it usually comes in the middle or at the end of a word. A Shvah Na is at the beginning of a word or syllable
Doing it with a Dagesh
The little dot that you see in the middle of letters is called a Dagesh. Most of the time, this dot doesn’t change the pronunciation of the consonant except for three letters. I discuss this point later in this section.
Hebrew has two types of D’geshim (duh-gehsh-eem; the plural form of Dagesh):
Dagesh Kal (dah-gehsh kahl): Appears at the beginning of all words and at the beginning of all syllables in the following letters: בּ (Bet), גּ (Gimmel), דּ (Dalet), כּ (Kaf), פּ (Pey), and תּ (Tav).
Dagesh ḥazak (dah-gehsh ḥah-zahk): Appears after the word the, which in Hebrew is a prefix consisting of the letter Hey and the vowel Patach below it.
Don’t get too hung up on this distinction, because all D’geshim look the same!
HEBREW AS THE HOLY TONGUE — DON’T BITE IT
Judaism has always regarded Hebrew as a sacred language. Hebrew is often referred to as לְשׁוֹן הַקֹּדֶשׁ (le-shohn hah-koh-desh; the Holy Tongue), and even the Hebrew word for letter, אוֹת (oht), means “sign” or “wonder.” In fact, during the period of Hebrew’s revival as a spoken language, some people objected, saying that Hebrew was simply too sacred for saying things like “Take out the garbage.”
Also, all Hebrew letters have numeric value. A particular form of Jewish numerology called גִּמַּהְרִיָּה (gee-meht-ree-yah) plays on the words’ numeric values. Both the Hebrew word for wine (יַיִן;yah-yeen) and secret (סוֹד;sohd) have the same numerical value. The Talmud has a saying, “When the wine goes in, secrets come out!” Other Jewish sacred writings claim that the Hebrew letters are the manifestation of divine energy patterns and even that the universe’s DNA is composed of Hebrew letters.
A 13th-century mystic, Rabbi Abraham Abulafia, created a form of Jewish meditation, similar to yoga, based on the Hebraic forms. And a 16th-century mystic, Rabbi Isaac Luria, developed another form of meditation based on visualizing the Hebrew letters.
Are you totally confused yet? What difference does adding a Dagesh make? In the Sephardic pronunciation that Israelis and most Hebrew speakers today use, adding a Dagesh almost never makes a difference in pronunciation. But in a few cases, when a Dagesh is placed within a letter (always a consonant), it changes the way you pronounce that consonant. When you add a Dagesh to the letter ו (Vet), for example, the V sound becomes a B sound, and you pronounce the letter like bet. When you pair a Dagesh with the letter ḥaf, the ḥ sound becomes a K sound, so the sound of that letter becomes kaf. Finally, the letter פ (Fey) with a Dagesh becomes a פּ (Peh).
Reading and writing from right to left
Hebrew, like other ancient Semitic languages (such as Acadian, Samarian, Ugaritic, and Arabic), is written from right to left. Why? Is there a preponderance of lefties in the region? No!
Maybe you’ve read the Bible, in particular the part where Moses comes down from the mountain with the Ten Commandments in hand. And if you haven’t read the Bible, perhaps you’ve seen the Mel Brooks film version in History of the World: Part 1. When Moses came down from the mountain, what was he holding? A copy of an email from the Almighty? A scroll of papyrus? No. He was holding two stone tablets! You may ask, “Well, how did the Ten Commandments get on the stone tablets? Did Moses have a special pen or something?”
When ancient Hebrew emerged, it was written by chiseling it in stone. If the writer was a rightie, they would have used their dominant hand — their right hand — to pound the mallet onto the stylus they held with their left hand. And because ancient Hebrew society (like all societies) favored righties, its language was written from right to left. The Phoenicians and then the Greeks followed suit. Then, for a while, the Greeks wrote in both directions, switching when they got to the end of the tablet or page. That practice makes sense, if you think about it; why press the Return key on your electric typewriter to go all the way back to start a new line when you can just keep going where you are in the backward direction! Then the Greeks decided that left to right would be their standard, but Hebrew scribes kept on writing right to left. Tradition! (OK, folks today are just as likely to have an electric typewriter as the ancient Greeks, but that's neither here nor there.)
https://www.easylearnhebrew.com, an online course in Hebrew. The site can help you read Hebrew in no time!
FUN&GAMES
Write the sound that each of the following Hebrew characters makes:
| בּ (B) _____ | ג (G) _____ | ל (L)____ | ב (V) _____ |
| ד (D) _____ | ה (H) _____ | ר (R)____ | א (° silent) _____ |
You can find the answers in Appendix C.
Chapter 2
The Nitty-Gritty: Basic Hebrew Grammar
IN THIS CHAPTER
