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'' is the reconstructed name of the first letter of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, continued in descended Semitic alphabets as Phoenician '' , Syriac '' , Hebrew ''Aleph'' , and Arabic '''' .
Aleph originally represented the glottal stop (IPA ), usually transliterated as , a symbol based on the Greek ''spiritus lenis'' , for example in the transliteration of the letter name itself, ''.
The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek Alpha (Α), being re-interpreted to express not the glottal consonant but the accompanying vowel, and hence the Latin A and Cyrillic А.

Contents

Origin

Hebrew Aleph

In Judaism

Hebrew Sayings with Aleph

Mathematics

Arabic Alif

Syriac Olaf/Alap

In Egyptology

References

Origin

Aleph is thought to be derived from the West Semitic word for "ox", and the shape of the letter derives from a Proto-Sinaitic glyph based on a hieroglyph depicting an ox's head, F1
In modern Hebrew, "meulaf", derived from the Hebrew root (alef-lamed-pe) is the passive participle of the verb "le'alef", and means trained (when referring to pets) or tamed (when referring to wild animals). In modern Arabic, "aleef" literally means "domesticated".

Hebrew Aleph

In Modern Israeli Hebrew, the letter represents either a glottal stop, or has no pronunciation besides that of the vowel attached to it. The pronunciation varies from group to group.
In gematria, aleph represents the number 1, and when used at the beginning of Hebrew years, it means 1000 (i.e. א'תשנ"ד in numbers would be the date 1754).
Aleph, along with Ayin, Resh, He, and Heth, cannot receive a dagesh. (However, there are few very rare examples where the Masoretes added a dagesh to an Aleph or Resh.)
Aleph is sometimes used as a mater lectionis to denote a vowel, usually . Such use is more common in words of Aramaic and Arabic origin, in foreign names and some other borrowed words.

In Judaism

Aleph is the subject of a midrash which praises its humility in not demanding to start the Bible. (In Hebrew the Bible is begun with the second letter of the alphabet, Bet.) In this folktale, Aleph is rewarded by being allowed to start the Ten Commandments. (In Hebrew, the first word is 'Anokhi, which starts with an aleph.)
In the Sefer Yetzirah, The letter Aleph is King over Breath, Formed Air in the universe, Temperate in the Year, and the Chest in the soul.
Aleph is also the first letter of the Hebrew word ''emet'', which means ''truth''. In Jewish mythology it was the letter aleph that was carved into the head of the golem which ultimately gave it life.
Aleph also begins the three words that make up God's mystical name in Exodus, I Am That I Am, (in Hebrew, 'Ehye 'Asher 'Ehye), and aleph is an important part of mystical amulets and formulas.

Hebrew Sayings with Aleph

'From Aleph to Taw' describes something from beginning to end; the Hebrew equivalent of the English ''From A to Z''.
'One who doesn't know how to make an Aleph' is someone who is illiterate.
'No...with a big Aleph!' (''lo b'aleph rabati'') means 'Absolutely not!'.

Mathematics

In set theory, The Hebrew aleph glyph is used as the symbol to denote the aleph numbers, which represent the cardinality of infinite sets.

Arabic Alif

Main articles: Alif

Historically, the Arabic letter was used to render either a long , or a glottal stop . This led to orthographical confusion, and to introduction of the additional letter hamza ﺀ.
The is, as it were, a double alif, expressing both a glottal stop and a long vowel: (final ﺂ)
The is actually a dotless , ﻯ (final ﻰ) (ISO 233 ) pronounced .

Syriac Olaf/Alap

In the Syriac alphabet, the first letter is ܐ — — Olaf (in western pronunciation) or Alap (in eastern pronunciation). It is used in word-initial position to mark a word beginning with a vowel — although some words beginning with ''i'' or ''u'' do not need its help, and sometimes an initial Olaf/Alap is elided. For example, when the Syriac first-person singular pronoun ܐܢܐ is in enclitic positions, it is pronounced ''no/na'' (again west/east) rather than the full form ''eno/ena''. The letter occurs very regularly at the end of words, where it represents the long final vowels ''o/a'' or ''e''. In the middle of the word, the letter represents either a glottal stop between vowels (but West Syriac pronunciation often makes this a palatal approximant), a long ''i/e'' (less commonly ''o/a'') or is silent.
As a numeral it Olaf/Alap stands for the number one. With a dot below, it is the number 1,000, with a line below it is 10,000 and with two dots below it is 10,000,000.

In Egyptology

The Egyptian A hieroglyph (commonly transliterated as ''3'' and by convention pronounced as ''|a|'') is also referred to as ''alef'', on grounds that it has traditionally been taken to represent a glottal stop, although some recent suggestions^[1] tend towards an sound instead.

References

1. Schneider, Thomas. 2003. "Etymologische Methode, die Historizität der Phoneme und das ägyptologische Transkriptionsalphabet." Lingua aegyptia: Journal of Egyptian Language Studies 11:187–199.