2955: Hebrew Gemination with Loans Jan 23, 2025

In traditional Hebrew phonology, the six consonants ב, ג, ד, כ, פ, and ת (collectively called begedkefeth) have two distinct pronunciations: a "soft" form (spirantised, like /v/, /ɣ/, etc.) and a "hard" form (plosive, like /b/, /g/, etc.). The soft form typically appears after vowels even from prepositions of the preceding word, while the hard form appears after pauses or as consonant clusters. Crucially, geminated (doubled) begedkefet consonants are always pronounced in their hard form.

The words אבא (aba) and סבא (saba), father and grandfather respectively, feature geminated /b/ consonants, which violates the typical rules of begedkefet. Moreover, this is not the case in the word for ‘grandmother’: סבתא (savta). Normally, an ungeminated ב following a vowel would be softened to /v/ (or historically /β/). These words, clued by the telltale א at the end of them, came to Hebrew via Aramaic.

Notably, there are many Hebrew words that come from Aramaic, wherein the Aramic word also follows typical rules of gemination (pronounced āva/sāva) but when this was brought into Hebrew, it was geminated. The native Hebrew is אב (āv) and שב (sāv)—note the Hebrew convention to use the letter ס (samekh) in loanwords, and not ש, צ, or ת.

This is seen elsewhere with Aramaic words brought into Hebrew, for instance: 

*ספּה → צפא (tzifa, geminated to sopa) meaning ‘sofa’ (and indeed the origin for the English).