From The Hebrew Alphabet...

The Hebrew Alphabet Letter Dalet

The fourth letter of many of the Semitic alphabets, including Hebrew, is dalet. This letter is based on a glyph that you would find if you were looking at the Middle Bronze Age alphabets. It was most probably called dalt meaning "door".

In the modern Israeli pronunciation the letter is dalet. There are many variations of the Hebrew dialect which uses dalet in different spellings. Just as in the English language, there may be subtle differences of the sound that are created as it is spoken. Dalet and Resh have almost the same appearance, and are/were commonly mistaken for one another.

Dalet is one of those six letters that are able to receive a Dagesh Kal. You will see some minor variations of this letter’s pronunciation. In modern Hebrew, dalet can be written with a chupchik or apostrophe in front of it. This means that the pronunciation of dalet is altered to /o/.

Dalet, in gematria, symbolizes the number four. The letter dalet, along with He, is used as representations of the Names given to God in Judaism. The letter that is most commonly used is He, but the letter dalet is rarely used.

When dalet is used as a prefix in Aramaic, which is the language of the Talmud, it takes on the form of a prepostition meaning "that", "from", "which’ or ‘of".

When you are speaking about the Syriac alphabet, dalet becomes dolath in the western pronunciation and in the eastern pronunciation it is Dalat. This is one of six letters which has the representation of two associated sounds. It is a very common letter in Syriac because it is often attached to word beginnings as the relative pronoun.

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