2.10 בגד כפת letters can take either type of Dagesh

Any consonant (except for Gutturals and Resh) can take a Dagesh Forte, including a בגד כפת letter

• The “Buck-up” letters will take the hard pronunciation regardless of a Dagesh Lene or Dagesh Forte - See the final word אַתָּה in the previous section

Advanced tip: When you see a Dagesh Forte, it often means that another letter (commonly, the letters נ and ת) has disappeared³⁸. We will talk more about this later in the course.

It’s good to think of the Dagesh Forte as the “Doubling Dagesh” since it doubles the consonant and often changes a word’s meaning.

Conversely, we can think of the Dagesh Lene as the “Meaningless Dagesh” since it does not ever change a word’s meaning

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38. Not entirely unlike the English apostrophe in words like can’t. The grammatical term for this is “assimilation.”↩︎