5.6 Compensatory Lengthening and Virtual Doubling

In Compensatory Lengthening, a short vowel lengthens to become a long vowel to compensate for the loss of a “doubling” Dagesh Forte (or sometimes a vowel) in the following consonant

• Patach will lengthen to Qamets
• Hireq will lengthen to Tsere
• Qibbuts will lengthen to Holem
• Compensatory Lengthening can occur in ANY letter that precedes a Dagesh Forte-rejecting consonant…but it does not always occur
• Compensatory Lengthening can also occur in a word with a Quiescent Aleph that rejects a Sheva.
• Sometimes there is no change to the preceding vowel - this is called “virtual doubling.”
  • As Dr. Van Pelt, the co-author of Basics of Biblical Hebrew likes to say "“Virtual Doubling” should be called “virtually no doubling”, because no spelling changes occur."

• When SQiN eM LeVY consonants reject the Dagesh, there is NEVER compensatory lengthening.