21st Century Bible Hebrew -- that weird thing with hitpael

Next, a screwy thing about hitpael.  The spelling can change if certain letters are at the start of the root.

Hebrew can’t stand to put certain sounds together in a certain order.  So it can be hard to identify the root of a verb that you are pretty sure is in the hitpael.  If the second letter of the entire verb is shin, sin, tsade or zayin, and the third letter is tav, tav, tet, or dalet, you are looking at a verb in hitpael and the root is peh shin, peh sin, peh tsade, or peh zayin.

Zamen, “invite” will be hizdamen,	הזדמן
Tsar, “trouble” will be hitstaer, meaning “regret” and the t sound will be supplied by a tet	הצטער
Shamer, “guard” will be hishtamer	השתמר

Now, if there are certain sounds Hebrew insists on changing, what about dalet, tet and tav?

No worries.  There is always a shva under the tav of the hitpael and in this case it will be a slightly audible shva.  Hebrew can tolerate a dalet after a tav so it doesn’t change the order.

As for the tav-tet and tav-tav combination, if you are looking at a text with vowels, you will find a dagesh in the tet or tav and then the other two root letters.  There’s one in Leviticus 14:4, mittaher, to become tahor.