Aleph

Aleph А

Aleph (or alef or alif, transliterated

ʾälef አ.

These letters are believed to have derived from an

.

Origin

The name aleph is derived from the West Semitic word for "

Hieroglyph	Proto-Sinaitic	Phoenician	Paleo-Hebrew

In Modern Standard Arabic, the word أليف /ʔaliːf/ literally means 'tamed' or 'familiar', derived from the root ʔ-L-F, from which the verb ألِف /ʔalifa/ means 'to be acquainted with; to be on intimate terms with'.^[6] In modern Hebrew, the same root ʔ-L-P (alef-lamed-peh) gives me’ulaf, the passive participle of the verb le’alef, meaning 'trained' (when referring to pets) or 'tamed' (when referring to wild animals).

Ancient Egyptian

"Aleph" in hieroglyphs

The Egyptian "

]) 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

; neither are to be preferred to the genuine Egyptological characters.

Arabic ʾalif

Written as ا or 𐪑, spelled as ألف or 𐪑𐪁𐪐 and transliterated as alif, it is the first letter in

ʾāleph, from a reconstructed Proto-Canaanite ʾalp "ox".

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

Position in word	Isolated	Final	Medial	Initial
Glyph form: (Help)	ا‎	ـا‎	ـا‎	ا‎

North Arabian
𐪑

Arabic variants

Alif mahmūza: أ and إ

The Arabic letter was used to render either a long /aː/ or a

is not considered a full letter in Arabic orthography: in most cases, it appears on a carrier, either a wāw (ؤ), a dotless yā’ (ئ), or an alif.

Position in word	Isolated	Final	Medial	Initial
Glyph form: (Help)	أ‎	ـأ‎	ـأ‎	أ‎

The choice of carrier depends on complicated orthographic rules. Alif إ أ is generally the carrier if the only adjacent vowel is 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-kasrah, below it and indicates that the letter so modified is indeed a glottal stop, not a long vowel.

A second type of hamza, hamzat waṣl (همزة وصل) whose diacritic is normally omitted outside of sacred texts, occurs only as the initial letter of the

and in some related cases. It differs from hamzat qaṭ‘ in that it is elided after a preceding vowel. Alif is always the carrier.

Position in word	Isolated	Final	Medial	Initial
Glyph form: (Help)	ٱ‎	ـٱ‎	ـٱ‎	ٱ‎

Alif mamdūda: آ

The alif maddah is a double alif, expressing both a glottal stop and a long vowel. Essentially, it is the same as a أا sequence: آ (final ـآ) ’ā /ʔaː/, for example in آخر ākhir /ʔaːxir/ 'last'.

Position in word	Isolated	Final	Medial	Initial
Glyph form: (Help)	آ‎	ـآ‎	ـآ‎	آ‎

"It has become standard for a hamza followed by a long ā to be written as two alifs, one vertical and one horizontal."^[9] (the "horizontal" alif being the maddah sign).

Alif maqṣūrah: ى

The ى ('limited/restricted alif', alif maqṣūrah), commonly known in Egypt as alif layyinah (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 /aː/, often realized as a short vowel. When it is written, alif maqṣūrah is indistinguishable from final Persian ye or Arabic yā’ as it is written in Egypt, Sudan and sometimes elsewhere.

The letter is transliterated as y in

.

In Arabic, alif maqsurah 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

/: (ىـ ـىـ‎).

Position in word	Isolated	Final	Medial	Initial
Glyph form: (Help)	ى‎	ـى‎	ـىـ‎	ىـ‎

Numeral

As a numeral, alif stands for the number one. It may be modified as follows to represent other numbers.^[citation needed]

Modification to alif	Number represented
One dot below	1,000
One line below	10,000
One line above	1,000,000
Two dots below	10,000,000

Aramaic

The Aramaic reflex of the letter is conventionally represented with the Hebrew 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.^[10]

Cursive Aramaic	Lapidary Aramaic

Hebrew alef

Hebrew spelling: אָלֶף ‎

In

.

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

Aleph, along with

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

Arabic

origin, in foreign names, and some other borrowed words.

Orthographic variants
Various print fonts			Cursive Hebrew	Rashi script
Serif	Sans-serif	Monospaced
א	א	א

Rabbinic Judaism

Aleph is the subject of a

Hebrew

, the first word is אָנֹכִי‎, which starts with an aleph.)

In the

chest

in the soul.

Aleph is also the first letter of the

that ultimately gave it life.

Aleph also begins the three words that make up God's name in

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]}.

Yiddish

In

:

• 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 אויך. The digraph וי represents the initial diphthong [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, אַ, represents the vowel [a] in standard Yiddish.
• An aleph with the diacritic komets, אָ, represents the vowel [ɔ] in standard Yiddish.

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

Syriac ʾalaph/olaf

Alaph
Madnḫaya alap
Serṭo olaph
Esṭrangela alap

In the

), a long i/e (less commonly o/a) or is silent.

South Arabian/Ge'ez

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 /ʔ/.

In the

, ʾälef አ appears as the thirteenth letter of its abjad. This letter is also used to render a glottal stop /ʔ/.

South Arabian	Ge'ez
𐩱	አ

Other uses

Mathematics

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.^[12]

Politics

The Mapai political party in Israel used an aleph as its election symbol, and featured it prominently in its campaign posters.^[13]

Character encodings

Character information

Preview	א		ا		ܐ		ࠀ		𐎀		𐤀		𐡀		𐫀		ℵ
Unicode name	HEBREW LETTER ALEF		ARABIC LETTER ALEF		SYRIAC LETTER ALAPH		SAMARITAN LETTER ALAF		UGARITIC LETTER ALPA		PHOENICIAN LETTER ALF		IMPERIAL ARAMAIC LETTER ALEPH		MANICHAEAN LETTER ALEPH		ALEF SYMBOL
Encodings	decimal	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex
Unicode	1488	U+05D0	1575	U+0627	1808	U+0710	2048	U+0800	66432	U+10380	67840	U+10900	67648	U+10840	68288	U+10AC0	8501	U+2135
UTF-8	215 144	D7 90	216 167	D8 A7	220 144	DC 90	224 160 128	E0 A0 80	240 144 142 128	F0 90 8E 80	240 144 164 128	F0 90 A4 80	240 144 161 128	F0 90 A1 80	240 144 171 128	F0 90 AB 80	226 132 181	E2 84 B5
UTF-16	1488	05D0	1575	0627	1808	0710	2048	0800	55296 57216	D800 DF80	55298 56576	D802 DD00	55298 56384	D802 DC40	55298 57024	D802 DEC0	8501	2135
Numeric character reference	א	א	ا	ا	ܐ	ܐ	ࠀ	ࠀ	𐎀	𐎀	𐤀	𐤀	𐡀	𐡀	𐫀	𐫀	ℵ	ℵ
Named character reference																	ℵ, ℵ

See also

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

References

• "The Letter Aleph (א)". Hebrew Today. Retrieved 2019-05-05.