2367: Anomalous: The Rare Dagesh in Guttural Letters Jun 11, 2021

Hebrew uses a system of diacritics to represent vowels, but also to represent other phonetic changes. Still, there are some anomalous cases in the Torah. The dagesh—appearing as a dot in the middle of a letter—distinguishes basically 2 features; either it will distinguish between plosive or fricative forms in six letters: בג"ד כת"פ (note that not all of these are still productive) but more often the dagesh is used as a דגש חזק ('strong dot') indicating gemination. This latter use is found in all other letters to effectively double that particular sound but those mentioned above and the 'guttural letters': א‎, ה‎, ח‎, ע‎, and in many ways ways ר. This last case, ‎ר (reish), representing [ʁ] or [ʀ] is found in at least 17 cases, which is still very few, that are throughout the Prophets and Writings. Even fewer exceptional cases—about four—are found with א (aleph) even though this is often taken as a 'silent letter', such as in Genesis 43:26, Leviticus 23:17, and neither of these have other vowels added.