Dagesh

The dagesh () is a diacritic that is used in the Hebrew alphabet. It takes the form of a dot placed inside a consonant. A dagesh can either indicate a "hard" plosive version of the consonant (known as , literally 'light dot') or that the consonant is geminated (known as , literally 'hard dot'), although the latter is rarely used in Modern Hebrew.

The dagesh was added to Hebrew orthography at the same time as the Masoretic system of niqqud (vowel points).

Two other diacritics with different functions, the mappiq and the shuruq dot, are visually identical to the dagesh but are only used with vowel letters.

The dagesh and mappiq symbols are often omitted when writing niqqud (e.g. is written as ). In these cases, dagesh may be added to help readers resolve the ambiguity. The use or omission of such marks is usually consistent throughout any given context.

Dagesh qal

A or (, or , also '' lene'', ''weak/light dagesh'') may be placed inside the consonants , , , , and . They each have two sounds, the original hard plosive sound (which originally contained no as it was the only pronunciation), and a soft fricative version produced as such for speech efficiency because of the position in which the mouth is left immediately after a vowel has been produced.

Prior to the Babylonian captivity, the soft sounds of these letters did not exist in Hebrew, but they were later differentiated in Hebrew writing as a result of the Aramaic-influenced pronunciation of Hebrew. The Aramaic languages, including Jewish versions of Aramaic, have these same allophonic pronunciations of the letters.

The letters take on their hard sounds when they have no vowel sound before them, and take their soft sounds when a vowel immediately precedes them. In Biblical Hebrew this was the case within a word and also across word boundaries, though in Modern Hebrew there are no longer across word boundaries, since the soft and hard sounds are no longer allophones of each other, but regarded as distinct phonemes.

When vowel diacritics are used, the hard sounds are indicated by a central dot called , while the soft sounds lack the mark. In Modern Hebrew, however, the only changes the pronunciation of , , and . Traditional Ashkenazic pronunciation also varies the pronunciation of , as does Yemenite pronunciation. Some traditional Middle Eastern pronunciations carry alternate forms for .

In Ashkenazi pronunciation, without a is pronounced , while in other traditions it is assumed to have been pronounced at the time was introduced. In Modern Hebrew, it is always pronounced .

The letters () and () may also contain a . This indicates an allophonic variation of the phonemes and , a variation which no longer exists in modern Hebrew pronunciation. The variations are believed to have been: pronounced as , as , as , and as . The Hebrew spoken by the Jews of Yemen (Yemenite Hebrew) still preserves unique phonemes for these letters with and without a dagesh.

Pronunciation

Among Modern Hebrew speakers, the pronunciation of some of the above letters has become the same as others:

Dagesh hazaq

or (, , i.e. 'gemination ', or , also ' forte') may be placed in almost any letter, indicating a gemination (doubling) of that consonant in the pronunciation of pre-modern Hebrew. This gemination is not adhered to in modern Hebrew and is only used in careful pronunciation, such as the reading of scripture in a synagogue service, recitation of biblical or traditional texts or on ceremonial occasions, and only by very precise readers.

The following letters, the gutturals, almost never have a : , , , , and . A few instances of with are recorded in the Masoretic Text, as well as a few cases of with , such as in Leviticus 23:17.

The presence of a or consonant-doubling in a word may be entirely morphological, or, as is often the case, is a lengthening to compensate for a deleted consonant. A may be placed in letters for one of the following reasons:

* The letter follows the definite article, the word "the". For example, (, 'heaven(s)') in Genesis 1:8 is (, 'the heaven(s)') in Genesis 1:1. This is because the definite article was originally a stand-alone particle (), but at an early stage in ancient Hebrew it contracted into a prefix (), and the loss of the 'l' was compensated for by doubling the following letter. In this situation where the following letter is a guttural, the vowel in 'ha-' becomes long to compensate for the inability to double the next letter - otherwise, this vowel is almost always short. This also happens in words taking the prefix , since it is a prefix created by the contraction of and . Occasionally, the letter following a which is used to indicate a question may also receive a , e.g. Numbers 13:20 (, 'whether it is fat').
* The letter follows the prefix where this prefix is an abbreviation for the word , meaning 'from'. For example, the phrase "from your hand", if spelled as two words, would be (). In Genesis 4:11 however, it occurs as one word: . This prefix mostly replaces the usage of the particle () in modern Hebrew.
* The letter follows the prefix 'she-' in modern Hebrew, which is a prefixed contraction of the relative pronoun (), where the first letter is dropped and the last letter disappears and doubles the next letter. This prefix is rare in Biblical texts, and mostly replaces the use of in Modern Hebrew.
* It marks the doubling of a letter that is caused by a weak letter losing its vowel. In these situations, the weak letter disappears, and the following letter is doubled to compensate for it. For example, compare Exodus 6:7 () with Numbers 23:28, where the first letter of the root has been elided: (). Lamed only behaves as a weak letter in this particular root word.
* If the letter follows a vav-consecutive imperfect (sometimes referred to as conversive, or ), which, in Biblical Hebrew, switches a verb between perfect and imperfect. For example, compare Judges 7:4 (, 'let him go') with Deuteronomy 31:1 (, 'he went'). A possible reason for this doubling is that the () prefix could be the remains of an auxiliary verb (, the ancient form of the verb , 'to be') being contracted into a prefix, losing the initial , and the final syllable disappearing and doubling the next letter.
* In some of the verbal stems, where the , and stems themselves cause doubling in the second root letter of a verb. For example:
** Exodus 15:9 (, 'I shall divide'), -stem, first person future tense
** in the phrase (, 'praise the '), where is in the -stem, masculine plural imperative form
** Genesis 47:31 (, 'he strengthened himself'), -stem

Rafe

In Masoretic manuscripts the opposite of a would be indicated by a , a small line on top of the letter. This is no longer found in Hebrew, but may still sometimes be seen in Yiddish and Ladino.

Unicode encodings

In computer typography there are two ways to use a with Hebrew text. The following examples give the Unicode and numeric character references:

*Using combining characters:
** + : = U+05D1U+05BC or בּ
** + : = U+05DBU+05BC or כּ
** + : = U+05E4U+05BC or פּ
*Using precomposed characters:
** with : = U+FB31 or בּ
** with : = U+FB3B or כּ
** with : = U+FB44 or פּ

Some fonts, character sets, encodings, and operating systems may support neither, one, or both methods.

See also

* Shadda, analogous to the in written Arabic
* Hebrew spelling
* Yiddish spelling
* Ladino spelling
* Geresh
* Dakuten and Handakuten (Japanese equivalent)

Notes

References

Further reading

* ,
* M. Spiegel and J. Volk, 2003. "Hebrew Vowel Restoration with Neural Networks," Proceedings of the Class of 2003 Senior Conference, Computer Science Department, Swarthmore College, pp. 1–7
Open Access Copy

External links

{{Hebrew language

Niqqud