[Mesorah] Kosht

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

R' Seth Mandel wrote:
> The absence of a vowel (including the shva sign) would
> indicate that the consonantal letter is not pronounced.
> That is the way the Tiberian punctuation indicates silent
> letters, such as the sin in Yissokhor or the yod in the third
> person masculine singular pronominal ending for plural
> nouns (which is not pronounced -oyw) or the second person
> masculine singular pronominal ending for plural nouns (which
> is not pronounced -eikho).

A frequent exception to this rule is the final letter of a word, which is pronounced even though there is no vowel on it. I supposed this exception is explained away by saying that there is an implied shva nach which we don't bother to write. Then we need an exception to the exception, to write the shva when there's a shva on both of the last two letters.

New (but related) question: I noticed that in the great majority of these two-final-shva words (including kosht nayrd and achalt) the last consonant has a dagesh. Is there some sort of rule that a dagesh on a shva shows that the shva is a shva na? Or maybe I'm confusing this with something about two consecutive shvas.

Akiva Miller

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