Hebrew Teeth

OK so.... The twenty two letters of the Hebrew alphabet make 32 sounds that correspond to the thirty two teeth in your mouth. 22 letters, plus 7 doubles or letters that make a different sound with a dot, plus 2 letters that soften or change before a front vowel, equals 31, plus 5in/sin, equals 32.

To pin point what exact sound each letter makes we use IPA symbols which are in pink. Two letters are best described using the corresponding Arabic letters which are in green. The letters that change before a front vowel (e or i) are in orange. Lastly the sounds that really aren't in English are in blue. 4alef is a glottal stop and is everywhere in English, we just don't have a letter for it and it for what ever reason is a challenge. So it has a different shade of blue.

That's it. That's everything. No sugar coating(bad for your teeth), no dumbing down. Why is it important to learn all the sounds? Because it makes the alphabet and root system work efficiently, it reduces homophones, ambiguity and the memory load. The blue letters are the ones most people will have a challenge with but if your lucky you might already know them. Anyways, Baby Hebrew is fine too but the payoff of learning these is well worth it. The numbers you see in transliteration are called the Mnemonic Hebrew Numbers. Mnemonic Hebrew does not take the route of Baby Hebrew in which the phonetic inventory is reduced but rather encourage and represents all sounds. All Jewish dialects are represented in Mnemonic Hebrew.

To remove sounds from Hebrew is like pulling a good tooth. To learn the sounds of Hebrew is like brushing your teeth.