Hebrew Letter Dalet

It represents the d sound in Hebrew words. Its name is linked to Hebrew delet, “door,” but that is not a translation of the letter. A teaching from the Talmudic period of Jewish rabbinic tradition interprets dalet as a poor person receiving charity—a symbolic reading, not ordinary spelling.

Its earliest proposed ancestor is a disputed sign in Proto-Sinaitic, early alphabetic writing from Sinai during Egypt’s Middle Kingdom. Scholars debate whether its picture represented a door or a fish; the proposed role was to write the d sound.

The tradition passed through Phoenician and Paleo-Hebrew, an ancient Hebrew script, during the Iron Age. Modern square Hebrew developed from Aramaic writing. In the Second Temple period of Jewish history, Paleo-Hebrew on coins could proclaim sovereignty; in some scrolls, script choice could distinguish ritual from everyday use.

Why does dalet have a dot?

The dot marks a traditional pronunciation distinction. In Hebrew texts with pronunciation marks, the dot called dagesh makes דּ the hard d form. In the Masoretic tradition of biblical reading, undotted ד could sound like English “th” in “this.” Standard Modern Israeli Hebrew normally uses d for both.