Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Pere Porta <pporta7 AT gmail.com>]

Have you ever read or heard, Isaac, about the consonants «begadkefat»?
These usually take dagesh after shewa. This is the case of all the words
you provide in your post.
This is the so called «dagesh lene», the light dagesh: it points out to the
uttering of the consonant (hard versus soft)
Now... there are some exceptions to this rule. And so, in Pr 3::3 we find
KTBM, write them (you, male)! No dagesh in the B.
And in Dn 1:4 we find WLLMDM (no dagesh in the D) and in 2K 13:7 we find
)BDAM (he destroyed them) (no dagesh in the D)...
I do not know, here and now, the cause of this different behaviour....
Maybe someone on this list can tell and illustrate us about it...
But precedently I wrote on the «dagesh forte», the strong dagesh! Namely
the dagesh put inside consonants other than the begadkefat.

Regards

Pere Porta
2012/5/10 Isaac Fried <if AT math.bu.edu>

>  You are right, אצבע ECBA (see Ex.8:15), 'finger', for instance, is with
> a dot in the letter B, but this means, I think, that the reading at the
> time the dgeshim were introduced (possibly a millennium prior to the
> invention of the nikud), was ICBA or ACBA. The segol is possibly a visual
> compromise between a cere and a xirik, the same way the xatap-patax is a
> compromise between a schwa and a patax.
> The same holds true, I think, also for אשכל E$KOL, 'bunch, cluster', (see
> Song of Songs 1:14, and also Deut. 32:32 for the plural form A$KLOT), and
> the אשכר E$KAR of Ps. 72:10.
>
>  Isaac Fried, Boston University
>
>  On May 7, 2012, at 11:42 AM, Pere Porta wrote:
>
>  a dagesh follows a segol
>
>


-- 
Pere Porta