Dagesh - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Hebrew language

Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...

. The first diacritic (the centre dot) is a dagesh.> | colspan="2" |Other Niqqud>

IPA	b, g, d, k, p, t
Transliteration Romanization of Hebrew Hebrew uses the Hebrew alphabet with optional vowel points. The romanization of Hebrew is the use of the Latin alphabet to transliterate Hebrew words....	b, g, d, k, p, t
Same appearance	mappiq, shuruk

The dagesh is a diacritic

Diacritic

A diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...

used in the Hebrew alphabet

Hebrew alphabet

The Hebrew alphabet , known variously by scholars as the Jewish script, square script, block script, or more historically, the Assyrian script, is used in the writing of the Hebrew language, as well as other Jewish languages, most notably Yiddish, Ladino, and Judeo-Arabic. There have been two...

. It was added to the Hebrew

Hebrew language

orthography

Orthography

The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...

at the same time as the Masoretic system of niqqud (vowel points). It takes the form of a dot placed inside a Hebrew letter

Hebrew alphabet

and has the effect of modifying the sound in one of two ways.

An identical mark called mappiq, carrying a different phonetic function, may be applied to different consonants; the same mark is also employed in the vowel shuruq.

Dagesh and mappiq symbols are often omitted in writing. For instance, בּ is often written as ב. The use or omission of such marks is usually consistent throughout any given context.
The two functions of dagesh are distinguished as either kal (light) or hazak (strong).

Dagesh Kal

Dagesh Kal or Dagesh Qal (דגש קל, or דגש קשיין, frequently also referred to as "dagesh lene" = "weak dagesh," or in other words "weak dot" as opposed to "strong dot" in the next section) may be placed inside the consonants bet, gimel, dalet, kaf, pe and tav. Historically, each had two sounds: one hard (plosive consonant), and one soft (fricative consonant

Fricative consonant

Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...

), depending on the position of the letter and other factors. When vowel diacritics are used, the hard sounds are indicated by a central dot called dagesh, while the soft sounds lack a dagesh. In Modern Hebrew, however, the dagesh only changes the pronunciation of bet, kaf, and pe (traditional Ashkenazic pronunciation also varies the pronunciation of tav, and some traditional Middle Eastern pronunciations carry alternate forms for dalet).

\| With dagesh						\| Without dagesh
\|Symbol	Name	Transliteration	IPA	Example		\|Symbol	Name	Transliteration	IPA	Example
bet	b	/b/	bun		vet	v	/v/	van
kaph	k	/k/	kangaroo		khaph	kh/ch/k	/χ/	loch
pe	p	/p/	pass		phe	ph/f	/f/	find
tav	t	/t/	talent		sav*	s	/s/	sale

* Only in Ashkenazi pronunciation. Tav without a dagesh is assumed to have been pronounced [θ] at the time niqqud was introduced. In Modern Hebrew, it is always pronounced [t].

** The letters gimmel and dalet may also contain a dagesh kal. This is believed to have indicated an allophonic variation of the phonemes /ɡ/ and /d/ at the time niqqud was introduced, a variation which no longer exists in modern Hebrew pronunciation. The variations are believed to have been: גּ=[ɡ], ג=ɣ or ʝ, דּ=[d], ד=ð.

The Hebrew spoken by the Jews of Yemen still has unique phonemes for these letters with and without a dagesh.

Pronunciation

In Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

's general population, the pronunciation of some of the above letters has become identical to the pronunciation of others:

	\| Letter(s)			pronounced like
vet			(without dagesh) like	vav
khaf			(without dagesh) like	chet
tav	or	tav	(with or without dagesh) like	tet
kaf			(with dagesh) like	qof

This is much too curt and does not include all the details of the Beged Kefeth rules, nor does it include Temani versions.

Dagesh Hazak

Dagesh Hazak or Dagesh Hazaq (דגש חזק, "strong dot" – i.e. gemination dagesh, or דגש כפלן, often referred to as "dagesh forte") may be placed in almost any letter, this indicated a gemination

Gemination

In phonetics, gemination happens when a spoken consonant is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short consonant. Gemination is distinct from stress and may appear independently of it....

(doubling) of that letter in pronunciation in forms of Hebrew earlier than modern Hebrew

Modern Hebrew

Modern Hebrew , also known as Israeli Hebrew or Modern Israeli Hebrew, is the language spoken in Israel and in some Jewish communities worldwide, from the early 20th century to the present....

. This phonetic (or allophonic

Allophone

In phonology, an allophone is one of a set of multiple possible spoken sounds used to pronounce a single phoneme. For example, and are allophones for the phoneme in the English language...

) variation is not adhered to in Modern Hebrew and is only used by current speakers of Hebrew in situations for careful pronunciation, such as reading of scriptures in a synagogue service, recitations of biblical or traditional texts or on ceremonious occasions, and then only by very precise readers.

The following letters, the gutturals

Guttural consonant

Guttural is a term used to describe any of several speech sounds whose primary place of articulation is near the back of the oral cavity. In some definitions this is restricted to pharyngeal consonants, but in others includes some but not all velar and uvular consonants...

, almost never have a dagesh: aleph א, he
He (letter)
He is the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets, including Phoenician , Aramaic, Hebrew , Syriac and Arabic . Its sound value is a voiceless glottal fricative ....

