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There is a grammatical concept as follows, if I'm not mistaking:

If [Aleph, Hei, Yud, Vav] comes at the end of one word, the dot of the first letter in the following word will be dropped.

My question is what will happen to pronunciation of the second word? Example:

  1. Pirkei avot: Perek dalet pasogh chaf Is it ketova or chatova?

  2. Pirkei avot: perek hei pasuk chet last word Is it kehalacha or chehalacha?

I could be very wrong, as I’m learning. Please correct me. Thank you.

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    Two comments: The rule is that the below mentioned בגדכפ"ת letters lose their dot if the previous syllable is open (i.e. ends with a vowel) and the previous word is not separated by a disjunctive cantillation mark. If you grab a Tanakh, you'll quickly find dozens of such cases, but later texts, like the Mishnah you mentioned, are not good examples, because such rules are often disregarded and there's no authoritative text for the Oral Law. Commented Jul 21 at 10:14
  • Great explanation. How do u read the examples I have given?
    – Angie
    Commented Jul 25 at 22:13
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    Again, the vocalisation of different Mishnah manuscripts has way lower authoritativeness and doesn't have cantillation marks that would make this clear. However, both at לִדְיוֹ כְתוּבָה and שֶׁלֹּא כַהֲלָכָה it is reasonable to assume that the two words go together, so the כ should be kh. Commented Jul 27 at 20:28
  • For Yeivin's "take" on this, see Yeivin's Introduction to the Tiberian Masorah starting with section 399. My web adaptation of this can be found here: bdenckla.github.io/phonetic-hbo/….
    – bfd
    Commented Aug 31 at 18:45

1 Answer 1

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If one of the six begedkefet letters is written without a dagesh (dot inside the letter), then it is always pronounced as a fricative, rather than as a plosive.

So, in the examples you gave, the kaf appears without a dagesh and is therefore pronounced as a voiceless uvular fricative or voiceless velar fricative (depending on one's tradition) - often transliterated as 'kh' or 'ch'.

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