Dagesh

Okay kiddo, so have you ever seen the letters in the Hebrew alphabet? They are a little different than the letters you know in English. In Hebrew, some letters can have a special dot in the middle, kind of like a period. This special dot is called a dagesh.

Now, when a letter has a dagesh, it changes the way the letter sounds. It makes it stronger and louder! It's kind of like when you put extra force into saying a word, like when you say "bubbles" really strongly. So when an Israeli person reads Hebrew, they pay attention to the dagesh to know how to pronounce the word.

But sometimes, a letter can have two ways to say it even if it doesn't have a dagesh. This is called a "beged kefet" letter. And if you add a dagesh to this type of letter, it makes it even stronger!

So that's what a dagesh is – it's a special dot in Hebrew that changes the pronunciation of a letter, making it stronger and louder. Super cool, huh?