Begadkefat (also begedkefet) is the 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. Celtic languages have a similar system. The name of the phenomenon is made up of these six consonants, mixed with haphazard vowels for the sake of pronunciation: BeGaDKePaT. The Hebrew term בֶּגֶ״ד כֶּפֶ״ת (Modern Hebrew ) denotes the letters themselves (rather than the phenomenon of spirantization). If a beged-kephat is at the beginning of a word, and is preceded by a word ending in an open syllable, then there is no dagesh. 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, disappeared in the 7th century BC. During this period all six plosive / fricative pairs were allophonic. In Modern Hebrew, Sephardi Hebrew, and most forms of Mizrahi Hebrew, three of the six letters, (bet), (kaf) and (pe) each still denotes a stop–fricative variant pair; however, in Modern Hebrew these variants are no longer purely allophonic (see below). Although orthographic variants of (gimel), (dalet) and (tav) still exist, these letters' pronunciation always remains acoustically and phonologically indistinguishable. In Ashkenazi Hebrew and in Yiddish borrowings from Ashkenazi Hebrew, without dagesh still denotes a fricative variant (under the influence of Judeo-German, aka Yiddish) which diverged from Biblical/Mishnaic. The only extant Hebrew pronunciation tradition to preserve and distinguish all begadkefat letters is Yemenite Hebrew; however, in Yemenite Hebrew the sound of gimel with dagesh is a voiced palato-alveolar affricate (under the influence of Judeo-Yemeni Arabic), which diverged from Biblical/Mishnaic.

Orthography

The phenomenon is attributed to the following allophonic consonants: 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, and no longer exist in modern Hebrew. (However, Hebrew does have the guttural R consonant which is the voiced counterpart of and sounds similar to Mizrahi Hebrew's fricative variant of ḡimel as well as Arabic's غ ġayn, both of which are . 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 ~, ~, and ~ 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, and are distinct phonemes, and there are minimal pairs: and consider, e.g.: This phonemic divergence is due to a number of factors, amongst others: Even aside from borrowings or lost gemination, common Israeli pronunciation sometimes violates 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.: