Hebrew Dagesh Point

It changes the consonant reading; it is not a vowel. Dagesh kal marks the stop-like reading of the six-letter group בגדכפת; dagesh chazak marks a doubled consonant in traditional reading. Modern Hebrew usually does not pronounce that doubling, though the point still distinguishes sounds in ב, כ, and פ.

On word-final ה, mapiq marks an audible consonant; in וּ, the same point is part of shuruq, the spelling for the vowel u.

when did Hebrew pointing begin?

Hebrew points were added to help preserve readings of biblical text. Biblical Hebrew was first written mainly with consonants; pointing systems emerged in Late Antiquity and the early Islamic period to clarify pronunciation and reading. The wider system was in place by the mid-eighth century, and the earliest surviving pointed scriptural manuscripts date to the ninth and tenth centuries.

By the twelfth century, the Tiberian system had largely displaced the Palestinian and Babylonian systems. A 2021 study compares Hebrew pointing with Syriac, another Semitic script: both use mark placement above and below letters to signal sound. It does not establish direct borrowing of identical dot shapes.