Dear anyone,
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Hi, I'm new to Hebrew and love it for the etymology and history.
I am hoping for an explanation to the method of determining which letter to use when they are pronounced basically the same.
Thanks!
Now I steal one of the top comments ( by @nathanvalleymusic )
as a native hebrew speaker who grew up rarely writing and had to learn individual words at a later age, i came up with a few strategies for these irregularities (which are valid at least in native hebrew words)
1) alef/ayin (word-initially or medially): unfortunately, this one is guesswork. try alef though, it's slightly more common
2) alef/ayin/he (word-finally): he is waaay more common than alef. word-final alef is usually only found when it is part of the root or in aramaic loanwords. word-final ayin makes an extra /a/ sound after the final vowel, so unless the final vowel is /a/, you can tell if it's an ayin (for example, /yo'de.a/ is spelled <יודע>, not <יודה>
3) soft bet/vav: if /v/ appears word-initially, it's written with a vav. if it appears word-finally, it's probably a bet
4) hard kaf/kuf: if /k/ appears word-finally, it's written with a kuf (except some arabic loanwords and some acronyms)
5) soft kaf/khet: if /x/ appears word-initially, it's written with a khet. also, word-final khet adds an /a/ before it (like ayin). this way, you can differentiate between /o're.ax/ <אורח> and /'orex/ <אורך>
6) samekh/sin: samekh is much more common. if you have to guess, guess samekh
7) tet/tav: mostly guesswork, but affixes with /t/ are written with tav. the only case in which /t/ in an affix is written with a tet is in special cases in the hitpa'el stem in which tav becomes tet
it's hellish, but you learn to get by hope this helps!