What language is Shalom?

Question

Ive heard that Shalom is Hebrew but how come it is not written in Hebrew characters, can you write hebrew using english letters

Answer 1

It is Hebrew.



In Hebrew it is written like this שלום



Writing it in another language is called transliteration. Many words we use today are actually from another language and were originally written in another alphabet. Shalom is one of those words.



Vodka, Czar, Gulag, Kremlin, Mammoth, Intelligensia are used in English but were originally written in the Russian alphabet.



Dojo, Judo, Shogun, Zen, Futon were all written in the Japanese alphabet first.



Tush, Bagel, Klutz, Goy, Kosher, Lox, Putz, Glitch were all written in Yiddish first.



Jar, Lime, Magazine, Soda, Candy, Coffee, Cotton, Sofa...are all words we think are English and actually they were first written in Arabic and come to us from Arabic countries. We simply transliterated them.

Answer 2

Hebrew.

Answer 3

Shalom is most certainly Hebrew. It's transliterated from the Hebrew language, much like other loanwords from other languages with non-Latin scripts (e.g., jungle and sofa).

Answer 4

Each letter is a symbol of a sound in all modern languages. This is called a phonetic alphabet: versus using pictures like hieroglyphs from ancient egypt. Therfore, you can use any hebrew words, or any other, and spell them with english. In fact all written alphabets derive from a common ancestor.

Answer 5

שָׁלוֹם <-- Hebrew with niqqud

שלום <-- Hebrew without niqqud



"shalom" is just a romanization (pronunciation) of Hebrew into English letters.

Answer 6

Hebrew. It means both hello and goodbye