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The square Hebrew alphabet was later adapted and used for writing languages of the Jewish diaspora – such as Karaim, the Judeo-Arabic languages, Judaeo-Spanish, and Yiddish. After the fall of the Persian Empire in 330 BCE, Jews used both scripts before settling on the square Assyrian form. During the 3rd century BCE, Jews began to use a stylized, 'square' form of the Aramaic alphabet that was used by the Persian Empire (and which in turn had been adopted from the Assyrians), while the Samaritans continued to use a form of the paleo-Hebrew script called the Samaritan alphabet. The Samaritans, who remained in the Land of Israel, continued to use the paleo-Hebrew alphabet. Following the exile of the Kingdom of Judah in the 6th century BCE (the Babylonian captivity), Jews began using a form of the Imperial Aramaic alphabet, another offshoot of the same family of scripts, which flourished during the Achaemenid Empire. The paleo-Hebrew alphabet was used in the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah. An example is the Siloam inscription ( c. Ī Hebrew variant of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, called the paleo-Hebrew alphabet by scholars, began to emerge around 800 BCE. An example of related early Semitic inscriptions from the area include the tenth-century Gezer calendar over which scholars are divided as to whether its language is Hebrew or Phoenician and whether the script is Proto-Canaanite or paleo-Hebrew. The Canaanite dialects were largely indistinguishable before around 1000 BCE. Main article: History of the Hebrew alphabet History Paleo-Hebrew alphabet containing 22 letters, period, geresh, and gershayim The Aleppo Codex, a tenth century Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible. The Arabic and Hebrew alphabets have similarities because they are both derived from the Aramaic alphabet, which in turn derives either from paleo-Hebrew or the Phoenician alphabet, both being slight regional variations of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet used in ancient times to write the various Canaanite languages (including Hebrew, Moabite, Phoenician, Punic, et cetera). The Yiddish alphabet, a modified version of the Hebrew alphabet used to write Yiddish, is a true alphabet, with all vowels rendered in the spelling, except in the case of inherited Hebrew words, which typically retain their Hebrew consonant-only spellings.

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There is a trend in Modern Hebrew towards the use of matres lectionis to indicate vowels that have traditionally gone unwritten, a practice known as ' full spelling'. In both biblical and rabbinic Hebrew, the letters י ו ה א can also function as matres lectionis, which is when certain consonants are used to indicate vowels. As with other abjads, such as the Arabic alphabet, during its centuries-long use scribes devised means of indicating vowel sounds by separate vowel points, known in Hebrew as niqqud. Originally, the alphabet was an abjad consisting only of consonants, but is now considered an ' impure abjad'. Five letters have different forms when used at the end of a word. In the remainder of this article, the term 'Hebrew alphabet' refers to the square script unless otherwise indicated. Various 'styles' (in current terms, ' fonts') of representation of the Jewish script letters described in this article also exist, including a variety of cursive Hebrew styles.

'Assyrian script'), since its origins were alleged to be from Assyria. The present 'Jewish script' or 'square script', on the contrary, is a stylized form of the Aramaic alphabet and was technically known by Jewish sages as Ashurit (lit. The original, old Hebrew script, known as the paleo-Hebrew alphabet, has been largely preserved in a variant form as the Samaritan alphabet. Historically, two separate abjad scripts have been used to write Hebrew. It is an offshoot of the Imperial Aramaic alphabet, which flourished during the Achaemenid Empire and which itself derives from the Phoenician alphabet. It is also used informally in Israel to write Levantine Arabic, especially among Druze. In modern Hebrew, vowels are increasingly introduced. The Hebrew alphabet ( Hebrew: אָלֶף־בֵּית עִבְרִי, Alefbet ivri), known variously by scholars as the Ktav Ashuri, Jewish script, square script and block script, is traditionally an abjad script used in the writing of the Hebrew language and other Jewish languages, most notably Yiddish, Ladino, Judeo-Arabic, and Judeo-Persian. 18 CE (derived from Eastern Arabic numerals and Brahmi numerals) BCEĪdlam (slight influence from Arabic) 1989 CE

Caucasian Albanian (origin uncertain) c.

Cherokee (syllabary letter forms only) c.