5.5 Loss of Dagesh Forte
The Dagesh Forte is kind of a big deal: it is Hebrew’s way of saying “pay attention; something is different”
- We’re about to see another reason why as we move in to our discussion of the Hebrew Article
- We like to think of the Dagesh Forte as your friend that should get your attention
- Sometimes the Dagesh Forte gets rejected from time to time
- We’ve discussed two of those already, and in this lesson, we’ll add a third; We’ll also now introduce a concept called “compensatory lengthening”, which we’ll define in the next section
- The two we’ve already discussed are:
- Gutturals/Resh ALWAYS reject the Dagesh Forte (Lesson 2)
- A word-final consonant without a vowel ALWAYS rejects the Dagesh Forte (Lesson 4)
- The new guideline for this lesson is: A SQiN eM LeVY consonant with a Sheva SOMETIMES rejects the Dagesh Forte
- When this happens, there is NEVER compensatory lengthening
- Remember we had you memorize the ten SQiN eM LeVY consonants in Lesson 1. Do you remember them?
- See table below for a summary of these three rules:
| Loss of Dagesh Forte Scenario | Rejects Dagesh | Compensatory Lengthening |
|---|---|---|
| Gutturals/Resh | Always | Sometimes |
| Word-final consonant without a Vowel (Lesson 4) | Always | Sometimes |
| SQiN eM LeVY WITH SHEVA | SOMETIMES | NEVER |
SQiN eM LeVY Rule
- Please don’t worry if you don’t understand this at first
- When you start to see the SQiN eM LeVY rule in action, it will get easier
- See this handout for additional discussion on SQiN eM LeVY consonants