Aleph

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Aleph (also spelled alef or alif, transliterated ʾ) is the first letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician ʾālep 𐤀‎, Hebrew ʾālef א, Aramaic ʾālap 𐡀‎, Syriac ʾālap̄ ܐ, Arabic ʾalif ا, and North Arabian 𐪑‎. It also appears as South Arabian 𐩱 and Ge'ez ʾälef አ. These letters are believed to have derived from an Egyptian hieroglyph depicting the head of an ox to describe the initial sound of *ʾalp, the West Semitic word for "ox" (compare Biblical Hebrew אֶלֶף ʾelef, 'ox'). The Phoenician variant gave rise to the Greek alpha (Α), being reinterpreted to express not the glottal consonant but the accompanying vowel, and hence the Latin A and Cyrillic А and possibly the Armenian letter Ա. Phonetically, aleph originally represented the onset of a vowel at the glottis. In Semitic languages, this functions as a prosthetic weak consonant, allowing roots with only two true consonants to be conjugated in the manner of a standard three consonant Semitic root. In most Hebrew dialects as well...

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