Resh is the twentieth letter of many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic alphabet . Its value is IPA or , in Hebrew also or .

In most Semitic abjads, the letter resh (and its equivalents) is quite similar to the letter dalet (and its equivalents). In the Syriac alphabet, the letters became so similar that now they are only distinguished by a dot: resh has a dot above the letter, and the otherwise identical dalet has a dot below the letter. In the Arabic alphabet, has a longer tail than . In the Aramaic and Hebrew square alphabet, resh is a rounded single stroke while dalet is a right-angle of two strokes. The similarity led to the variant spellings of the name Nebuchadnezzar and Nebuchadrezzar.

, Latin R, and Cyrillic Р.

Origins of Resh

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Resh is usually assumed to have come from a pictogram of a head (in modern Hebrew rosh; in Arabic, ra's).

Resh in Hebrew

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In modern Israeli Hebrew Resh is pronounced as a voiced uvular fricative (IPA: /ʁ/). This sound is hard for English speakers to pronounce, and it is often pronounced by Ashkenazim as /ɹ/ or sometimes /ʀ/. Mizrahi Jews will pronounce it as /r/, or ɾ/.

Resh, along with Ayin, Aleph, He, and Heth, cannot receive a dagesh.

Resh in gematria represents the number 200.

Resh as an abbreviation can stand for Rabbi (or Rav, Rebbe, Rabban, Rabbenu, and other similar constructions).

Resh is used in an Israeli phrase: after a child will say something false, one might say "B'Shin Qoph, Resh" (With Shin, Qoph, Resh). These letters spell Sheqer, which is the Hebrew word for a lie. It would be akin to an English speaker saying "That's an L-I-E."

Phoenician alphabet | Arabic letters

ר | Resh (lizherenn) | Resch | Reish | Resh (lettre) | ר | Resj | ר | Reš