Geresh (׳‎ inHebrew:גֶּרֶשׁ‎^[1] orגֵּרֶשׁ‎^[2][3][ˈɡeʁeʃ], ormedieval[ˈɡeːɾeːʃ]) is a sign in Hebrew writing. It has two meanings.

1. Anapostrophe-likesign (also known colloquially as achupchik)^[4] placed after a letter:
   • as adiacritic that modifies thepronunciation of someletters (only in modern Hebrew),
   • as adiacritic that signifiesYiddishorigin of a word orsuffix,^{[citation needed]} (examples below)
   • as apunctuation mark to denoteinitialisms or abbreviations,
   • or to denote a single-digitHebrew numeral
2. A note ofcantillation in the reading of theTorah and otherBiblical books, taking the form of a curved diagonal stroke placed above a letter.

As adiacritic, the Geresh is written immediately after (left of) the letter it modifies. It indicates three sounds native to speakers ofmodern Hebrew that are common inloan words andslang:[dʒ] as injudge,[ʒ] as inmeasure and[tʃ] as inchurch. In transliteration ofArabic, it indicates Arabicphonemes which are usuallyallophones in modern Hebrew:[ɣ] is distinguished from[r] and[ħ] is distinguished from[χ]. Finally, it indicates other sounds foreign to thephonology of modern Hebrew speakers and used exclusively for the transliteration of foreign words:[ð] as inthen,[θ] as inthin,[sˤ]; and, in some transliteration systems, also[tˤ],[dˤ] and[ðˤ]. It may be compared to the usage of a followingh in various Latin digraphs to form other consonant sounds not supported by the basic Latin alphabet, such as "sh", "th", etc.

There are six additional letters in theArabic alphabet. They areṮāʾ,Ḫāʾ,Ḏāl,Ḍād,Ẓāʾ, andGhayn. Also, some letters have different sounds inArabic phonology andmodern Hebrew phonology, such asJīm.

Note

*^ Both double-vav and vav with geresh are non-standard and inconsistently used.^[7]

Some words or suffixes ofYiddish origin or pronunciation are marked with a geresh, e.g. thediminutivesuffixלֶ׳ה –-le, e.g.יענקל׳ה –Yankale (as inYankale Bodo), or the wordsחבר׳ה –[ˈχevre], 'guys' (which is the Yiddish pronunciation of Hebrewחברה[χevˈra] 'company'), orתכל׳ס –[ˈtaχles], 'bottom-line'.

The geresh is used as a punctuation mark ininitialisms and to denotenumerals.

Ininitialisms, the Geresh is written after the last letter of the initialism. For example: the titleגְּבֶרֶת (literally "lady") is abbreviatedגב׳, equivalent to English "Mrs" and "Ms".^[8]

A Geresh can be appended after (left of) a single letter to indicate that the letter represents aHebrew numeral. For example:ק׳ represents 100. A multi-digit Hebrew numeral is indicated by theGershayim⟨״⟩.

As a note ofcantillation in the reading of theTorah, the Geresh is printed above the accented letter:ב֜‎. TheGeresh Muqdam (lit. 'a Geresh made earlier'), a variant cantillation mark, is also printed above the accented letter, but slightly before (i.e. more to the right of) the position of the normal Geresh:ב֝‎. As a cantillation mark it is also calledṬères (טֶרֶס)‎.^[1]

Most keyboards do not have a key for the geresh. As a result, anapostrophe (',Unicode U+0027) is often substituted for it.

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