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A dagesh can either indicate a "hard" plosive version of the consonant (known as dagesh qal, literally 'light dot') or that the consonant is geminated (known as dagesh ḥazaq, 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 ...
dagesh, shuruk: Example גֹּבַהּ The word for height in Hebrew, govah. The centre dot in the leftmost letter (which is the letter He) is a mappiq. Other Niqqud: Shva · Hiriq · Tzere · Segol · Patach · Kamatz · Holam · Dagesh · Mappiq · Shuruk · Kubutz · Rafe · Sin/Shin Dot
When vowel diacritics are used, the hard sounds are indicated by a central dot called dagesh (דגש ), while the soft sounds lack a dagesh. In modern Hebrew, however, the dagesh only changes the pronunciation of ב bet, כ kaf, and פ pe, and does not affect the name of the letter. The differences are as follows:
The Hebrew term בֶּגֶ״ד כֶּפֶ״ת (Modern Hebrew /ˌbeɡedˈkefet/) denotes the letters themselves (rather than the phenomenon of spirantization). If a begadkefat is at the beginning of a word and is preceded by a word ending in an open syllable, then there is no dagesh .
"dagesh kal", which designates the plosive (as opposed to fricative) variant of any of the letters בגדכפת (in earlier forms of Hebrew this distinction was allophonic; in Israeli Hebrew ג , ד and ת with or without dagesh kal are acoustically and phonologically indistinguishable, whereas plosive and fricative variants of ב ...
When Hebrew is written Ktiv menuqad (with niqqud diacritics) the two are distinguished by a dot (called a dagesh) in the centre of the letter for /b/ and no dot for /v/. In modern Hebrew, the more commonly used Ktiv hasar niqqud spelling, which does not use diacritics, does not visually distinguish between the two phonemes. [citation needed]
The two functions of dagesh are distinguished as either qal (light) or hazaq (strong). The six letters that can receive a dagesh qal are bet, gimel, daled, kaph, pe, and taf. Three of them (bet, kaph, and pe) have their sound value changed in modern Hebrew from the fricative to the plosive by adding a dagesh.
Modern Hebrew has fewer phonemes than Biblical Hebrew but it has developed its own phonological complexity. Israeli Hebrew has 25 to 27 consonants, depending on whether the speaker has pharyngeals. It has 5 to 10 vowels, depending on whether diphthongs and vowels are counted, varying with the speaker and the analysis.