WRITING SYSTEM
Typing in Hebrew
Hebrew gives its name to the script and is the only language here that uses it, right to left, with a layout map behind it and 54 practice words to learn on. Hebrew is typed on the Hebrew QWERTY layout.
Written right to left, with no vowels in ordinary text — readers supply them from context, and the dots that mark them are used only in dictionaries, poetry and scripture. Five letters take a different form at the end of a word, each with its own key. Numbers inside Hebrew text still run left to right, which makes mixed text one of the more entertaining problems in typography.
What typing it involves
- Direction
- right to left
- Key inventory
- 26 distinct characters across 54 practice words
- Composition
- one character per keystroke, nothing stacks
- Input
- typed directly on the keys
- Hebrew keyboard layout
- Hebrew QWERTY
- Keyboard guide
- labels every key, for every language here
- The chart reaches
- 26 of the 26 characters its practice words use
The characters you will type most
Counted across every practice word in the language below, most frequent first. These are the keys worth finding without looking.
- י23
- א15
- ש14
- ו12
- ל11
- ה10
- ם10
- ב9
- ד9
- ע8
The longest practice word in this script is עבודה in Hebrew.
The one language written in Hebrew
Other writing systems
- Kannada Telugu's sibling, slightly more angular and sharing an ancestor with it.
- Khmer Holder of the record for the largest alphabet — around 74 characters between the consonants, dependent and independent vowels and diacritics.
- Lao Closely related to Thai and simpler, because Lao underwent a spelling reform that Thai did not: words are written broadly as they sound, where Thai keeps etymological spellings from Sanskrit and Pali.
There is a written guide for this script: Typing Hebrew: five final letters and no vowels. Hebrew leaves its vowels out, changes five letters at the end of a word, and runs right to left except for its numbers. What each means at the keyboard.
Every script this site teaches, with the languages written in each, is on the languages hub. If your computer does not produce these characters yet, that is a setting rather than a missing keyboard — adding a keyboard layout covers it for Windows, macOS, Linux and ChromeOS. The rest of the written guides cover what is the same whichever script you are in: posture, the home row, and why speed follows accuracy rather than the other way round.