The idea of this project is to develop a writing system, based on the latin alphabet, to write hebrew. The first intention is not to write biblical hebrew, but modern. Anyway, the idea contemplates the need for writing and reading ancient hebrew, mainly for non-hebrew speakers learning the scriptures.
This is not a phonetic attempt to write hebrew, it is a real writing system, with its own rules. The main goal of the whole projects is to make hebrew an easier to learn language and to even the difficulty levels of learning to speak and learning to write, something than in hebrew are much more apart than in other languages.
Hebrew is not a particularly difficult language to speak and to understand, but for non-israelies or non-religious jews, who learn it form a very early moment in their life, it is really difficult to read and write. This happens because the full spelling has a vowel representation system that does not represent the modern pronunciation, and the lack spelling has multiple consonants for making it more readable, heritages of biblical hebrew, but lacks from the majority of the vowels.
Each letter in the aramaic (ktaƃ aşuri) or ancient hebrew (ktaƃ ìƃri) alphabets has a corresponding latin letter, besides if it sound is usually written with two letters for phonetic purposes (e.g.: ts or sh). The names of the letters are the hebrew ones, not the latin nor any latin-written language name.
There are 23 consonants in the alphabet, the 22 of the traditional alphabet plus one, because Şin and Ṣin are differentiated (they are not interchangeable in roots). Three letters have two different glyphs for the two sounds they represent, but they are not consider as six letters. Every glyph has just one sound.
Consonants are used only to represent consonantal sounds, they are never written to archive a vowel sound. If a word ends with an A sound it would never be written with a ending hei or Alef. The same goes for the middle of the word with letters Alef, yud and vav. There are exceptions for the above, they would be explained later.
There are not final consonants as in the aramaic alphabet, the same glyph is used for any part of the word.
Non-hebrew consonants are written as in modern hebrew alphabet, with a gereş (apostrophe) after the letter, e.g. ç'ips for the english word chips.
| Upper- case | Lower- case | Rafe up. | Rafe low. | Aşuri | Ìƃri | Upper- case | Lower- case | Rafe up. | Rafe low. | Aşuri | Ìƃri | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ʌ | ʌ | א | 𐤀 | S | s | ס | 𐤎 | |||||
| B | b | Ƃ | ƃ | ב | 𐤁 | Ꙩ | ꙩ | ע | 𐤏 | |||
| G | g | Ǥ | ǥ | ג | 𐤂 | P | p | F | f | פ | 𐤐 | |
| D | d | Đ | đ | ך | 𐤃 | Ç | ç | צ | 𐤑 | |||
| H | h | ה | 𐤄 | Q | q | ק | 𐤒 | |||||
| V | v | ו | 𐤅 | R | r | ר | 𐤓 | |||||
| Z | z | ז | 𐤆 | Ş | ş | ש | 𐤔 | |||||
| Ꜧ | ꜧ | ח | 𐤇 | Ṣ | ṣ | ש | 𐤔 | |||||
| Ṭ | ṭ | ט | 𐤈 | T | t | Ŧ | ŧ | ת | 𐤕 | |||
| Y | y | י | 𐤉 | A | a | |||||||
| K | k | X | x | כ | 𐤊 | E | e | |||||
| L | l | ל | 𐤋 | I | i | |||||||
| M | m | מ | 𐤌 | O | o | |||||||
| N | n | נ | 𐤍 | U | u |
The vowel representation system is built on top of the five latin vowels with their original sounds and similar to nowadays spanish, portugues or italian. The name of those letters are their own sound, as it is on those languages.
Because in modern hebrew there is no distinction in the pronunciation of the pairs T/Ŧ, D/Đ and G/Ǥ, they can be written with the dageş version. The other three pairs must be respected as they sound differs.
Alef is never written in words than start with it. Every word in hebrew that start with a vowel without any diacritical mark, is supposed to have a preceding Alef.
Diacritical marks over vowels are used to write the two glottal stop letter as part of a word. If Alef is muted it must be written as a circumflex accent (â) over the immediate previous vowel, if it is an Àyin, with a ring (å). When the glottal stop is pronounced it is written with an acute accent (á) for Alef and a grave (à) for Àyin.
For writing isolated Alef or ayin letters, the glyph that must be used is the regular one, diacritics must not be used outside of a word or unbound from a vowel.
When a word ends in a consonantal He (in standard hebrew has mapiq) it is written as a macron on the last vowel (ā). This letter is normally not pronounced, but it can have an important function as a suffix or can be part of the word root, so it cannot be omitted from writing.
-VyiC > -Vi̗C i.e.: Yomayim > Yomai̗m
-iyVC > -iVC i.e.: Italqiyot > Italqiot
Diacritical marks below vowels are used to indicate the presence of letters that are part of the root, but because those roots are weak, they are not always written in standard hebrew. Writing them, makes this system more regular, easier to understand, more accurate to actual pronunciation (dageş ꜧazaq is ommited when talking) and stop using consonants for vowel sounds (diphthongs are written with I not Y).
This is not mandatory, they can be omitted and the final writing is a kind of latin "less niqud". In that case, the patterns show they same irregularities than in actual hebrew.
To this group belong the roots that have a Nun in the first radical and they lose it when conjugated. In standard hebrew, in those conjugations, the Nun disappears and the second radical is written with dageş ꜧazaq.
