In Yiddish orthography, the rafe distinguishes פ /p/ from פֿ /f/ and in words of Semitic origin also ב /b/ from בֿ (/v/.
In Ladino the rafe, called a varrica (“little crossbar”), looks more like a breve-shaped diacritic (ﬞ ) on top of the letter (◌ﬞ). When written in the square form, or when unable to apply the varrica rafe diacritic to a letter, it is replaced by a geresh (׳) immediately after the letter as a substitute to effect the same change in pronunciation. For example, גﬞ is equivalent to ג׳ in altering the sound from the voiced velar stop [g] to the voiced postalveolar affricate [d͡ʒ], known in English as "soft g".
In Ladino, as in Tiberian Hebrew, the rafe changes ב [b] into בﬞ [v], ד [d] into דﬞ [ð], and פ [p] into פﬞ [f]. Unlike in Hebrew, the rafe also changes ג [g] into גﬞ ([d͡ʒ] or [t͡ʃ]), ז [z] into זﬞ [ʒ], and in words of Semitic origin also ש ([s] or [ʃ]) into שﬞ [ʃ]. In words of Romance origin, [s] is spelled as ס, freeing up ש for the voiceless postalveolar fricative [ʃ] without the need for a rafe to disambiguate.
Note Ladino orthography is far less standardized than Yiddish; original Ladino works may be written in Rashi script (using rafe), Hebrew block print (using geresh), or in the Latin alphabet (e.g. the 1553 Ferrara Bible).
"Hebrew Point Rafe" is encoded in the Unicode standard as U+05BF.
Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar, §14 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Gesenius%27_Hebrew_Grammar/14 ↩
Rabbi Nosson Scherman, Rabbi Meir Zlotowitz, Siddur Kol Yaakov/The Complete ArtScroll Siddur—Nusach Ashkenaz, 3rd Edition, Eighteenth Impression, Mesorah Publications Ltd., July 2003. ISBN 0-89906-650-X. Preface, p. IX. /wiki/ISBN_(identifier) ↩
"Sefarađizo: Ladino: Alefbet: Tabla". 2021-09-16. Archived from the original on 2021-09-16. Retrieved 2021-09-16. http://www.sefaradizo.org/ladino/alefbet/alefbet_ladino-tabla-es.html ↩