Overview

Nun is the fourteenth character of the modern Hebrew alphabet, written נ in its regular form and ן as its final form when it appears at the end of a word. It corresponds to the sound /n/ as in English "n" and is used across Biblical, Medieval and Modern Hebrew as a standard nasal consonant.

Origin and development

The letter derives from an earlier Proto‑Semitic sign that likely represented a fish or a similar concept; this root passed into Phoenician and then into the alphabets of the Mediterranean, giving rise to the Greek letter Nu (Ν) and the Latin N. The name "nun" itself is preserved across Semitic languages and reflects that ancient lineage.

Forms and typography

Hebrew has five letters with special final (sofit) shapes used only at the end of words; nun is one of them. The non‑final nun (נ) appears in the middle or beginning of words, while the final nun (ן) is used only at a word's end. In Unicode these are encoded at U+05E0 (נ) and U+05DF (ן).

Pronunciation, grammar and numeric value

Phonetically nun denotes the alveolar nasal /n/. In grammar it behaves like an ordinary consonant: it participates in prefixes, roots and inflections. In Hebrew gematria, the letter nun has the numeric value 50; this value is consistent for both the regular and final forms.

Usage and examples

  • Common words: נֵר (ner, "candle"), נַחַל (nahal, "stream"), נֵס (nes, "miracle").
  • Final form example: בֵּן (ben, "son") ends with the final nun ן.
  • Nun appears in modern transliteration and in other Jewish languages such as Yiddish, retaining the /n/ sound.

Notable facts and distinctions

Nun's clear descent to Greek and Latin letters illustrates the continuity from Semitic scripts to western alphabets. In written Hebrew the existence of a distinct final form is a typographic characteristic shared with only a handful of other letters (kaf, mem, pe, tzadi), and the letter's numeric value and simple phonetic role make it widely used in numbering, abbreviation and linguistic patterns.

For more on the sequence and history of Hebrew letters see the Hebrew alphabet.