Text utility
Hebrew Transliteration
Type how it sounds (shalom, toda, ahava) and pick the Hebrew word from the candidates that appear. Useful when you can speak Hebrew but can't type the script on the keyboard in front of you. Heritage speakers, learners, and anyone on a shared or borrowed computer.
Type Latin (e.g. shalom) → press Space or Enter to pick a candidate. Use ←/→ to switch between candidates. Esc clears the current word.
How phonetic Hebrew typing works
This tool sends what you type to a transliteration service and shows you the most likely Hebrew matches. Shalom becomes שלום. Toda becomes תודה. You do not need to memorize where each Hebrew letter sits on a physical keyboard. You also do not need to install a Hebrew keyboard layout on the computer in front of you. Type what the word sounds like in English letters and the tool offers you the Hebrew form.
Candidates appear in order of probability. The first one is usually right. The alternatives cover homophones, words that sound the same in Latin but are spelled differently in Hebrew. For example שלום means peace or hello, while שלם means whole or complete. Use the arrow keys to flip through the choices, or click the one you want. The selected word goes into the text box and the next word is up to you.
The Hebrew alphabet
A quick-reference chart for the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet: name, approximate sound, and the final form five of them take at the end of a word.
| Letter | Name | Sound | Final form |
|---|---|---|---|
| א | Aleph | Silent (glottal stop) | None |
| ב | Bet | B (v when undotted: vet) | None |
| ג | Gimel | G as in go | None |
| ד | Dalet | D | None |
| ה | He | H | None |
| ו | Vav | V (also o or u as a vowel) | None |
| ז | Zayin | Z | None |
| ח | Het | Guttural kh, like Bach | None |
| ט | Tet | T | None |
| י | Yod | Y (also ee as a vowel) | None |
| כ | Kaf | K (kh when undotted: khaf) | ך |
| ל | Lamed | L | None |
| מ | Mem | M | ם |
| נ | Nun | N | ן |
| ס | Samekh | S | None |
| ע | Ayin | Silent, guttural | None |
| פ | Pe | P (f when undotted: fe) | ף |
| צ | Tsadi | Ts as in cats | ץ |
| ק | Qof | K | None |
| ר | Resh | R | None |
| ש | Shin/Sin | Sh (sin: s) | None |
| ת | Tav | T | None |
Who this is for
People who can speak Hebrew but cannot fluently type it on the keyboard in front of them. The real cluster of users:
- Heritage speakers in the diaspora who grew up hearing Hebrew at home and never learned the keyboard layout because they grew up typing English.
- Beginning Hebrew learners who know the alphabet conceptually but cannot yet hunt-and-peck the physical keys at conversational speed.
- Anyone on a borrowed, shared, or public computer that does not have a Hebrew keyboard installed.
- Travelers and students writing email, messages, or short notes home from a non-Hebrew computer.
What the tool can’t do
This is a typing aid, not a translator. If you do not know the Hebrew word for what you want to say, this tool will not help. For that you want a translator like Google Translate or an LLM. The tool also cannot fix grammar or conjugation. If you type kotev when you meant kotevet, you will get כותב (the masculine form), not the feminine כותבת.
For longer phrases or full sentences, you will usually want to switch between this tool and the regular Hebrew keyboard page, which gives you a full on-screen keyboard for special characters, punctuation, and niqqud (vowel marks) that the transliteration tool does not surface.
Privacy and what gets sent where
What you type is sent to an external transliteration service so the service can return the candidate matches. That service can see the characters you type while the tool is open. The Hebrew text does not leave the page after you copy it. There is no server-side storage on gate2home.com. If you want a fully offline option for sensitive text, the OS-level Hebrew keyboard (Settings, Keyboard, Add Hebrew on macOS, Windows, or Linux) is the way.
If the suggestions do not appear
If you type but nothing shows up under the input box, check two things. First, your browser network: the tool needs an outbound connection to fetch candidates. Second, ad-blockers or strict content blockers, which sometimes intercept the request. When the transliteration service is unavailable, the suggestion area stays empty. The regular Hebrew keyboard page works without it. Use the on-screen keyboard there to type Hebrew directly.