[Mesorah] Kosht

[Zev Sero]

kennethgmiller at juno.com wrote:

> 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.

Yes, there is such a rule, but there's also a rule that a dagesh can't
appear at the very end of a word.  These words break that rule.  There's
another rule that a sheva na is always the beginning of a syllable, and
therefore can't possibly exist at the end of a word; that rule, as far as
I know, has no exceptions, because it's part of the very definition of
sheva na.  Therefore the sheva at the end of these words is nach, even
though there's a dagesh.  (I wonder whether these dots aren't really
degeshim at all, but mappikim, such as one gets in a final heh, and their
function is to indicate that the letter is pronounced.)

-- 
Zev Sero               Something has gone seriously awry with this Court's
zev at sero.name          interpretation of the Constitution.
                       	                          - Clarence Thomas