Te way this Nun is written with latin letters is as a tilde below the first vowel before the second radical.
Paàl building
- Future: ḛså, tḭså, tḭsì, yḭså, tḭså, nḭså, tḭsù, yḭsù.
- Imperative: så, seì, seù. [???]
Nifàl building
- Present: nḭçtzal, nḭçtzelet, nḭçtzalim, nḭçtzalot.
- Past: nḭçalti, nḭçalta, nḭçalt, nḭçal, nḭçla, nḭçalnu, nḭiçaltem, nḭnaçel.
Hifìl building
- Present: ma̰çil, ma̰çila, ma̰çilim, ma̰çilot.
- Past: hḭçalti, hḭçalta, hḭçalt, hḭçil, hḭçila, hḭçalnu, hḭçaltem, hḭçalten, hḭçilu.
- Future: a̰çil, ta̰çil, ta̰çili, ya̰çil, ta̰çil.
- Imperative: ha̰çel, ha̰çili, ha̰çilu.
- Infinitive: leha̰çil.
Hufàl building
- Present: mṵçal, mṵçelet, mṵçalim, mṵçalot.
- Past: hṵçalti, hṵçalta, hṵçalt, hṵçal, hṵçla, hṵçalnu, hṵçaltem, hṵçalten, hṵçlu, nṵçal.
- Future: ṵçal, tṵçal, tṵçli, yṵçal, tṵçal, nṵçal, tṵçlu, yṵçlu.
To this group belong the roots that have a Vav or a Yod in the first or the second radical. When conjugated they disappear or the act as a vowel. They can make diphthongs too.
In latin letters, when they disappear or sound as a vowel or a diphthong, Vav is written as a caron and Yod with an acute accent below the first vowel before the next radical or below the first vowel after the previous.
Paàl building
- Present: qa̬m, qa̬ma, qa̬mim, qa̬mot.
- Past: qa̬mti, qa̬mta, qa̬mt, qa̬m, qa̬ma, qa̬mnu, qa̬mtem, qa̬mten, qa̬mu.
- Future: aqu̬m, taqu̬m, taqu̬mi, yaqu̬m, taqu̬m, naqu̬m, taqu̬mu, yaqu̬mu.
- Imperative: qu̬m, qu̬mi, qu̬mu.
- Infinitive: laqu̬m.
Nifàl building
- Present: nizo̬n, nizo̬net, nizo̬nim, nizo̬not.
- Past: nizo̬nti, nizo̬nta, nizo̬nt, nizo̬n, nizon̬a, nizo̬nu, nizo̬ntem, nizo̬nten, nizo̬nu.
- Future: ezo̬n, tizo̬n, tizo̬ni, yizo̬n, tizo̬n, nizo̬n, tizo̬nu, yizo̬nu.
- Imperative: hizo̬n, hizo̬ni, hizo̬nu.
- Infinitive: lehizo̬n.
Hifìl building
- Present: ma̰çil, ma̰çila, ma̰çilim, ma̰çilot.
- Past: hḭçalti, hḭçalta, hḭçalt, hḭçil, hḭçila, hḭçalnu, hḭçaltem, hḭçalten, hḭçilu.
- Future: a̰çil, ta̰çil, ta̰çili, ya̰çil, ta̰çil.
- Imperative: ha̰çel, ha̰çili, ha̰çilu.
- Infinitive: leha̰çil.
Hufàl building
- Present: ma̰çil, ma̰çila, ma̰çilim, ma̰çilot.
- Past: hḭçalti, hḭçalta, hḭçalt, hḭçil, hḭçila, hḭçalnu, hḭçaltem, hḭçalten, hḭçilu.
- Future: a̰çil, ta̰çil, ta̰çili, ya̰çil, ta̰çil.
- Imperative: ha̰çel, ha̰çili, ha̰çilu.
- Infinitive: leha̰çil.
- The first letter of every sentence is capitalized.
- The first letter of all proper nouns (names of people, cities, countries, places, etc.) is capitalized. If the name has more than one word, all of them are capitalized in the first letter (e.g. Tel AƂiƂ).
- Titles are capitalized in every word.
- Religious festivals and national holidays are capitalized.
- Letter names are capitalized.
- Abbreviations: if they have vowels, they act as one word so just first letter is capitalized when needed, if they are only consonants, they act as multiple words and each one of them is capitalized when needed.
Abbreviations are written as in standard hebrew. Acronyms are written with gerşayim before the last letter (e.g. ꜧ"K or T"Ʌ) and the optional adding of an A letter between consonants when they are traditionally pronounced (e.g. Tana"x or Raşla"ç). One word abbreviations are written with gereş after the last letter (e.g. Ad' for Adon or R' for Rofê).
Only in exceptional words a dot below the vowel is used for marking the accented sylabe. Otherwise, the accented sylabe can be inferred. The situations where is mandatory to write the dot below the vowel, are those that do not correspond to the next parameters:
- Accent on last sylabe is the default.
- Verbs have they accent defined by the tense.
- Words with pronominal suffixes have they accent defined by the person.
- Words ending in 'et' and accentuated on the prelast sylabe.
- Dual words, ending in 'ayim'.