Pronunciation & Transliteration

From Letters to Living Speech

In the previous lesson, you met the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. You learned their names and shapes. But letters on a page are only half the story. The other half is sound.

Hebrew is not a dead language. It is spoken today by millions of people, and it was spoken for centuries before that by prophets, priests, poets, and families sitting around ordinary tables. When you read a passage of scripture and hear the Hebrew behind it, something shifts. The words stop being abstract and become physical — breath and tongue and voice, the same raw materials the psalmist used when he cried out to God.

Pronunciation matters because scripture was meant to be heard. The rhythms of Hebrew poetry depend on sound. The wordplay that threads through the prophets depends on sound. Even the most famous Hebrew words you already know — amen, hallelujah, shalom — carry their meaning partly in the way they feel in your mouth. This lesson will help you start hearing Hebrew, not just seeing it.

We will also talk about transliteration: the practice of writing Hebrew sounds using English letters. Since most of your study resources will use transliteration rather than the Hebrew script itself, understanding how it works (and why it sometimes seems inconsistent) will save you real confusion down the road.

How Hebrew Sounds Differ from English

Hebrew and English share a number of sounds. The letters bet, dalet, vav, zayin, lamed, mem, nun, samekh, and shin all produce sounds that English speakers recognize immediately. You already know how to make these sounds. That is good news.

The challenging news is that Hebrew also contains several sounds that have no equivalent in English. These are not exotic or impossible — millions of children learn them as naturally as you learned the “th” in “the” — but they do require a little patience.

Chet (ח) produces a sound from the back of the throat, similar to the “ch” in the German word Bach or the Scottish loch. It is not the “ch” in “church.” English speakers sometimes approximate it as a hard “h,” and that will get you understood, but the true sound is rougher and lower in the throat. ▶ Listen

Ayin (ע) is perhaps the most foreign sound for English speakers. In ancient Hebrew, it was a voiced sound produced deep in the throat — a constriction of the pharynx. Modern Israeli Hebrew has largely dropped this sound, treating ayin as silent. For your purposes, knowing it exists is more important than producing it perfectly. When you see it in transliteration, it is usually marked with a simple apostrophe or left out entirely. ▶ Listen

Resh (ר) is technically an “r” sound, but it is not the English “r.” Biblical Hebrew resh was likely a tapped or trilled “r,” similar to the Spanish single-tap “r” in pero. Modern Israeli Hebrew uses a uvular “r” closer to the French “r.” Either way, it is not the English “r” that curls the tongue back. ▶ Listen (trill) ▶ Listen (uvular)

Tsade (צ) combines a “t” and an “s” into a single sound: “ts,” like the end of the English word “cats.” English speakers can make this sound easily at the end of a word but sometimes struggle with it at the beginning. The trick is simply practice. Say “cats” a few times, then drop the “ca.” What remains is the sound of tsade. ▶ Listen

Beyond these, a few letters have alternate pronunciations depending on context. Bet can sound like “b” or “v.” Kaf can sound like “k” or the throaty “ch” of chet. Pe can sound like “p” or “f.” These variations follow predictable rules that you will learn over time, but for now, simply be aware that certain letters pull double duty.

Common Transliteration Systems

Transliteration is the practice of representing Hebrew letters and sounds using the Latin alphabet — the alphabet you are reading right now. Because Hebrew and English do not share the same set of sounds, transliteration always involves compromises, and different scholars and publishers have made different choices about how to handle those compromises.

You will encounter two broad approaches.

Academic transliteration aims for precision. Each Hebrew letter gets a unique symbol, often using diacritical marks — dots, lines, and other small additions above or below the letters. Scholars use this system because it allows a reader to reconstruct the original Hebrew spelling from the transliteration alone. It is exact, but it can look intimidating if you are not used to it.

Simplified (popular) transliteration aims for readability. It uses plain English letters without diacritical marks and sometimes merges distinct Hebrew sounds into a single English representation. This is the system you will see in most Church and Come Follow Me resources, popular Bible commentaries, and devotional books.

Here is the same word rendered in both systems:

• Hebrew: שָׁלוֹם
• Academic: šālôm
• Simplified: shalom

And another:

• Hebrew: מָשִׁיחַ
• Academic: māšîaḥ
• Simplified: mashiach

In this series, we will use simplified transliteration for everyday discussion and occasionally note the academic form when precision is helpful. You do not need to learn the academic system, but knowing it exists will help you when you encounter it in commentaries or footnotes.

