This article containsHebrew text. Without properrendering support, you may seequestion marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Hebrew letters.

Begadkefat (alsobegedkefet) is the phenomenon oflenition affecting the non-emphaticstop consonants ofBiblical Hebrew andAramaic when they are preceded by a vowel and notgeminated. The name is also given to similar cases of spirantization of post-vocalic plosives in otherlanguages; for instance, inJerba Berber.^[1]

The phenomenon's name comprises these six consonants with haphazardvowels for pronunciation: BeGaDKePaT. The Hebrew termבֶּגֶ״ד כֶּפֶ״ת (Modern Hebrew/ˌbeɡedˈkefet/) 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 nodagesh.

Begedkefet spirantization developed during the Biblical Hebrew period due to Aramaic influence. Its time of emergence can be found by noting that theOld Aramaic phonemes/θ/,/ð/ disappeared in the7th century BC.^[2] During this period all six plosive/fricative pairs wereallophonic.

InModern Hebrew,Sephardi Hebrew, and most forms ofMizrahi Hebrew, three of the six letters,ב‎ (bet),כ‎ (kaf) andפ‎ (pe) each still denotes astop–fricative variant pair; however, in Modern Hebrew these variants are no longer purely allophonic (seebelow). Althoughorthographic variants ofג‎ (gimel),ד‎ (daleth) andת‎ (taw) still exist, these letters' pronunciation always remains acoustically and phonologically indistinguishable.^{[note 1]}

InAshkenazi Hebrew and inYiddish borrowings from it,ת‎ without dagesh still denotes a fricative variant, which is pronounced[s], which diverged from Biblical/Mishnaic[θ].

The only pronunciation tradition to preserve and distinguish all begadkefat letters isYemenite Hebrew. However, in Yemenite Hebrew, gimel with dagesh is avoiced postalveolar affricate[d͡ʒ] under the influence ofJudeo-Yemeni Arabic; it diverged fromMishnaic Hebrew[ɡ].

The phenomenon is attributed to the following allophonic consonants:

InHebrewwriting with niqqud, a dot in the center of one of these letters, calleddagesh( ּ ), marks the plosive articulation:

• at the beginning of a word^{[note 2]} or after a consonant (in which cases it is termed "dagesh qal"^{[note 3]}),
• 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 amacron) placed above it, called "rafe"( ֿ ), marks in Yiddish (and rarely in Hebrew) the fricative articulation.

As mentioned above, the fricative variants of[ɡ],[d] and[t] no longer exist in modern Hebrew. (However, Hebrewdoes have theguttural R consonant/ʁ/ which is the voiced counterpart of/χ/ and sounds similar toMizrahi Hebrew's fricative variant of[ɡ] ḡimel as well asArabic's غ ġayn, both of which are[ɣ~ʁ]. Modern Hebrew ר resh can still sporadically be found standing in for this phoneme, for example in the Hebrew rendering ofRaleb (Ghaleb) Majadele's name.) The three remaining pairs/b/~/v/,/k/~/χ/, and/p/~/f/ still sometimesalternate, as demonstrated ininflections of manyroots in which the roots' meaning is retained despite variation of begedkefet letters'manner of articulation, e.g.,

however, in Modern Hebrew, stop and fricative variants ofב‎‏,כ‎ andפ‎ are distinct phonemes, and there areminimal pairs:

and consider, e.g.:

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 theinflections:

• קפץ ← קיפץ‎	/kaˈfats/→/kiˈpets/, historically/kipˈpets/	("jumped" → "hopped"),
• שבר ← שיבר‎	/ʃaˈvar/→/ʃiˈber/, historically/ʃibˈber/	("broke" → "shattered"),
• שכן ← שיכן‎	/ʃaˈχan/→/ʃiˈken/, historically/ʃikˈken/	("resided" → "housed"),

• due to the introduction, throughforeign borrowings, of:

 • syllable-initial/f/ (e.g.פברק‎/fibˈʁek/ "fabricated"),

 • non-syllable-initial/p/ (e.g.הפנט‎/hipˈnet/ "hypnotized")

 • non-syllable-initial/b/ (e.g.פברק‎/fibˈʁek/ "fabricated"), ג׳וֹבּ/dʒob/ "job",קוּבּ‎/kub/ "cubic meter",פָּאבּ‎/pab/ "pub").

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

• The wordsמעבורת‎ (ferry) andמעברות‎ (refugee absorption camps), whose respective prescribed pronunciation is/maʕˈboʁet/ and/maʕbaˈʁot/, are commonly pronounced/ma.aˈboʁet/ and/ma.abaˈʁot/, replacing the consonant (/ʕ/) with a vowel (/a/), but still preferring the stop variant/b/ to its fricative counterpoint/v/.
• Similarly, the wordsהעפלה‎ (Aliyah Bet, called the Ha'apala which designates the covert Jewish immigration to British Palestine, 1934–1948) andמעפילים‎ (the immigrants of this immigration), whose respective prescribed pronunciation is/haʕpaˈla/ and/maʕpiˈlim/, are commonly pronounced/ha.apaˈla/ and/ma.apiˈlim/, again replacing the consonant (/ʕ/) with the vowel (/a/), but still preferring the stop/p/ to the fricative/f/.
• Conversely, words likeלהכחיש‎ (to deny) orמכחול‎ (paintbrush), whose respective prescribed pronunciation is/lehaχˈħiʃ/ and/miχˈħol/, are commonly pronounced/lehakˈχiʃ/ and/mikˈχol/, preferring the stop/k/ to the fricative/χ/, although following vowels (respectively/a/ and/i/), due to the shifting of the original semitic pronunciation of the letterח‎ (heth) from/ħ/ to/χ/, rendering it identical to common Israeli pronunciation of the fricative variant of the letterכ‎.

•  Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar, §12,§13,§21

• Phonology
• Linguistic morphology
• Hebrew language
• Aramaic languages

• Pages with plain IPA
• All articles with broken links to citations
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Articles containing Hebrew-language text
• Articles containing Syriac-language text