Dagesh

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. Although there is debate, some scholars suggest that 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. However, the rules of the dagesh ḥazak still influence pronunciation in modern Hebrew, though not by gemination: in all cases where Biblical Hebrew geminates a letter, modern Hebrew retains a dagesh inside the letter, which influences pronunciation in the following way: in ב‎ bet, כ‎ kaf, and פ‎ pe, it turns a fricative sound (vet, khaf, and fe) into a plosive sound (bet, kaf, and pe); in all other letters, it is not pronounced. 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'. This is because, similarly to the case of the definite article above, the loss of the 'n' at the end of the abbreviated is compensated for by doubling the following letter. 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 in modern Hebrew, which is a prefixed contraction of the relative pronoun : the prefix's first letter is dropped and its last letter combines with the following word's first letter, which is therefore doubled and a appears in it. For instance (Song of Songs 4:1), "who descend" becomes where the dot inside indicates the letter has been doubled. This prefix is far less common than the full in Biblical texts, but mostly replaces it 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 (, 'and 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 singular future tense • in the phrase (, 'praise the '), where is in the -stem, masculine plural imperative form • Genesis 47:31 (, 'and he strengthened himself'), -stem == Rafe ==

In Masoretic manuscripts the opposite of a would be indicated by a , a small horizontal 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 ==