Bet (letter)
- This is about the Hebrew letter: for other uses, see Beth.
Bet or Beth is the second letter that belongs to different ancient alphabets: The ancient Phoenician language and the Hebrew language. It is like the B in English and makes the same sound in terms of phonetics.
(Phonetics comes from the Greek word phone = sound/voice.)
The Phoenician/Hebrew letter probably gave rise to the Greek Beta, Latin B, and the Cyrillic equivalent.
Due to the fact that the origins of these letters is rooted in eras of thousands of years ago, there is a divergence of opinion among modern scholars about the past and present written forms and pronounciations of this and other letters. Beth is used mostly in academic circles. Bet is the way the letter is used and pronounced in Israel and by most Jews familiar with Hebrew, although some also use the beth pronounciation.
| Contents |
Phoenician pronounciation
| Phoenician | Hebrew | |
|---|---|---|
| Missing image Phoenician_beth.png Beth | ב | ב |
Main article: Phoenician languages
Main article: Phoenician alphabet
The Phoenician people and their language no longer exist. The Phoenician language is known only from inscriptions and from occasional glosses in books written in other languages, so it is not known with certainty and finality exactly how this and other letters were pronounced. It is difficult to evaluate sound-changes in Phoenician dialects over time because writers continued to use archaic "book-spellings" that did not mark vowels in any way. The earliest known inscriptions in Phoenician come from Byblos and date back to ca. 1000 BCE. Knowledge of Hebrew aided the reconstruction of Phoenician inscriptions. According to secular scholaars, modern alphabets thought to have descended from the Phoenician include Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, and Latin.
Hebrew pronounciation
Main article: Hebrew language
Main article: Hebrew alphabet
Main article: Jewish languages
ב Bet or beth is the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet in the Hebrew language that is used as a living language by the Jewish people that live in modern Israel. It is the first letter of the Torah (Hebrew Bible). It also denotes the number "two" in Hebrew numerals.
The Hebrew language was used by the Jewish people for Torah study and Jewish prayer on a daily basis throughout its long history. Today, Hebrew is the official spoken language of the people living in Israel, both by its Jews and many Arab Israelis, therefore most speakers of Hebrew assume that they are justified in expecting that their version of the way they utilize the language is the most closely tied to its origins and sources which are ultimately within the Hebrew Bible. Orthodox Judaism believes that the Torah is a God-given divine book and that the Hebrew alphabet and the Hebrew language therefore come directly from God. The name bet is related to the Hebrew word bat ("daughter") or beit ("house [of]") as symbols of the human family's foundations.
Outside of Israel, and the Jewish world, many use the pronounciation Beth with a "th". This form may be both an ancient usage or even an Anglicisation of the letter.
Two forms
There are two main forms to the pronounciation of this letter:
- בּ bet
- ב vet
When written by following the accepted "vocalizations" known as Niqqud (a system of accepted signs, or orthography, guiding the correct pronounciation of individual letters) there are in fact two forms or variations of this letter.
As labial consonants
Main article: Labial consonant
Labials are consonants articulated either with both lips (bilabial articulation) or with the lower lip and the upper teeth (labiodental articulation). Thus בּ like the [b] is a bilabial stop (plosive), and ב like [v] is a labiodental fricative.
בּ with the dagesh
When the Bet has a "dot" in its center, known as a dagesh, then it is indeed pronounced as Bet, making the same sound that the English B makes when pronounced. There are various rules in Hebrew grammar that stipulate when and why a dagesh is used.
Interestingly, the first two words of the Book of Genesis begin with a Bet:
בְּרֵאשִׁית, בָּרָא
("In the beginning/head God created")
As a prefix, the letter בּ may function as a preposition meaning "in" or "at".
When it is written in the caligraphy of a Torah scroll, even though the words are not punctuated or vocalized, the first letter בּ has the daggesh ("dot") inside of it.
ב without the dagesh
When this letter appears as ב without the dagesh ("dot") in its center then it is pronounced as Vet, making the same sound as the English letter V.