Dagesh In Aramaic

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Dagesh is a dot which occurs inside a Aramaic letter. We mentioned Dagesh earlier, in the lesson about Shurek. Dagesh in Aramaic is not really a vowel, but it has been included in this group of lessons because it affects the way the Aramaic letters are pronounced.

Dagesh occurs when a Aramaic letter is doubled, for emphasis. Most of the time the presence of Dagesh makes no difference to the way the Aramaic letter is pronounced. For the Aramaic letters Gamal, Dalat and Taw, the pronunciation was originally different with Dagesh, and for Taw there still is a difference. However, in the Aramaic letters Beet, Kap and Pe, the sound of the letter is very different depending on whether or not the letter has a Dagesh. With Dagesh, these Aramaic letters are pronounced b, k and p, but without Dagesh they are pronounced v, ch and f. Make sure you learn the difference!

There are some Hebrew and Aramaic words where the vowel Shurek (the dot inside the letter Waw) can easily be confused with Dagesh. With these words, the Waw is pronounced as w, not as oo. This happens with the Hebrew and Aramaic name Eve, the wife of Adam. Her name in both Hebrew and Aramaic is but this is pronounced Hawa, not Ha-oo-a! The dot inside the Waw is a Dagesh, not the vowel Shurek. Similarly, the common Hebrew word meaning command, is pronounced mi-tsa-ve, not mi-tsa-oo-a! Practice and experience will tell you the correct way to pronounce these words.

In later lessons, we will look at Dagesh in more detail and see when it occurs. This will help you to recognise situations where the dot inside a Waw is a Dagesh rather than Shurek.

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