Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Yaakov Stein" <yaakov_s AT rad.com>]

> I think that BK"P became hard thereby only incidentally, but now we
are stuck with this phenomenon and need to say DIBER, not DIVER.

Isaac, 

I quite agree that in spoken language we can forget about the idea that
dagesh doubles the letter
(although I try to emphasize this when reading tora).
Similarly, we can forget about the shva na and nax distinction (with the
same remark).

What was never clear to me was WHY the dagesh changes some of the
BGDKPT letters in the way is does.

What is the connection between the B and V sound ?
Between the P and F ?

It would be much easier to understand if the P became B 
or the F became V by adding voicing (as a strenghtening).

Do you have any ideas why these particular couples are related ?

I heard several years ago in a lecture on Semitic languages that
these dagesh letter changes were probably brought in from the
Horite language, which has many more such combinations.
Do you know anything about that ?

Yaakov (J) Stein