The Hebrew language according to those whose language it is, is 5765 years old. It is the language of the of the "Torah" or more commonly known as the bible or Old Testament. While rarely spoken by any large percentage of the world population it has lasted where many others have long since ceased to exist. While the Hebrew language ceased to be a major spoken language following Rome's dispersion of the last two tribes of Israel, Jews have always maintained its use in religious areas. All marriage and divorce contracts have ever been written in Hebrew. Prayers and religious rights all were done in hebrew.
In the late 1800s a man by the name of Eliezer Ben Yehuda began codifying and modernizing what would become modern Hebrew. like most things change didn't come easy, Religious zealots raged and others simply couldn't have been bothered. Likely the British decision to make Hebrew one of three official languages of the mandate gave its study a major impetus.
Hebrew had changed even on its own over the intervening 1800 or so years . Those of North European decent tended to have one manor of pronunciation while those of arabic, Spanish and Italian decent have another. Words have crept in from mother tongues spoken for centuries. Ben-yehuda started a process that continues today. Modern Hebrew is once again thriving and growing into a modern language. while similar to "Biblical Hebrew", modern hebrew is moving towards the general norms in today's spoken languages.
The Hebrew language has 21 letters five of which have forms when appearing at the end of a word. All the letters of the Hebrew Aleph Bet (alphabet)are consonants. The vowels in hebrew are in the form of symbols, which when added to a letter make up the whole sound of the letter or combination of letters. These vowels are generally not shown in either the printed or written forms. The letters which are used today and for the last 1800 years are somewhat different from the pre-Roman period and have under gone their own evolution.
like all things Hebrew has evolved and will continue to do so. There are some basic facts to keep in mind though. Hebrew is written and read from the right side of the page to the left. There are no capital letters in Hebrew. Each letter has a numerical value and the sum is calculated in a similar manner to Roman numerals.Like any language, Hebrew can fill books with its historical usage and grammar. For our purposes the information above and the charts below will allow us to at least work with IDF vehicle markings. The charts below give you the printed form, written form, numerical value and where possible English pronunciation. the last section gives a basic explanation of the vowel system. I highly recommend a google search or an" Ulpan" (hebrew course) for a more in depth study.
For those using computers to make their own decals, a representation of th estadard hebrew keyboard is shown at th ebootom of the charts. You acn play with font type and size in most windows programs.
Symbol |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Closest English sound |
'o' as in hot
|
'e' as in shed
|
as in the word paw |
as in the word food |
long e as in the word see |
'ai' as in paint |
Symbol name |
Patach |
Segol |
Kamats |
Kubuts |
Chirik |
Tsere |
Example using letter '�' or Z |
Zah |
Zeh |
Zaw |
Zoo |
Zee |
Zay |
| Symbol |  |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Closest English sound | Adds long 'O' as bow |
Adds 'oo' sound as in Boo |
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| Symbol name | Shva |
Cholom |
Shuruk |
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| Example using letter '�' or Z | Zow |
Zoo |
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