Overview

Bet (also spelled Beth or Vet) is the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet and is written as ב. In modern Hebrew its sound depends on a diacritic: with a dagesh (a dot) it represents the voiced bilabial stop /b/, and without the dagesh it represents the fricative /v/. In the system of Hebrew numerals (gematria) Bet has the value 2.

Form and pronunciation

The letter has a distinctive square‑based shape in the block (Ktav Ashuri) script used for print. It has no special final form (unlike some other Hebrew letters). Pronunciation varies historically and dialectally, but the two primary realizations in contemporary Israeli Hebrew are /b/ (with dagesh) and /v/ (without). In transliteration it is normally rendered as "b"; when representing the fricative sound it may be shown as "v" depending on context.

History and development

Bet descends from a Proto‑Semitic consonant whose reconstructed root *bayt- or *bayṭ- meant "house"; cognates appear throughout Semitic languages (for example Arabic bayt). The character evolved from an early pictogram of a house into the Phoenician letter bēth, and from there into Greek Beta and the Latin B. Its continuity illustrates the common origin of many alphabetic scripts.

Uses and examples

In Hebrew grammar the letter also appears as a prepositional prefix ב‑ (pronounced "be-" or "ba-" depending on vowelization), meaning "in, at, with" (for example בַּיִת "bayit", house, versus הִתְבַּיִת fictional examples). Bet is used in personal names (e.g., the patronymic "ben" begins with b‑) and in common words derived from the root for "house".

Mathematical and typographical uses

A stylized form of the name appears in mathematics: the Hebrew name beth (ℶ) denotes a sequence of infinite infinite cardinal numbers known as the beth numbers, used in set theory. The symbol ℶ is conventionally used in advanced set theory to index certain cardinalities related to powersets.

Notable facts and distinctions

  • Numeric value: 2 in gematria.
  • Name origin: from a Semitic word for "house".
  • Orthography: no final form; variation depends on dagesh for sound.
  • Cultural reach: ancestor of Greek Beta and Latin B.