Simple, Pronounced as in English

Where there are two Hebrew letters in one box the lower one indicates the sofit form used at the ends of words.

1. The j sound is the Standard Arabic pronunciation that's used for Qur'an recitation. In parts of Egypt, Sudan, Yemen and Oman a g or gy (gyuh) pronunciation is spoken. In the Levant and parts of North Africa a hard z sound is used (as in genre). The Hebrew גּ is mostly pronounced as g, an exception being some Yemenite Jewish groups where it's pronounced as j. According to some sources ج was originally pronounced closer to g in Muhammad's time (peace be upon him). Whenever I use g in transcriptions I am referring to the hard g sound such as in get, rather than the soft g such as in gem, which is always transcribed as j.
2. The h is voiceless, without the vocal chords vibrating, as in hot, rather than being voiced, as in behind.
3. When a noun is in a grammatical form called the construct state (which is indicated by a diacritical mark called a tanwin) then ة is pronounced as t, otherwise it's pronounced as h. It's also pronounced as h if you pause for breath or stop speaking after it. Hebrew also has the concept of construct state but a word in the construct state has its final letter ה changed to a ת, whereas in Arabic the base letter remains as ه but has the two dots borrowed from the ت added to it, becoming ة.
4. The w sound is used in Arabic and in Hebrew spoken by Yemenite and Iraqi Jews, and when preceded by an a the aw sound is spoken by some Italian Jews. Other Hebrew accents use a v sound instead.
5. There are a variety of different ways of producing an r sound and any of them are accepted. The most ancient form is probably a rolled r. In Arabic it is necessary to have two distinct pronunciations for ر, one heavy and one light, see .
6. Where an Arabic word and a Hebrew word share a common origin the s and sh sounds are often swapped, for example shemesh, שֶׁמֶשׁ, and shams, شَمْس. This table shows letters aligned according to pronunciation whereas shows their historical alignment.
7. In early Biblical times שׂ was originally pronounced differently from ס (probably like the ll sound in Welsh). But by the time Ezra–Nehemiah was written there is evidence it had already come represent the same sound as ס. It's not normal practice to attempt to reproduce a distinction today. (Except in writing!)

Sounds Rarely Heard in English

Begadkefat (Hard and Soft Letters)

In Hebrew there are six letters which can have two pronunciations each. The correct pronunciation is indicated by the presence or absence of a hardening dagesh (dot). The usual practice is to distinguish at least three hard and soft pairs. The other three pairs are less commonly distinguished, some speakers pronouncing the soft versions as though they were the hard ones. However, even the ב/בּ (b/v) distinction is not fully universally distinguished (and in some accents the ב may be an intermediate sound, [β] in IPA). The dagesh is part of the pronunciation rules of the language. For example, if a word which usually begins with a letter with a hardening dagesh comes after a word that ends in a vowel then, in some circumstances, it will lose its hard sound and adopt the soft pronunciation.

On the Arabic side of things, there are ten fully independent letters in this section. The sounds will still have hard or soft qualities but understanding those features is not required to understand Arabic. There is, for example, no special relationship between ك and خ. The pairs د and ذ and ت and ث do look visually similar however. This is because both Hebrew and Arabic use adaptations of two alphabets which were originally both used to write the Aramaic language, which, like Hebrew, has the soft-hard distinction.

1. Occurs only rarely (once in the entire Bible). Unlike other letters that have final (sofit) forms which must be used consistently at the ends of words it's acceptable to use פּ even at the end of a word.
2. Some Ashkenazi Jews use an alternative pronunciation like an English s.

Heavy and Light Letters

Some sounds can be modified to create both heavy and light versions. There are seven pairs of heavy and light letters and two additional Arabic letters that are sometimes heavy and othertimes light without changing the letter's appearance.

There are four different methods which can be used to make a letter heavy. It helps to make the right sound if you visualize where it's coming from. To some extent the techniques are interchangeable. The main objective is to create some contrast between the heavy and the light letters. Nonetheless in the interests of precision the "proper" techniques are listed in . A secondary aspect to making a good heavy or light pronunciation is to make the lips spread wide (like a smile) for the light letters and rounded (like a w) for the heavy letters.

Velarization

Uses the top part of the back of the mouth. Both English and Arabic have l with and without velarization. If you say the words lips and full then you may notice two different sounds and different feelings in the mouth. However, some heavy accents outside of England only have the heavy l, and some speakers use a different technique involving the teeth to produce heavy l (i.e. not velarization in some accents). The sounds for g, k and ng also come from the velar region of the mouth.

Pharyngealization

Performed by tensing up the lower part of the back of the mouth.

Uvularization

The uvular is located part way between the velar and pharyngeal parts.

Glottalization

Performed by pinching in a muscle located inside the voice box, in the neck.

