Foreign sounds
Advanced sounds for foreign words
Not all sounds present in European languages could originally be carried in Hebrew. Meanwhile, for foreign words, toponyms and names, these sounds had to be somehow written and spelled.
Thus in Modern Hebrew was invented system of letters with an apostrophe sign - 'geresh' (גרש), which forms a set of additional pronunciations you can see below.
Gimel + Geresh (גִימֵל + גֵּרֶשׁ)
ג׳
[dg]/[dʒ]Like in the English word 'gym'.
Zayin + Geresh (זַיִן + גֵּרֶשׁ)
ז׳
[j]/[ʒ]Like in the English word 'pleasure'.
Tsadi + Geresh (צָדִי + גֵּרֶשׁ)
צ׳
[ch]Like in the English word 'chip'.
Dalet + Geresh (דָלֶת + גֵּרֶשׁ)
ד׳
[th]/[ð]RARE!Like in the English word 'the'.
Tav + Geresh (תָו + גֵּרֶשׁ)
ת׳
[th]/[θ]RARE!Like in the English word 'thing'.
Vav + Vav (וָו + וָו)
וו
[w]RARE!Not 'geresh', but double letter.Like in the English word 'wow'.
In colloquial speech 'geresh' is often called as 'chupchik'.