Aramaic Letters: Heh

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The next letter of the Aramaic Alphabet is called Heh, pronounced to rhyme with words like hen, pen but without the final n. It corresponds to the Hebrew letter Heh in the Hebrew Alphabet. The letters in the Aramaic Alphabet are almost identical to those in Hebrew, but have slightly different names and sometimes slightly different sounds.

  Aramaic audio: Listen to the sound of Heh.

Here is what the Aramaic letter Heh looks like:

Here is how to write Heh:



 
Heh is normally pronounced with a h sound, like the words Hebron, Haman or hostile. But if Heh comes at the end of an Aramaic word, it cannot be pronounced as h because ‘h’ does not have enough power to act as a proper sound. When it occurs at the end of an Aramaic word, therefore, Heh is simply pronounced with the vowel of the previous letter, which is usually a or e. This situation is identical to what happens with words like Hannah or Sarah in English - the final h is not vocalised and the last sound is the vowel a.

Heh is the fifth letter of the Aramaic Alphabet, and therefore has the Gematria (numerical value) of 5.

Heh is one of the four Hebrew/Aramaic letters on the Dreidel, which is a spinning top used for playing games during the festival of Hannukah.

Practise writing Heh in the grid lines below:









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