Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Jason Hare <jaihare AT gmail.com>]

> I was wondering, does the presence/absence of the dagesh alone change
> the meaning of the word in any way?

It's not the presence of a dagesh that can change a word. It is the
form of a word that determines whether or not a dagesh is required for
WRITING. This is an orthographical issue. The fact is, a short vowel
cannot stand in an unaccented syllable in Biblical Hebrew (and this is
the BH list, not the MH list -- we are here to discuss issues of
Biblical Hebrew and not the ignoring of these classical rules by
Israelis). If we have a short vowel in an unaccented syllable, there
must be either a sheva under the following consonant or a dagesh.
That's just how the accentuation/syllabification rules work in
Biblical Hebrew!

This is why we have to write אַתָּה )AT.FH and not אַתָה )ATFH, even
though the latter appears in explanations of modern Hebrew in basic
textbooks. The dagesh is not important for modern Hebrew
pronunciation, but the Massoretes must have thought it represented
something in speech, else they would not have included it! It surely
represented the same thing in that stage of Hebrew as the shadda does
in classical Arabic, the elongation/doubling of a consonant.

If you want to ignore dagesh, you can feel free. People in ulpan in
Israel ignore it everyday in all letters but B, P and K. Otherwise,
you can ignore it. But you will also be ignoring a basic orthographic
tool of Biblical Hebrew. You need to learn the rules of
syllabification and vowel length in Biblical Hebrew and also the rules
of dagesh, if you want to understand the system as it's present in the
Bible. If you don't want to understand that system (and I don't want
to assume anything about your intentions), feel free to imagine that
the dagesh is completely random and useless, just as Isaac Fried has
already told us that he doesn't understand why there are lengthened
vowels in these specific situations and doesn't have a desire to
uncover their explanation. Nothing's "necessary" when it comes down to
it. You just need to understand what you're looking to get from your
study of Biblical Hebrew.

Regards,
Jason Hare
Rehovot, Israel