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The Phoenician alphabet continued to be used by the Samaritans and developed into the Samaritan alphabet, that is an immediate continuation of the Phoenician script without intermediate non-Israelite evolutionary stages. The Samaritans have continued to use the script for writing both Hebrew and Aramaic texts until the present day.
The Phoenician alphabet spread to Greece during this period, where it became the source of all modern European scripts. Phoenician belongs to the Canaanite languages and as such is quite similar to Biblical Hebrew and other languages of the group, at least in its early stages, and is therefore mutually intelligible with them.
Historically, it represented either a pharyngealized /sˤ/ or an affricate such as the modern Hebrew pronunciation or the Ge’ez ; [3] which became in Ashkenazi pronunciation. A geresh can also be placed after tsade ( צ׳ ; ץ׳ ), giving it the sound [ t͡ʃ ] (or, in a hypercorrected pronunciation, a pharyngealized [ ʃˤ ] ), e.g. צִ ...
Samekh or samech is the fifteenth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician sāmek 𐤎, Hebrew sāmeḵ ס , Aramaic samek 𐡎, and Syriac semkaṯ ܣ. Samekh represents a voiceless alveolar fricative /s/. In the Hebrew language, the samekh has the same pronunciation as the left-dotted shin. The numerical value of samekh is 60.
A mace was a ceremonial stick or staff, similar to a scepter, perhaps derived from weapons or hunting tools. In Modern Hebrew, the word וָו vav is used to mean both "hook" and the letter's name (the name is also written וי״ו), while in Syriac and Arabic, waw to mean "hook" has fallen out of use.
When a word in modern Hebrew borrowed from another language ends with /p/, the non-final form is used (e.g. ּפִילִיפ /ˈfilip/ "Philip"), while borrowings ending in /f/ still use the Pe Sofit (e.g. כֵּיף /kef/ "fun", from Arabic). This is because native Hebrew words, which always use the final form at the end, cannot end in /p/.
In Modern Israeli Hebrew (and Ashkenazi Hebrew, although not under strict pronunciation), the letter Ḥet (Hebrew: חֵית) usually has the sound value of a voiceless uvular fricative (/χ/), as the historical phonemes of the letters Ḥet ח (/ħ/) and Khaf כ (/x/) merged, both becoming the voiceless uvular fricative (/χ/).
However, it does not change the pronunciation or transliteration in any way. The name for the letter is final kaf (kaf sofit). Four additional Hebrew letters take final forms: mem, nun, pei and tsadi. Kaf/khaf is the only Hebrew letter that can take a vowel in its word-final form, which is pronounced after the consonant, that vowel being the ...