dots


I agree, there are word separators in this inscription; but they are vertical bars, not dots.

(Btw: I read the last word as ...מחנ; then the image ends.)


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## rushalaim

berndf said:


> I agree, there are word separators in this inscription; but they are vertical bars, not dots.
> 
> (Btw: I read the last word as ...מחנ; then the image ends.)


I assume, it's hard to make a dot on that kind of rough stone surface, then it looks like half-line. Egyptians made three vertical dots in the end of phrase.


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## fdb

rushalaim said:


> Egyptians made three vertical dots in the end of phrase.



Are you talking about the Egyptian language, or about Aramaic papyri from Egypt?


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## rushalaim

fdb said:


> Are you talking about the Egyptian language, or about Aramaic papyri from Egypt?


https://www.ancient-egypt-online.com/images/papyrus-ani.jpg
I mean Egyptian hieroglyphs.


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## rushalaim

Letters were made as numbers initially. Maybe, that's why modern-Hebrew alphabet followed modern-Greek alphabet to make 27 letters in amount?


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## fdb

rushalaim said:


> Letters were made as numbers initially. Maybe, that's why modern-Hebrew alphabet followed modern-Greek alphabet to make 27 letters in amount?



The use of letters as numbers is a Greek invention, not adopted in the Near East until the Hellenistic period.


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## rushalaim

fdb said:


> The use of letters as numbers is a Greek invention, not adopted in the Near East until the Hellenistic period.


I think, the proof that Phoenician letters were invented initially for counting is the strict letters' order of the alphabet. 
Later, Greeks added letters to complete 27. After that, when modern-Hebrew was made they added 5 letters to 22 to fill 27.


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