1. צ is alternatively pronounced as a t rapidly followed by and blended together with an s (both light) in some Hebrew accents, a method of articulation called an affricate consonant. The same ts sound occurs in English words ending in ts, such as cats, and in the word pizza. Some experts think the original Proto-Semitic sound was both heavy and affricate. English words frequently make use of two more affricate consonants: ch is a combination of t and sh; and j is a combination of d and a hard z. (The hard z is found in words like genre, vision, equation and seizure.)
2. ظ is a heavy version of ذ, the th sound in the. It is not supposed to be a heavy version of ز (z) in Standard Arabic (though it can be this way in Levantine Arabic) even though the most common English alphabet transcription of ظ is as z. The transcription is misleading so far as Standard Arabic is concerned.
3. In some accents these are pronounced as light sounds, exactly the same as the corresponding light letters.
4. Pronounced as g in some dialects (same as גּ), which is also a velar sound but unrelated to ע‎, ع and غ.

5. ח/ح/[ħ] is also an unvoiced version of ע/ع. See also, for alternative pronunciations and transcriptions of ח.

Silent Letters

There are cases when the letters ي ,و ,ا and ה ,י ,ו ,א combine with a mark above, below or to the side of the letter before (or the same letter) to signify a vowel sound rather than their usual glottal stop (or silent), w (or v), y and h sounds. This is called mater lectionis (Western term) or madd (Arabic).

However, sometimes when these letters are technically silent because of mater lectionis our brains may still interpret them as their usual consonantal sounds, a y sound for example. The vowels being constructed in these cases are things like ah and ey, and the letters h and y act in a similar way in English they do in Hebrew. Nonetheless, the y in prey is noticeably different from the y in yam. The word blah is another example. There are other combinations which are not used for this purpose in English however. For example, English doesn't use uw to represent oo.

ا is the only letter in the Arabic alphabet which is only ever used to either indicate a vowel or as a silent support for a hamza, but it's never a consonant letter on its own.

Doubled Letters

When an Arabic letter has a shaddah (small ω) written above it, for example سّ, or a Hebrew letter has a dagesh (dot) in its centre, for example שּׂ, then the letter may be doubled. The shaddah always indicates doubling. In Hebrew the situation is a bit more complicated because, as previously mentioned in , a dot also indicates a hardening dagesh when it's placed inside one of the begadkefat letters (תּ ,פּ , כּ ,דּ ,גּ, בּ). And as a third function a dot can also indicate something called a mappīq.

When reading:

1. When a begadkefat letter has a dagesh it's always pronounced with its hard pronunciation (b, g, d, k, p, t).
2. When a begadkefat letter with a dagesh comes after a full vowel (not a vocal sh'vā or chatāf vowel) then it's pronounced both hardened and doubled, except when it's the last letter of a word in which case it's not doubled, for example אַתְּ.
3. When a begadkefat letter with a dagesh follows straight after another consonant sound then it's pronounced hard but not doubled.
4. When a letter that's not a begadkefat letter nor א , ה or ר has a dot then it's a doubling dagesh.
5. When a ה or א has a mappīq dot (חּ , הּ) then it's pronounced as a consonant even though it's in a position within the word where ה or א would normally be interpreted as a mater lectionis (silent) letter serving to lengthen the preceding vowel.

When writing:

1. When applying a prefix to a word that begins with an begadkefat letter the dagesh will usually be dropped (e.g. בֵּיתֶךָ בְּבֵיתֶךָ) and become pronounced with softer pronunciation (maximally v, gh, dh, kh, f and th or s, although most accents don't distinguish between gh and g, nor between dh and d).
2. A begadkefat letter with a dagesh after a vowel occurs:
   1. When applying a grammatical prefix where the grammar rule specifically calls for adding a doubling dagesh, for example the הַ־ definite article prefix ("the").
   2. When it's part of the basic make-up of the word itself, for example שַׁבָּת (shabbāt).

   In both cases the dagesh will be both hardening and doubling.

3. A begadkepfat letter which comes after a consonant without a vowel usually has a hardening dagesh.
4. When a word normally begins with a begadkefat letter but the previous word ends with a vowel then the begadkefat letter may or may not end up having a dagesh, depending on whether the cantillation (rhythm) is conjunctive (continuing) or disjunctive (with separation). Cantillation may be indicated using a system of cantillation marks although these are often not written. A maqqāf (hyphen) also indicates conjunction, in which case there is no dagesh.
5. The letters ה ,ח ,ע and א never have a dagesh, and ר almost never has one.
6. A word cannot end with a doubling dagesh. This results in some words where a dagesh only appears once a suffix has been added, for example when עַם ("nation", "people") becomes עַמִּים in its plural form.