Heblish – Hebrew Lessons

Tenses

Free Hebrew lessons – September 2010 – Training – Day 36

Shalom mi-Israel (Hello from Israel),

Wow! It was a good vacation. We were in Berlin, and if you haven’t visited there yet, this is the time to think about it… No, I didn’t get a commission from the iriya (city council) of Berlin…  

In our previous lessons we had a refresher, but before that, in lesson 34, we learned some tenses. We learned that verbs in the present tense singular form remain the same, like: I sit, you sit, he sits -
Ani yoshev, ata yoshev, hu yoshev for masculine, and: I sit, you sit, she sits:  
Ani yoshevet, at yoshevet, hi yoshevet for feminine.

Today we’ll take another step ahead and learn the plural form.

Today’s menu: The present – plural form

Attention: The underlined letters represent the accent.

Remember “Rule number 1″
In the present – there are only 4 inflections for EVERY Hebrew verb:
- Singular for (m) – (m) means masculine
- Singular for (f) – (f) means feminine
- Plural for (m)
- Plural for (f)

If you remember, when we talked about the singular form, we used the following table.

 * I hope you remember: There is no “it” in Hebrew

Today we will learn the plural form.

Let’s see how to say the last 3 words we learned: sit, write and learn, in the plural form:

Masculine:

We, you, they (masculine):
Sit – Ana^nu yoshvim, atem yoshvim, hem yoshvim.
Write – Ana^nu kotvim, atem kotvim, hem kotvim.
Learn – Ana^nu lomdim, atem lomdim, hem lomdim.

Feminine:

We, you, they (feminine):
Sit – Ana^nu yoshvot, aten yoshvot, hen yoshvot.
Write – Ana^nu kotvot, aten kotvot, hen kotvot.
Learn – Ana^nu lomdot, aten lomdot, hen lomdot.

I already said it, but I will say it again – There are two things you must remember:

1. In Hebrew there are no “present simple” and “present progressive” tenses – there is only one form of “present,” and the verb remains the same for the plural persons, depending on the gender.

2. The difference between masculine and feminine in the plural form is the “ot” on the end of the feminine verbs and the “im” for the masculine verbs.
In the present – “ot” is the suffix for all feminine plural verbs,  and “im” is the suffix for all masculine plural verbs. Again – I’m talking about the present!

To really “get” this, you must look at the tables above over and over and over… let it soak in and you will find it’s not that confusing.  If you want to talk about “confusing,” let’s talk about learning English.  Ha!… 

Lehitraot in lesson 37 …

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Tenses

Free Hebrew lessons – August 2010 – Training – Day 34:

Shalom,

I really don’t understand why everybody says it’s hot. I’m sitting here at my computer, drinking a cup of hot tea, listening to beautiful music, the air conditioner is on… and everything is OK…

In our previous lesson we learned how to say maim (water) and shamaim (sky). We learned the word for “of / belonging to”, shel and its inflections, and we mentioned again the 3 tenses in Hebrew: past, present and future.

Today we’ll take another step ahead and learn 3 new words and their inflections.

Today’s menu: The present – singular form

Attention: The underlined letters represent the accent.

In Hebrew there are 7 different forms of verbs.

Let’s imagine seven different buildings, each building holds one form.  If you know how to conjugate one word in a building, you can do that for all the other “neighbors” (the other verbs in that building).

Hebrew is a very structured language, but I’m not sure if I’m going to teach you in the traditional way, like I learned in school. Now you might want to say, “goodbye Yaron, it was nice to meet you, see you one day – maybe…”

So what I’m going to do is, teach you the main rules which effect the most conjugations, or persons.

The present

Rule number 1
In the present – there are only 4 inflections for EVERY Hebrew verb:
- Singular for (m) – (m) means masculine
- Singular for (f) – (f) means feminine
- Plural for (m)
- Plural for (f)

Today we will learn only the singular form.

Where is the “it” subject pronoun?
You sometimes say that Hebrew is a difficult language, but I’m not sure about that… in English there is a subject pronoun “it,” but there is no “it” in Hebrew.

Dogs and men are the same… oh, wait… wait… I wanted to say… OK, dogs and men are the same … but I meant to say that human beings, animals and objects are the same, in Hebrew. There are no words like “it“, “which” or “who,” which can tell us if we are talking about a man or about his dog…

NOTE:  Remember, in Hebrew there is no word for “am/is/are” – it is inferred in “ani, ata, hu,” etc.  In other words, “ani” means “I” and/or “I am”; “ata” means “you” and/or “you are”; “hu” means “he” and/or “he is,” and so forth.  It takes a little getting used to for the English speaker, but it is really a great feature of the Hebrew language.

Today’s new words: sit, write & learn

Masculine:

I, you, he:
Sit – Ani yoshev, ata yoshev, hu yoshev.
Write – Ani kotev, ata kotev, hu kotev.
Learn – Ani lomed, ata lomed, hu lomed.

Feminine:

I, you, she:
Sit – Ani yoshevet, at yoshevet, hi yoshevet.
Write – Ani kotevet, at kotevet, hi kotevet.
Learn – Ani lomedet, at lomedet, hi lomedet.

From the two tables above you can see two things:

1. In Hebrew there are no “present simple” and “present progressive” tenses – there is only one form of “present,” and the verb remains the same for the singular persons, depending on the gender.

2. The difference between masculine and feminine is the “et” on the end of the feminine verbs. “Et” is the suffix for most feminine singular verbs. Most, but not every…

After you worked so hard today, I have a beautiful story about a “present” to show you. It is more a gift than a present… You are welcome to read it here: The present.

Lehitraot in lesson 35 …

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Holiday – ^ag Shavuot

Free Hebrew lessons – May 2010 – Training – Day 23:

^ag samea^ – (happy holidays),

In our previous lesson we read the end of Conny’s story, corrected her Heblish and also learned many new Hebrew words. Some of the words were in the first person.

Since today is a holiday (^ag Shavuot), we won’t have a real lesson, but I still want to put a little focus on those first person words.  

Today’s menu: A short focus on some first person words

Let’s take only what we’ve learned from Conny’s story:

In Hebrew there is a difference between asking for something to happen (a request for some kind of “action”), and simply asking a question.

More examples:
   – I asked for a chair.
     This is a request, so in Hebrew we say: Bikashti kise.

   – I asked “may I sit down?”
     This is just a question, therefore in Hebrew we say: Shaalti “ani ya^ol lashevet?”

More words from Conny’s story:

That’s all for this lesson. It’s only a few words, but a very important concept in the Hebrew language.

Lehitraot (see you) in lesson 24…

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