Dagesh In Hebrew

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Dagesh is a dot which occurs inside a Hebrew letter. We mentioned Dagesh earlier, in the lesson about Shurek. Dagesh in Hebrew is not really a vowel, but it has been included in this group of lessons because it affects the way the Hebrew letters are pronounced.

Dagesh occurs when a Hebrew letter is doubled, for emphasis. Most of the time the presence of Dagesh makes no difference to the way the Hebrew letter is pronounced. For the Hebrew letters Gimel, Dalet and Tav, the pronunciation was originally different with Dagesh, but in Israel today there is no difference. However, in the Hebrew letters Bet, Kaf and Pe, the sound of the letter is very different depending on whether or not the letter has a Dagesh. With Dagesh, these Hebrew letters are pronounced b, k and p, but without Dagesh they are pronounced v, ch and f. Make sure you learn the difference!

There are some Hebrew words where the vowel Shurek (the dot inside the letter Vav) can easily be confused with Dagesh. With these words, the Vav is pronounced as v, not as oo. This happens with the Hebrew name Eve, the wife of Adam. Her name in Hebrew is but this is pronounced Hava, not Ha-oo-a! The dot inside the Vav is a Dagesh, not the vowel Shurek. Similarly, the common Hebrew word meaning command, is pronounced mi-tsa-ve, not mi-tsa-oo-a! Practice and experience will tell you the correct way to pronounce these words.

In later lessons, we will look at Dagesh in more detail and see when it occurs. This will help you to recognise situations where the dot inside a Vav is a Dagesh rather than Shurek.

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