Dalet

Encyclopedia : D : DA : DAL : Dalet

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Dāleth
Arabic	Syriac	Hebrew	Aramaic	Phoenician
ﺩ	ܕ	ד
Pronunciation (IPA):
Position in alphabet:				4
Gematria/Abjad value:				4

Dalet (dāleth, also spelled Daleth or Daled) is the fourth letter of many Semitic alphabets, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew ד, Syriac ܕ and Arabic dāl ﺩ (in abjadi order; 8th in modern order). Its sound value is a voiced alveolar plosive ([d]).

The letter is based on a glyph of the Middle Bronze Age alphabets, probably called dalt "door" (door in Modern Hebrew is delet), ultimately based on a hieroglyph depicting a door, O31

The Proto-Canaanite letter may have been called digg "fish" (Hebrew dag).

The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek delta (Δ), Latin D and the equivalent in the Cyrillic Д.

Hebrew Daleth

Hebrew alphabet
	א	ב	ג	ד
ה	ו	ז	ח	ט	י
כך	ל	מם	נן	ס	ע
פף	צץ	ק	ר	ש	ת
History · Transliteration Niqqud · Dagesh · Gematria Cantillation · Numeration

The Arabic alphabet
History · Transliteration Diacritics · hamza {{ar Numerals · Numeration

Syriac alphabet
	Aleph (letter)>ܐ	Beth (letter)>ܒ	Gimel (letter)>ܓ	Dalet>ܕ
He (letter)>ܗ	Waw (letter)>ܘ	Zayin>ܙ	Heth (letter)>ܚ	Teth>ܛ	Yodh>ܝ
Kaph>ܟܟ	Lamedh>ܠ	Mem>ܡܡ	Nun (letter)>ܢܢ	Samekh>ܣ	Ayin>ܥ
Pe (letter)>ܦ	Tsade>ܨ	Qoph>ܩ	Resh>ܪ	Shin (letter)>ܫ	Taw (letter)>ܬ

This letter is named daleth, following the Tiberian Hebrew pronunciation, in academic circles, and dalet, following the modern Israeli Hebrew pronunciation (see Taw (letter)), although dales is used by many Ashkenazi Jews and daleth by some Jews of Middle-Eastern background. The ד like the English D is a voiced alveolar plosive, a type of consonantal sound. Just as in English, there may be subtle varieties of the sound that are created when it is spoken. Daleth and Resh have nearly the same appearance, and were/are often mistaken for one another, hence the variants "Nebuchadnezzar" and "Nebuchadrezzar".

Variations

Dalet can receive a dagesh, being one of the 6 letters that can receive Dagesh Kal (see Gimel). There are minor variations to this letter's pronunciation, such as:

• ד dhalet /d/ (/ð/ among Teimanim, Mizrachim and some Sephardim; /z/ among some Ashkenazim.)

or:

• דּ dalet /d/

In addition, in modern Hebrew, the letter can also be written with an apostrophe in front of it (known as a chupchik): 'ד which alters the pronunciation to /ð/.

Significance

In gematria, dalet symbolizes the number four.

The letter dalet, along with the He (and very rarely Gimel) is used to represent the Names of God in Judaism. The letter He is used commonly, and the dalet is rarer. A good example is the keter (crown) of a tallit, which has the blessing for donning the tallit, and has the name of God usually represented by a dalet.

Dalet as a prefix in Aramaic (the language of the Talmud) is a preposition meaning "that", or "which", or also "from" or "of"; since many Talmudic terms have found their way into Hebrew, one can hear dalet as a prefix in many phrases (as in Mitzvah Doraitah; a mitzvah from the Torah.)

See also

• Star of David (two Phoenician Dalet letters)

 

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