The dagesh (דגש) is a diacritic used in the Hebrew alphabet. It is part of the system of niqqud (vowel points), and was added to Hebrew orthography at the same time. An identical point with a different phonetic function (within the same system) is called Mapiq. A diacritical mark or diacritic, sometimes called an accent mark, is a mark added to a letter to alter a words pronunciation or to distinguish between similar words. ... Note: This article contains special characters. ... In Hebrew orthography, Niqqud or Nikkud (Standard Hebrew נִקּוּד, Biblical Hebrew נְקֻדּוֹת, Tiberian Hebrew vowels) is the system of diacritical vowel points (or vowel marks) in the Hebrew alphabet. ... Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family spoken by 6 million people mainly in Israel, parts of the Palestinian territories, the United States and by Jewish communities around the world. ... The orthography of a language is the set of rules of how to write correctly in the writing system of a language. ... The dagesh (דגש) is a diacritic used in the Hebrew alphabet. ...

The dagesh is a dot which is drawn inside a Hebrew letter to modify its sound. Note: This article contains special characters. ...

It is possible to add Dagesh Hazzak to almost any letter. It makes up for a missing letter.

The following letters cannot have a dagesh: aleph א, he ה, chet ח, ayin ע, resh ר. Aleph or alef has several meanings: Aleph or Alef (א) the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet; is the equivalent letter of the Arabic alphabet. ...

Dagesh Kal is for the letters bet ב, kaf כ & ך, pe פ & ף gimel ג, dalet ד, tav ת.
The effect of the dagesh on the above letters is to turn a fricative sound into its equivalent plosive: Note: This page contains phonetic information presented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) using Unicode. ... A stop or plosive or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. ...

• The letter bet sounds like v without and b with dagesh.
• The letter kaf sounds like kh without and k with dagesh.
• The letter pe sounds like f without and p with dagesh.

The dagesh is completely optional in modern, Israeli Hebrew and is usually not used. This might help explain why the names of the letters reflect the sound with the dagesh even though there is no dagesh present. Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family spoken by 6 million people mainly in Israel, parts of the Palestinian territories, the United States and by Jewish communities around the world. ...

In computer typography there are two ways to use a dagesh with Hebrew text. Here are Unicode examples: In computing, Unicode provides an international standard which has the goal of providing the means to encode the text of every document people want to store on computers. ...

• Combining characters:

 bet + dagesh: בּ בּ = U+05D1 U+05BC kaf + dagesh: כּ כּ = U+05DB U+05BC pe + dagesh: פּ פּ = U+05E4 U+05BC 

• Precomposed characters:

 bet with dagesh: בּ בּ = U+FB31 kaf with dagesh: כּ כּ = U+FB3B pe with dagesh: פּ פּ = U+FB44 

Some fonts, character sets, encodings, and OSes may support neither, one, or both methods. Combining diacritical marks are Unicode characters that are intended to modify other characters (see Diacritic). ... Precomposed character is a Unicode entity that can be decomposed into a canonically equivalent string of several other characters. ... A character encoding is a code that pairs a set of characters (such as an alphabet or syllabary) with a set of something else, such as numbers or electrical pulses. ... A character encoding consists of a code that pairs a set of characters (representations of graphemes or grapheme-like units, such as might appear in an alphabet or syllabary for the communication of a natural language) with a set of something else, such as numbers or electrical pulses, in order... In computing, an operating system (OS) is the system software responsible for the direct control and management of hardware and basic system operations. ...

Sources

• Lonely Planet (Hebrew phrasebook)
• alanwood.com Hebrew
• alanwood.com Alphabetic presentation