Begadkefat

Template:Short description Template:IPA notice Template:Special characters Begadkefat (also begedkefet) is the phenomenon of lenition affecting the non-emphatic stop consonants of Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic when they are preceded by a vowel and not geminated. The name is also given to similar cases of spirantization of post-vocalic plosives in other languages; for instance, in Jerba Berber.

The phenomenon's name comprises these six consonants with haphazard vowels for pronunciation: BeGaDKePaT. The Hebrew term (Modern Hebrew ) denotes the letters themselves (rather than the phenomenon of spirantization). If a begadkefat is at the beginning of a word and is preceded by a word ending in an open syllable, then there is no dagesh.

Begedkefet spirantization developed during the Biblical Hebrew period due to Aramaic influence. Its time of emergence can be found by noting that the Old Aramaic phonemes Template:IPAslink, Template:IPAslink disappeared in the 7th century BC. During this period all six plosive/fricative pairs were allophonic.

In Modern Hebrew, three of the six letters, ב‎ (bet), כ‎ (kaf) and פ‎ (pe) each still denotes a stop–fricative variant pair; however, in Modern Hebrew these variants are no longer purely allophonic (see below). Although orthographic variants of ג‎ (gimel), ד‎ (daleth) and ת‎ (taw) still exist, these letters' pronunciation always remains acoustically and phonologically indistinguishable.

In Ashkenazi Hebrew and in Yiddish borrowings from it, ת‎ without dagesh still denotes a fricative variant, which is pronounced Template:IPAblink, which diverged from Biblical/Mishnaic Template:IPAblink.

The only pronunciation tradition to preserve and distinguish all begadkefat letters is Yemenite Hebrew. However, in Yemenite Hebrew, gimel with dagesh is a voiced postalveolar affricate Template:IPAblink under the influence of Judeo-Yemeni Arabic; it diverged from Mishnaic Hebrew Template:IPAblink.

Orthography

The phenomenon is attributed to the following allophonic consonants:

		Plosives		Spirants		Hebrew Notes
		Hebrew	Syriac	Hebrew	Syriac	Biblical, Mishnaic	Standard Israeli
Bet	Letter	בּ‎		ב‎		[β]	[v]
	IPA	Template:IPAblink		Template:IPAblink		-
Gimel	Letter	גּ‎		ג‎		[ɣ]	[ɡ]
	IPA	Template:IPAblink		Template:IPAblink		-
Dalet	Letter	דּ‎		ד‎		[ð]	[d]
	IPA	Template:IPAblink		Template:IPAblink		-
Kaph	Letter	כּ‎		כ‎		[x]	Template:IPAblink
	IPA	Template:IPAblink		Template:IPAblink		-
Pe	Letter	פּ‎		פ‎		[ɸ]	Template:IPAblink
	IPA	Template:IPAblink		Template:IPAblink		-
Taw	Letter	תּ‎		ת‎		[θ]	[t]
	IPA	Template:IPAblink		Template:IPAblink		-

In Hebrew writing with niqqud, a dot in the center of one of these letters, called dagesh ( ּ ), marks the plosive articulation:

• at the beginning of a word or after a consonant (in which cases it is termed "dagesh qal"),
• when the sound is – or was historically – geminated (in which case it is termed "dagesh ẖazaq", a mark for historical gemination in most other consonants of the language as well), and
• in some modern Hebrew words independently of these conditions (see below).

A line (similar to a macron) placed above it, called "rafe" ( ֿ ), marks in Yiddish (and rarely in Hebrew) the fricative articulation.

In Modern Hebrew

As mentioned above, the fricative variants of Template:IPAblink, Template:IPAblink and Template:IPAblink no longer exist in modern Hebrew. (However, Hebrew does have the guttural R consonant Template:IPAslink which is the voiced counterpart of Template:IPAslink and sounds similar to Mizrahi Hebrew's fricative variant of Template:IPAblink ḡimel as well as Arabic's غ ġayn, both of which are . Modern Hebrew ר resh can still sporadically be found standing in for this phoneme, for example in the Hebrew rendering of Raleb (Ghaleb) Majadele's name.) The three remaining pairs Template:IPAslink~Template:IPAslink, Template:IPAslink~Template:IPAslink, and Template:IPAslink~Template:IPAslink still sometimes alternate, as demonstrated in inflections of many roots in which the roots' meaning is retained despite variation of begedkefet letters' manner of articulation, e.g.,

