Geresh

Geresh (׳ in Hebrew: גֶּרֶשׁ or גֵּרֶשׁ [ˈɡeʁeʃ], or medieval [ˈɡeːɾeːʃ]) is a sign in Hebrew writing. It has two meanings.

An apostrophe-like sign (also known colloquially as a chupchik) placed after a letter:

as a diacritic that modifies the pronunciation of some letters (only in modern Hebrew),

as a diacritic that signifies Yiddish origin of a word or suffix, (examples below)

as a punctuation mark to denote initialisms or abbreviations,

or to denote a single-digit Hebrew numeral

A note of cantillation in the reading of the Torah and other Biblical books, taking the form of a curved diagonal stroke placed above a letter.

Diacritic

As a diacritic, the Geresh is written immediately after (left of) the letter it modifies. It indicates three sounds native to speakers of modern Hebrew that are common in loan words and slang: [dʒ] as in judge, [ʒ] as in measure and [tʃ] as in church. In transliteration of Arabic, it indicates Arabic phonemes which are usually allophones in modern Hebrew: [ɣ] is distinguished from [r] and [ħ] is distinguished from [χ]. Finally, it indicates other sounds foreign to the phonology of modern Hebrew speakers and used exclusively for the transliteration of foreign words: [ð] as in then, [θ] as in thin, [sˤ]; and, in some transliteration systems, also [tˤ], [dˤ] and [ðˤ]. It may be compared to the usage of a following h in various Latin digraphs to form other consonant sounds not supported by the basic Latin alphabet, such as "sh", "th", etc.

Loanwords, slang, foreign names and transliterations

Transcriptions of Arabic

There are six additional letters in the Arabic alphabet. They are Ṯāʾ, Ḫāʾ, Ḏāl, Ḍād, Ẓāʾ, and Ghayn.