Jerry928 is correct. The Phoenician abjad (consonant alphabet) is the oldest known alphabet, and is considered to be the ancestor of nearly every modern alphabet, including Hebrew, Aramaic, Latin, Greek etc. It predates Aramaic by hundreds of years (1200-150 BCE, as opposed to c. 135 CE for Aramaic!). Aramaic's writing system is convoluted in development (as a prestige lingua franca for trade, many folks adopted/adapted it for their own uses), but it was definitely based on the Phoenician system. The Aramaic alphabet was adopted by Jews writing both Hebrew and Aramaic.
I lived for 3 months in Israel. One of the things that really stood out to me was the fact that there is so little English used on signage. Less than almost anywhere I've ever been in Europe or Asia. I'm not convinced it was wise, but it was certainly quite impressive- the feat of linguistics that the Israeli state performed in bringing back a dead language and making it live again, not just symbolically by giving it official status but realistically making it the living, native language of millions of people. And I suppose making sure all signs and labels everywhere were written in Hebrew, not English, was one way to achieve that.
I still didn't learn how to read any Hebrew, though. I can recognize the sign that means "Exit" and that's all.
Yes, there are a lot of signs in both Hebrew and Arabic, and some (but significantly fewer) in English. Mostly these are, as you said, signs along major roads and highways. And also in popular tourist areas. But... "most other stuff?" No way. I travel a lot. And I've never had so much trouble finding English signage, labeling, menus, etc anywhere that I've been. Not in Korea, nor Japan, nor China, nor Vietnam, nor Saudi Arabia, nor Egypt, nor Bulgaria.. not even in Ethiopia. Which led me to believe that it was deliberate. If English was used extensively, there would have been no reason to adopt Hebrew as a national language, and English would simply have become a defacto language of the country since the Israelis came from all over the world speaking many different languages (none of them speaking Hebrew). This is my theory.
I couldn't spell "Ayin" for the life of me. I kept trying Ayan, Ayen, Ian, Iyan, etc. I spent the most time trying to guess how to spell each letter using a different alphabet. No pun intended.
Yom means "day" and is spelled יום: yod, vav, mem-sofit ("sofit" means final, because five of the letters have different forms when they're the last letter in a word: kaf, mem, nun, pe and tsadi).
C'mon guys - soon you'll be claiming every 3-letter combination as a spelling of a Hebrew letter! There are heaps of alternate spellings already loaded, including all the letter variants that appear on Wikipedia.
Maybe I'm being too specific, but in my Bible (which is how I learned them all in the first place) "Samekh" is spelled as "Samek". Only one I didn't get. I use the New Living Translation by the way.
the average score is 12 wow :o But i guess people who didnt know any skipped this quiz... I only got alef and bet. figured some might be similar to latin, as they are, but couldnt guess any correct spelling and soon gave up
Yeah there are. They both use the letter shown, but different vowels. There's a dot above either the left or right part that indicates if its a shin or a sin. Similar to bet/vet, pe/fe
That's not true - it's pronounced "tzadik", not "tzadi". I've been to Israel numerous times and learned the Hebrew alphabet as a kid, no one really pronounces it as "tzadi", everyone says "tzadik".
I still didn't learn how to read any Hebrew, though. I can recognize the sign that means "Exit" and that's all.
Yes, there are a lot of signs in both Hebrew and Arabic, and some (but significantly fewer) in English. Mostly these are, as you said, signs along major roads and highways. And also in popular tourist areas. But... "most other stuff?" No way. I travel a lot. And I've never had so much trouble finding English signage, labeling, menus, etc anywhere that I've been. Not in Korea, nor Japan, nor China, nor Vietnam, nor Saudi Arabia, nor Egypt, nor Bulgaria.. not even in Ethiopia. Which led me to believe that it was deliberate. If English was used extensively, there would have been no reason to adopt Hebrew as a national language, and English would simply have become a defacto language of the country since the Israelis came from all over the world speaking many different languages (none of them speaking Hebrew). This is my theory.
ב: beis, bais
ו: vov
ח: ches
ט: tes
כ: kof