Summary Of The Aramaic Alphabet

• Aramaic is read and written from right to left.
• There are 22 letters in the Aramaic Alphabet.
• The Aramaic Alphabet has no capital letters.
• Each Aramaic letter stands alone. (Unlike Arabic, Aramaic is never joined up, except occasionally in handwritten Aramaic.) This makes learning Aramaic much easier than English!
• Five of the letters in the Aramaic Alphabet have a slightly different form when they occur at the end of the word. (Think yourself lucky that you’re not learning Arabic – a sister language of Aramaic – because most Arabic letters have four forms, depending on whether they are isolated, or occur at the beginning, end or middle of a word.)
• Most Aramaic letters can have a dot inside the letter, called a Dagesh. The Dagesh is used instead of doubling the letter, and gives the letter emphasis. In six of the letters in the Aramaic Alphabet, the Dagesh gives the letter a harder pronunciation.

Letter	Final Form	Name	Sound / Sign	Pronunciation	Numeric value (Gematria)
		Alap	Vowel / silent	silent glottal stop / vowel, e.g. re-educate, re-do	1
		Beet	b, v	with dot - b as in Bathsheba without dot - v as in valley	2
		Gamal	g	g as in Gilgal	3
		Dalat	d	d as in David	4
		Heh	h	h as in Haman	5
		Waw	w	w as in water	6
		Zeyn	z	z as in Zebulun	7
		Chet	h / ch	half-way between h and ch e.g. similar to ch in Bach	8
		Tet	t	t as in tabernacle	9
		Yood	y	y as in yoke	10
		Kap	k, ch	with dot - k as in king without dot - ch as in Bach	20
		Lamad	l	l as in Laban	30
		Meem	m	m as in Moses	40
		Noon	n	n as in Naaman	50
		Semkat	s	s as in Selah	60
		Ey	)	vocal glottal stop, not present in English	70
		Pe	p	with dot - p as in Palestine without dot - f as in Philistine	80
		Sadeh	s	s as in hiss or miss	90
		Kop	q, k	k as in kill	100
		Resh	r	r as in Rachel	200
		Sheen	sh	sh as in shalom	300
		Taw	t	with dot - t as in time without dot - th as in thick	400