A Quick Guide to Common Transliterations

The following table shows each Hebrew consonant alongside its most common English transliterations. Where the simplified and academic forms differ, both are shown.

A few things to notice. First, aleph and ayin are both often represented by an apostrophe or simply ignored in simplified transliteration, even though they are different letters with different historical sounds. Second, chet (ח) and khaf (כ) both get written as “ch” or “kh” in simplified form, though academic transliteration distinguishes them. Third, tet (ט) and tav (ת) are both written as “t” in simplified form. These overlaps are a natural consequence of squeezing one alphabet into another. They rarely cause real confusion in practice.

Practice with Familiar Words

You already know more Hebrew than you think. Many Hebrew words have passed into English through the Bible and centuries of religious tradition. Let us look at a few and connect the dots.

Amen — Hebrew: אָמֵן — Transliteration: amen — Meaning: “So be it,” “truly,” or “it is firm.” From the root aleph-mem-nun, which carries the idea of faithfulness and solidity. When you say “amen,” you are speaking Hebrew.

Hallelujah — Hebrew: הַלְלוּיָהּ — Transliteration: halleluyah — Meaning: “Praise Yah” (Yah being a shortened form of the divine name). This is a compound word: hallelu (praise, plural imperative) plus Yah. The Psalms are full of it.

Shalom — Hebrew: שָׁלוֹם — Transliteration: shalom — Meaning: “Peace,” but far richer than the English word suggests. Shalom implies wholeness, completeness, well-being, and harmony. It comes from the root shin-lamed-mem.

Sabbath — Hebrew: שַׁבָּת — Transliteration: shabbat — Meaning: “Cessation” or “rest.” From the root shin-bet-tav, meaning to cease or stop. The English word “Sabbath” is a direct borrowing, softened slightly in pronunciation over the centuries.

Messiah — Hebrew: מָשִׁיחַ — Transliteration: mashiach — Meaning: “Anointed one.” From the root mem-shin-chet, meaning to smear or anoint with oil. The Greek equivalent is Christos, from which we get “Christ.”

Torah — Hebrew: תּוֹרָה — Transliteration: torah — Meaning: “Instruction” or “teaching.” Often translated as “law,” but the Hebrew word is warmer than that — it is guidance from a loving source. From the root yod-resh-he, meaning to throw or direct.

Notice how each of these words opens a small window into the theology of the Hebrew Bible. That is the gift of even a little Hebrew: the familiar becomes richer.

Why Transliteration Can Be Confusing

If you have ever wondered why the Jewish holiday of lights is spelled “Hanukkah” in one place, “Chanukah” in another, and “Hannukah” in a third, you have already experienced the central frustration of transliteration. The Hebrew word is חֲנֻכָּה. It does not change. But English writers have to decide: do you represent the opening chet as “H,” “Ch,” or “Kh”? Do you double the nun? Do you end with “ah” or “a”?

There is no single correct answer. Different publishers follow different conventions, and many writers simply go with whatever looks most natural to them. The result is that the same Hebrew word can appear in half a dozen English spellings across your study materials.

This is normal. It is not a sign that anyone is wrong. It is simply what happens when two very different writing systems meet. Once you understand the reason behind the variation, it stops being confusing and starts being almost predictable. You will learn to recognize the same word beneath its various English disguises.

A few other examples you may have noticed:

• The patriarch’s name: Jacob / Ya’akov / Yaakov / Yaaqov
• The prophet: Isaiah / Yeshayahu / Yesha’yahu
• The holy city: Jerusalem / Yerushalayim / Yerushalaim

In every case, the Hebrew is stable. The English is just doing its best.

As you continue through these lessons, we will settle into a consistent simplified transliteration so that you always know what you are looking at. But when you venture into other books and resources — and we hope you will — you now have the context to make sense of whatever system they use.

You are building a foundation. The letters from Lesson 1, the sounds from this lesson, and the transliteration awareness you now carry will serve you in every lesson that follows. Next, we will look at an even more precise tool for representing sound: the International Phonetic Alphabet.