in verbs:
• בוא ← תבוא‎		("come" (imperative) → "you will come"),
• שבר ← נשבר‎		("broke" (transitive) → "broke" (intransitive),
• כתב ← יכתוב‎		("he wrote" → "he will write"),
• זכר ← יזכור‎		("he remembered" → "he will remember"),
• פנית ← לפנות‎		("you (f.) turned" → "to turn"),
• שפטת ← לשפוט‎		("you (f.) judged" → "to judge "),
or in nouns:
• ערב ← ערביים‎		("evening" → "twilight"),
• מלך ← מלכה‎		("king" → "queen"),
• אלף ← אלפית‎		("a thousand" → "a thousandth"),

however, in Modern Hebrew, stop and fricative variants of ב‎

1. REDIRECT Template:Rlm, כ‎ and פ‎ are distinct phonemes, and there are minimal pairs:

• אִפֵּר – אִפֵר‎	–	("applied make up" – "tipped ash"),
• פִּסְפֵּס – פִסְפֵס‎	–	("striped" – "missed"),
• הִתְחַבֵּר – הִתְחַבֵר‎	–	("connected" – "made friends (with)"),
• הִשְׁתַּבֵּץ – הִשְׁתַּבֵץ‎	–	("got integrated" – "was shocked"),

and consider, e.g.:

•

לככב‎ "to star", whose common pronunciation preserves the manner of articulation of each kaf in the word it is derived from: כּוֹכָב‎ "a star" (first stop, then fricative), as opposed to the prescribed pronunciation , which regards the variation in pronunciation of kaf Template:IPAslink ←→ Template:IPAslink as allophonic and determines its manner of articulation according to historical phonological principles; or:

•

similarly, לרכל‎ "to gossip", whose prescribed pronunciation is colloquially rejected, commonly pronounced , preserving the fricative manner of articulation in related nouns (e.g. רכילות‎ "gossip", רכלן‎ "gossiper").

This phonemic divergence is due to a number of factors, amongst others:

• due to loss of consonant gemination in modern Hebrew, which formerly distinguished the stop members of the pairs from the fricatives when intervocalic – e.g. in the inflections:

• קפץ ← קיפץ‎	, historically	("jumped" → "hopped"),
• שבר ← שיבר‎	, historically	("broke" → "shattered"),
• שכן ← שיכן‎	, historically	("resided" → "housed"),

• due to the introduction, through foreign borrowings, of:

 • syllable-initial Template:IPAslink (e.g. פברק‎ "fabricated"),

 • non-syllable-initial Template:IPAslink (e.g. הפנט‎ "hypnotized")

 • non-syllable-initial Template:IPAslink (e.g. פברק‎ "fabricated"), ג׳וֹבּ "job", קוּבּ‎ "cubic meter", פָּאבּ‎ "pub").

Even aside from borrowings or lost gemination, common Israeli pronunciation sometimes violates the original phonological principle "stop variant after a consonant; fricative after a vowel", although this principle is still prescribed as standard by the Academy of the Hebrew Language, e.g.:

• The words מעבורת‎ (ferry) and מעברות‎ (refugee absorption camps), whose respective prescribed pronunciation is and , are commonly pronounced and , replacing the consonant (Template:IPAslink) with a vowel (Template:IPAslink), but still preferring the stop variant Template:IPAslink to its fricative counterpoint Template:IPAslink.
• Similarly, the words העפלה‎ (Aliyah Bet, called the Ha'apala which designates the covert Jewish immigration to British Palestine, 1934–1948) and מעפילים‎ (the immigrants of this immigration), whose respective prescribed pronunciation is and , are commonly pronounced and , again replacing the consonant (Template:IPAslink) with the vowel (Template:IPAslink), but still preferring the stop Template:IPAslink to the fricative Template:IPAslink.
• Conversely, words like להכחיש‎ (to deny) or מכחול‎ (paintbrush), whose respective prescribed pronunciation is and , are commonly pronounced and , preferring the stop Template:IPAslink to the fricative Template:IPAslink, although following vowels (respectively Template:IPAslink and Template:IPAslink), due to the shifting of the original semitic pronunciation of the letter ח‎ (heth) from Template:IPAslink to Template:IPAslink, rendering it identical to common Israeli pronunciation of the fricative variant of the letter כ‎.

External links

• File:Wikisource-logo.svgGesenius' Hebrew Grammar,§12, §13, §21