Begadkefat (also begadkephat, begedkefet) is the name given to a 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 the Berber language of Djerba. Irish has a similar system.
Contents
The phenomenon is attributed to the following consonants:
The name of the phenomenon is made up with these six consonants, mixed with haphazard vowels for the sake of pronunciation: BeGaDKePaT. The Hebrew term בֶּגֶ״ד כֶּפֶ״ת (Modern Hebrew /ˌbeɡedˈkefet/) denotes the letters themselves (rather than the phenomenon of spirantization).
Begedkefet spirantization developed sometime during the lifetime of Biblical Hebrew under the influence of Aramaic. Its time of emergence can be found by noting that the Old Aramaic phonemes /θ/, /ð/ disappeared in the 7th century BC. It persisted in Hebrew until the 2nd century CE. 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 denote a stop–fricative variant pair; these variants are, however, no longer purely allophonic (see below). Although orthographic variants of ג (gimel), ד (dalet) and ת (tav) still exist, these letters' pronunciation always remains acoustically and phonologically indistinguishable. In Yiddish, ת can denote a fricative variant, [s].
Orthography
In Hebrew writing with niqqud, a dot in the center of one of these letters, called dagesh ( ּ ), marks the plosive articulation:
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 [ɡ], [d] and [t] no longer exist in modern Hebrew. (However, Hebrew does have the guttural R consonant /ʁ/ which is the voiced counterpart of /χ/ and often coincides with Mizrahi Hebrew's fricative variant of [ɡ] ḡimel as well as Arabic'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 of Raleb (Ghaleb) Majadele's name.) The three remaining pairs /b/~/v/, /k/~/χ/, and /p/~/f/ 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.,
however, in Modern Hebrew, stop and fricative variants of ב, כ and פ are sometimes distinct phonemes, compare e.g.:
and consider, e.g.:
This phonemic divergence might be due to a number of factors, amongst others:
Apart from this partial phonemic distinction, common Israeli pronunciation no longer always concords with 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.: