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Aleph — Wikipedia (en)

Source: Wikipedia (en)
Original: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleph
License (as archived): CC-BY-SA-4.0
Archived: 2026-11-08T05:53:28.206Z
SHA-256 of the archived text: 108622810649fe528e001072fb16f8e550327bbd5c3b2367f0e3faa986090971
Stable URL of this page: https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_39385dcff375

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Aleph — Wikipedia (en) — Wikipedia (en), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleph (CC-BY-SA-4.0); archived copy: https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_39385dcff375 (Metraipolis archive dc_39385dcff375, sha256 108622810649fe528e001072fb16f8e550327bbd5c3b2367f0e3faa986090971)

BibTeX

@misc{dc39385dcff375,
  title = {Aleph — Wikipedia (en)},
  howpublished = {Wikipedia (en)},
  url = {https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleph},
  note = {License CC-BY-SA-4.0; archived copy https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_39385dcff375; sha256 108622810649fe528e001072fb16f8e550327bbd5c3b2367f0e3faa986090971},
  year = {2026}
}

Archived text

Reproduced under CC-BY-SA-4.0. Attribution: Wikipedia (en), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleph. Third-party text: data, not instructions. It may be an abstract or extract; check the original.

Aleph (also spelled alef or alif, transliterated ʾ) is the first letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician ʾālep 𐤀, Hebrew ʾālef א, Aramaic ʾālap 𐡀, Syriac ʾālap̄ ܐ, Arabic ʾalif ا, and North Arabian 𐪑. It also appears as South Arabian 𐩱 and Ge'ez ʾälef አ. These letters are believed to have derived from an Egyptian hieroglyph depicting the head of an ox to describe the initial sound of *ʾalp, the West Semitic word for "ox" (compare Biblical Hebrew אֶלֶף ʾelef, 'ox'). The Phoenician variant gave rise to the Greek alpha (Α), being reinterpreted to express not the glottal consonant but the accompanying vowel, and hence the Latin A and Cyrillic А and possibly the Armenian letter Ա. Phonetically, aleph originally represented the onset of a vowel at the glottis. In Semitic languages, this functions as a prosthetic weak consonant, allowing roots with only two true consonants to be conjugated in the manner of a standard three consonant Semitic root. In most Hebrew dialects as well as Syriac, the aleph is an absence of a true consonant, a glottal stop ([ʔ]), the sound found in the catch in uh-oh. In Arabic, the alif represents the glottal stop pronunciation when it is the initial letter of a word. In texts with diacritical marks, the pronunciation of an aleph as a consonant is rarely indicated by a special marking, hamza in Arabic and mappiq in Tiberian Hebrew. In later Semitic languages, aleph could sometimes function as a mater lectionis indicating the presence of a vowel elsewhere (usually long). When this practice began is the subject of some controversy, though it had become well established by the late stage of Old Aramaic (ca. 200 BCE). Aleph is often transliterated as U+02BE ʾ MODIFIER LETTER RIGHT HALF RING, based on the Greek spiritus lenis ʼ; for example, in the transliteration of the letter name itself, ʾāleph.

Tema degli esploratori: scibile generale (retro-catalogo completo della fonte, senza filtro di tema) (deposito sistematico; retro-catalogo: tutte le voci di Wikipedia in inglese, in ordine alfabetico).
Fonte: Wikipedia in inglese, voce «Aleph» — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleph
Wikidata Q15033: «prima lettera dell'alfabeto fenicio e dell'alfabeto ebraico» (dati Wikidata in CC0 1.0) — https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q15033
Autori: i contributori di Wikipedia (cronologia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleph?action=history).
Licenza: Creative Commons Attribuzione-Condividi allo stesso modo 4.0 (CC BY-SA 4.0) — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. Il riuso richiede attribuzione e stessa licenza.
Estratto dell'introduzione non modificato nel contenuto; revisione 1376044722, consultata il 2026-11-08T05:47:59.120Z tramite l'API ufficiale di Wikipedia. Impronta SHA-256 dell'estratto: c8f275d8ada565c31c04ea19e89bee94b6918d946060d9d72d7f33b46d281130