# Historic Pronunciation of "dageshed" shin, zayin, hey, resh, yod etc.



## Segulah

Being interested in original pronounciation of hebrew in the old days ive 
turned to yemenite accents. Alot of the letters having a dagesh but no phonetic difference  in modern hebrew do convey a phonetic defference in yemenite. including following ג, ד, ו, ח, ט, ע, צ, ק, ת. These are all differnt from israeli hebrew. Bur there are still a few letters with dagesh that i still dont know what they sound like, I ve seen dagesh in letters like shin (inside) zayin, hey, resh, yod etc. Read somewhere that this doubles the letter, but never understodd what this implicates. 
Somebody who knows this??
thanks.


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## -Epic-

in hebrew there are 2 types of dageshs.

a. דגש קל (Light Dagesh) it goes on ב,ג,ד,כ,פ,ת letters only

b. דגש חזק (Hard Dagesh) which goes on all letters (including the above)

Usually Hard Dagesh doubles the letter. It emphasizes the pronunciation of the letter.


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## pachyderm

Presumably consonants with "dagesh hazak" (דגש חזק) were "geminates": pronounced for a longer period of time than their counterparts without dagesh. Compare [t:] in Italian "otto" or [k:] in English "black coat".


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## pachyderm

Also note that dagesh cannot appear in the gutturals א ה ח ע and in ר.


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## Segulah

is ר  one of the אותיות גרוניות? I cant be originally. 
if a letter has a dagesh hazaq and is doubled i wonder if this only was inplied in prayers. why would you need to double a letter in regular speech? are there any minimal pairs with these letters?


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## scriptum

Segulah said:


> is ר one of the אותיות גרוניות? I cant be originally.
> if a letter has a dagesh hazaq and is doubled i wonder if this only was inplied in prayers. why would you need to double a letter in regular speech? are there any minimal pairs with these letters?


 
- "Resh" is not a guttural, but, like the gutturals, it cannot have a dagesh.
- In modern Hebrew there is no doubling of consonants. Dagesh qal & dagesh hhazaq are pronounced in the same way. In other words, you can hear a dagesh only in the consonants ב כ פ. (*b* as opposed to *v*, *k* as opposed to *kh*, *p* as opposed to *f*).


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## Flaminius

> Is ר  one of the אותיות גרוניות? It can't be originally.


[Please apply standard writing conventions including capitalisation and punctuation; Rule #22]

Even if Resh was not a guttural, dagesh on Resh is very rare in the history of Hebrew.  Wikipedia has this to say: "The following letters, the gutturals, almost never have a dagesh: aleph א, he ה, chet ח, ayin ע, resh ר. (A few instances of resh with dagesh are Masoretically recorded in the Hebrew Bible, as well as a few cases of aleph with a dagesh, such as in Leviticus 23:17.)"

Nowadays, letters with a dagesh chazaq is pronounced exactly the same as letters without it because Modern Hebrew, or Sephardic pronunciation at least, does not have gemination.  If we are to find minimal pairs, we need to go back to older Hebrew pronunciations such as the one for Mishnaic Hebrew.

A minimal pair that I can think of right now is two conjugations of _lalun_ (to stay overnight).  I wrote -nn- to express Nun with dagesh:
lannu (we stayed overnight)
lanu (they stayed overnight)


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## Outsider

See also this Wikipedia article. You are right that the Yemenite pronunciation has some conservative traits.


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## -Epic-

pachyderm said:


> Also note that dagesh cannot appear in the gutturals א ה ח ע and in ר.


 

They did have dagesh in the





Segulah said:


> old days


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## Lugubert

scriptum said:


> - "Resh" is not a guttural, but, like the gutturals, it cannot have a dagesh.


That opens up some interesting questions. How was the 'r' pronounced in earlier times? If it was like in Italian or Russian etc, the non-pointing is unique for a non-laryngeal. But it was like the "Paris" 'r', some varieties of 'r' in German and Dutch, the Danish and south Swedish 'r', and the Arabic ghayn, it belongs to the gutturals.


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## Outsider

Segulah said:


> I ve seen dagesh in letters like shin (inside) zayin, hey, resh, yod etc. Read somewhere that this doubles the letter, but never understodd what this implicates.
> Somebody who knows this??


Oh, about that, see this.


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