yodh

Yodh, also spelled yod or yodh, is the tenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet. It represents a consonant sound commonly transliterated as "y" and is typically pronounced as a palatal approximant in Hebrew, similar to the English letter Y. In Hebrew numerals, Yodh has a value of 10, and the letter frequently functions as a mater lectionis, helping to indicate vowels in spelling.

The letter's name and its phonetic use are consistent across modern and biblical Hebrew, though its pronunciation can vary slightly with dialect. In written Hebrew, the letter does not have a special final form; the standard form is the single character י. Yodh is also present in other Semitic scripts that descend from the Phoenician alphabet and plays a role in many proper names and common words throughout the Hebrew language.

Origin and form: Yodh derives from the Phoenician letter yodh, which itself traces back to a Proto-Semitic symbol meaning “hand.” In the modern Hebrew script, it appears as a small, vertical stroke and is one of the few consonants whose shape remains relatively simple across handwriting and print. Its usage spans everyday language, liturgical text, and scholarly works.

In addition to its linguistic role, Yodh carries symbolic and numerical significance in Jewish tradition. It appears in various contexts within gematria and Kabbalah, often noted for its association with the divine name and with the number 10. In digital text, Yodh is encoded in Unicode at U+05D9 and can be represented in HTML as י.