4.11 Geminate Nouns take a Dagesh Forte when Pluralized

Geminate (from the Latin for “twins”) words appear to have two visible letters. At one point in history, the second consonant appeared twice. Example עַם (people) was once *עמם. The lexical form drops the extra consonant.

When we pluralize a Geminate word, the “twin” letter “reappears” but as a Dagesh Forte instead of a consonant. So in our example, עַם becomes עַמִּים (peoples).

• The reason we don’t have a Dagesh Forte in עַם is that a “word-final” letter (i.e. the last consonant of a word) ALWAYS rejects the Dagesh Forte when it has no vowel

• This is the second of three major scenarios where a Dagesh Forte is rejected
• We looked at the first scenario in Lesson 2 - Gutturals and Resh ALWAYS reject the Dagesh Forte
• There is one more rejection scenario that we will meet in Lesson 5