Aleph

Aleph is a symbol used in mathematics and linguistics to represent the smallest infinite ordinal number. It was introduced by the German mathematician Georg Cantor in the late 19th century. The symbol, a Hebrew letter, is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet and is used to denote the smallest transfinite cardinal number, which is the cardinality of the set of natural numbers. In set theory, aleph-null (ℵ0) represents the cardinality of the set of natural numbers, while aleph-one (ℵ1) represents the cardinality of the set of real numbers. The concept of aleph is fundamental in the study of infinite sets and has significant implications in various branches of mathematics, including topology and analysis. In linguistics, the term "aleph" is sometimes used to refer to the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, which is also represented by the symbol aleph.