ה, chet
Heth (letter)
' or ' is the reconstructed name of the eighth letter of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, continued in descended Semitic alphabets as Phoenician , Syriac , Hebrew ḥēth , Arabic , and Berber .Heth originally represented a voiceless fricative, either pharyngeal , or...

ח, ayin
Ayin
' or ' is the sixteenth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic . It is the twenty-first letter in the new Persian alphabet...

ע, resh
Resh
Resh is the twentieth letter of many Semitic alphabets, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic alphabet . Its sound value is one of a number of rhotic consonants: usually or , but also or in Hebrew....

ר. (A few instances of resh with dagesh are Masoretically

Masoretic Text

The Masoretic Text is the authoritative Hebrew text of the Jewish Bible and is regarded as Judaism's official version of the Tanakh. While the Masoretic Text defines the books of the Jewish canon, it also defines the precise letter-text of these biblical books, with their vocalization and...

recorded in the Hebrew Bible

Hebrew Bible

The Hebrew Bible is a term used by biblical scholars outside of Judaism to refer to the Tanakh , a canonical collection of Jewish texts, and the common textual antecedent of the several canonical editions of the Christian Old Testament...

, as well as a few cases of aleph with a dagesh, such as in Leviticus 23:17.)

The presence of a dagesh hazak 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 dagesh hazak may be placed in letters for one of the following reasons:

1. The letter follows a definite article. For example, שָׁמָיִם shamayim "heaven(s)" in Gen. 1:8 becomes הַשָּׁמַיִם hashshamayim "the heaven(s)" in Gen 1:1. (Occasionally, the letter following a He

He (letter)

He is the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets, including Phoenician , Aramaic, Hebrew , Syriac and Arabic . Its sound value is a voiceless glottal fricative ....

used to indicate a question may also receive a dagesh, e.g. Num. 13:20 הַשְּׁמֵנָה הִוא "whether it is fat").

2. The letter follows the prefix mem- with the hirik vowel (i); where this prefix is an abbreviation for the word min, meaning "from". For example, the phrase "from your hand", if spelled as two words, would be מִן יָדֶךָ min yadecha. In Gen. 4:11, however, it occurs as one word: מִיָּדֶךָ miyyadecha.

3. It marks a missing double letter. For example, compare Ex. 6:7 לָקַחְתִּי lakachti with Num. 23:28, where the first letter of the stem has been elided: וַיִּקַּח vayyikkach.

4. If the letter follows a vav consecutive

Waw-consecutive

The Waw-consecutive or Vav-consecutive is a grammatical construction in Classical Hebrew. It involves prefixing a verb form with the letter waw in order to change its aspect.-Waw-conjunctive and waw-consecutive:...

imperfect (sometimes referred to as vav conversive, or vav ha'hipuch), which, in Biblical Hebrew, switches a verb between perfect and imperfect. For example, compare Judges 7:4 יֵלֵךְ yeilech "let him go" with Deu. 31:1 וַיֵּלֶך vayyeilech "he went".

5. If it is a marker of the binyan. For example:

(a) It is placed in the first letter of the root of a word in the imperfect form in the binyan niphal;

(b) It is placed in the second letter of the root of a word in the binyan piel (e.g. Ex. 15:9 אֲחַלֵּק achalleik "I shall divide") or the binyan pual;

(c) It is placed in the second letter of the root of a word in the binyan hithpael, e.g Gen. 47:31 וַיִתְחַזֵּק vayitchazzeik, "he strengthened himself".

Rafe

In Masoretic manuscripts the opposite of a dagesh would be indicated by a rafe, 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.

Meaning

Israeli linguist Vadim Cherny argues that both dagesh kal and hazak represent the same phenomenon, namely a stop. In his theory, dagesh hazak is post-tonic stop that produces gemination of trailing consonants, and dagesh kal prevents consonantal clustering and thus blurring. Cherny asserts that dagesh kal is only pronounceable in cantillation, and the Masoretes intended it as a cantillation mark.

Unicode encodings

In computer typography there are two ways to use a dagesh with Hebrew text. Here are Unicode

Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...

examples:

Combining character
Combining character
In digital typography, combining characters are characters that are intended to modify other characters. The most common combining characters in the Latin script are the combining diacritical marks ....

s:



bet + dagesh: &#1489;&#1468; בּ = U+05D1 U+05BC

kaf + dagesh: &#1499;&#1468; כּ = U+05DB U+05BC

pe  + dagesh: &#1508;&#1468; פּ = U+05E4 U+05BC

Precomposed character
Precomposed character
A precomposed character is a Unicode entity that can be defined as a combination of two or more other characters. A precomposed character may typically represent a letter with a diacritical mark, such as é...

s:



bet with dagesh: &#64305; בּ = U+FB31

kaf with dagesh: &#64315; כּ = U+FB3B

pe  with dagesh: &#64324; פּ = U+FB44

Some fonts, character sets, encoding

Character encoding

A character encoding system consists of a code that pairs each character from a given repertoire with something else, such as a sequence of natural numbers, octets or electrical pulses, in order to facilitate the transmission of data through telecommunication networks or storage of text in...

s, and operating system

Operating system

An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...

s may support neither, one, or both methods.

External links

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