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The little dot that you see in the middle of letters is called a Dagesh. Most of the time, this dot doesn’t change the pronunciation of the consonant except for three letters. I discuss this point later in this section.

Hebrew has two types of D’geshim (duh-gehsh-eem; the plural form of Dagesh):

 Dagesh Kal (dah-gehsh kahl): Appears at the beginning of all words and at the beginning of all syllables in the following letters: בּ (Bet), גּ (Gimmel), דּ (Dalet), כּ (Kaf), פּ (Pey), and תּ (Tav).

 Dagesh ḥazak (dah-gehsh ḥah-zahk): Appears after the word the, which in Hebrew is a prefix consisting of the letter Hey and the vowel Patach below it.

Don’t get too hung up on this distinction, because all D’geshim look the same!

Sometimes in Hebrew, a letter acts like a weak letter, such as a ה (Hey) or a נ (Nun), and disappears in the course of verb conjugation. (By “weak letter,” I mean that it sometimes drops out during conjugation.) When a weak letter disappears, a Dagesh Chazak appears in the letter that comes after the dropped letter. Also, certain word patterns called Mishkalim (meesh-kah-leem), in which all the words belong to a certain category (such as professions, colors, and physical challenges), have a Dagesh in one of the letters. Words that describe physical challenges, such as blindness and deafness, for example, always take a Dagesh ḥazak in the middle letter of the word.