Dalet

Dalet (dāleth, also spelled Daleth or Daled) is the fourth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician dālt 𐤃, Hebrew dālet ד‎, Aramaic dālaṯ 𐡃, Syriac dālaṯ ܕ, and Arabic dāl د‎ (in abjadi order; 8th in modern order). Its sound value is the voiced alveolar plosive ([d]). It is also related to the Ancient North Arabian 𐪕‎‎, South Arabian 𐩵, and Ge'ez ደ.

The letter is based on a glyph of the Proto-Sinaitic script, probably called dalt 'door' (door in Modern Hebrew is delet), ultimately based on a hieroglyph depicting a door:

Arabic dāl

The letter is named dāl (دَالْ), and is written in several ways depending on its position in the word:

The letter represents a /d/ sound.

Phoenician

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

Aramaic

Hebrew dalet

Hebrew spelling: דָּלֶת

The letter is dalet in the modern Israeli Hebrew pronunciation (see Tav (letter)). Dales is still used by many Ashkenazi Jews and daleth by some Jews of Middle-Eastern background, especially in the Jewish diaspora.[citation needed] In some academic circles, it is called daleth, following the Tiberian Hebrew pronunciation. It is also called daled. The ד‎ like the English D represents a voiced alveolar stop. Just as in English, there may be subtle varieties of the sounds that are created when it is spoken.

Variations

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

• ד‎ dhaleth /d/ (/ð/ among Teimanim, Mizrachim and some Sephardim; /z/ among some Ashkenazim.[citation needed]) or
• דּ‎ dalet /d/.

In addition, in modern Hebrew, the combination ד׳‎ (dalet followed by a geresh) is used when transcribing foreign names to denote /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. A reason for this is that He is used as an abbreviation for HaShem "The Name" and the dalet is used as a non-sacred way of referring to God.[citation needed]

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).[citation needed]

In an undisclosed sample of Modern Hebrew writings the frequency of the usage of dalet was discovered to be is 2.59%.

Syriac daled/dolath

In the Syriac alphabet, the fourth letter is ܕ — dolath in western pronunciation, dalath and daled in eastern pronunciation (ܕܵܠܵܬ). It is one of six letters that represents two associated sounds (the others are bet, gimel, kaph, pe and taw). When daled/dolath has a hard pronunciation (qûššāyâ) it is a [d]. When it has a soft pronunciation (rûkkāḵâ) it is traditionally pronounced as a [ð]. The letter is very common in Syriac as it is often attached to the beginning of words as the relative pronoun.

Daled/dolath is always written with a point below it to distinguish it from the letter resh (ܪ), which is identical apart from having a point above. As a numeral, dalad/dolath stands for the number four. With various systems of dots and dashes, it can also stand for 4,000 and 40,000.

Other uses

Mathematics

In set theory, the dalet symbol U+2138ℸ DALET SYMBOL is sometimes used to reference the fourth transfinite cardinal number.

Character encodings

See also

• History of the alphabet § Semitic alphabet
• Proto-Sinaitic script

External links