Future tense

Free Hebrew lessons – March 2011 – Training – Day 61

Shalom,

In our previous lesson we talked about Japan and its tragedy.

Lately, there have been a lot of disasters, but we must always look forward to the future and hope the best for us and for our families.

Therefore, today we will talk about the future, and I also have a beautiful story for you at the end of the lesson…      
 

Today’s menu: Future tense

Attention: The underlined letters represent the accent.

In lesson 43 we learned about the Eitan letters, and I taught you how to conjugate the word “close” in the future tense for all of the English pronouns.

As I told you, in Hebrew every verb has a root, and in the future tense there are four possible prefix letters before the root.
If you learn them, you will be able to conjugate almost every Hebrew verb in the future tense.
The letters are: e, i, t and n, and in Hebrew the name of this group of letters is “Eitan.”

Today I will only give you some examples with some new verbs.
Let’s have fun today, and use a sentence from the beautiful Beatles song, “Close your eyes”…

“Close your eyes and I’ll kiss you, tomorrow I’ll miss you…”

A man speaking to a woman

1. Close your eyes – Tisgeri et ha’einaim shela^

   – Close – Tisgeri  
   – Your – Shela^
   – Eyes – Einaim

The word “close” in English is not in the future tense, but in Hebrew when I use “close” for “close your eyes,” or for any similar sentence, I use an imperative form.

Since in Hebrew we don’t use the imperative form very often, most of those words will be in the future tense. That’s why the word “close” for this example is in the future tense.

If you want to know how to say it in high (very proper) Hebrew, you can read the following explanation. Otherwise, simply go ahead and read the next paragraph.
For “tisgeri,” as an exception to what I said about the Eitan letters, I also can say “sigri.” Sigri is the imperative form of “tisgeri.”
For “ha’einaim shela^” (your eyes), I can say “einai^” which is only one word, so the whole sentence for “close your eyes” will be “sigri et einai^.”

Now leaving the high Hebrew aside, let’s learn the rest of the sentence:

2. And I’ll kiss you – Va’ani anashek ota^

   – And I – Va’ani
   – I will kiss – anashek (The prefix “a” indicates the first person, even though I already said “ani“.)
   – I will not talk about the “you” (ota^) today. We will talk about it in our next lesson.  It is not hard, it just needs some more detailed explanation. 

Here, for “anashek,” you can see that I used “a” instead of “e” for “I will kiss”. I don’t want to dwell on the reason, but in Hebrew it is always the same letter “alef,” translated as the “e” letter. In Heblish it will be either “e” or “a” depending on the root. 

So, to expand on the rule I taught you in lesson 43:
- For every verb in the future tense in Hebrew, we use one of the “Eitan” prefixes:  e, i, t or n before the root. For first person (singular) it will either e or a.

3. Tomorrow I’ll miss you – Ma^ar etgaagea elai^

   – Tomorrow – Ma^ar
   – I will miss – etgaagea
   – (I will miss whom? I will miss…) you – elai^

Now, here is the story I promised:
One of our famous Israeli writers, Meir Shalev, wrote a short article about his father.  Mr. Shalev’s story went something like this:  “In WWII my father volunteered in the British army. During his service, he shared a truck with another soldier, who was a devout Christian believer. Although he was a Jew, my father did not practice orthodox Judaism. When the Christian driver heard that his companion was from Jerusalem, he started talking to my father about the stories in the Bible. They drove four days; my non-orthodox Jewish father and the orthodox Christian, “together with” Abraham and Moses, Rachel and Sarah, King David and more heroes from the Bible.

The Christian driver, who knew a lot about the Bible, was surprised to discover how much my father knew about the Bible. At the end of the journey, when they arrived in Alexandria (Egypt), he hugged my father and said: “I knew that the Bible was translated to many languages, but I never dreamed that it was also translated into Hebrew…” ”

Lehitraot in lesson 62…

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Japan

Free Hebrew lessons – March 2011 – Training – Day 60

Hello, my friends.

It is with a heavy heart that I come to you this week. I tried to write a lesson, but my attention kept going back to the news of the tragedy in Japan. If you will forgive me, this week I would like to simply pause and be thankful for the good things in my life – my family, my friends, my health and my country.

I have never been to Japan, but I do have a friend there, named Aki, who is also one of our fellow students on Free-Hebrew. Here is what she wrote to me the day after the earthquake:

Hi, Yaron

Most terrible earthquake in Japan I ever know.

Over a thousand of people are dead, and 10 thousand people are missing. 

The center of earthquake is 370 km distant from Tokyo. My family is all right.

Still now I feel quakes several times.

Indeed I’m afraid that a nuclear reactor may be damaged…

Please pray for Japan, my friend.

If you have friends or family in Japan, please share about it on our FB Group page, let us know if they are safe.

As I write this, the official number of dead and missing is 13,000, with many more people feared lost or still trapped in land or mud slides. At this point it is simply impossible to know how many lives have been affected. To add to the misery, Japan is reporting that some of their nuclear reactors are leaking radiation into the surrounding area and in danger of a “meltdown.”  It is almost too much for the mind to absorb.

Please join me in praying for the lost, the trapped and the injured people of the great country of Japan. Another positive thing we can do is to open our homes to some of the refugees.  It has been reported that as many as 450,000 people are living in temporary shelters, often sleeping on the floor of school gymnasiums, and the weather in Japan is very cold this time of the year. 

Next week we will pick up with our regular lessons. I apologize for the somber tone of the “lesson” this week; perhaps the real lesson is that we should not waste a second of our lives, and always be sure that our family and friends know that we value each and every one of them, as I value you.

   – Japan – Yapan
   – Earthquake – Reidat adama (earth – adama)
   – Ocean – Ocyanus
   – Sea – Yam
   – Tsunami – Tsunami
   – Dark Rain – Geshem sha^or (rain – geshem) 
         If you don’t recognize this term, it is a nickname for “radiation fallout.”
   – Nuclear reactor – Kur garini

Lehitraot in lesson 61… and let’s hope for good news!

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Refresher – lessons 9 to 12

Free Hebrew lessons – March 2011 – Training – Day 59

Hi,

In our previous lesson we learned that most of the time the suffix for plural words in the feminine is “ot” and in the masculine it is “im.” We will learn more about singular and plural during our lessons as you read many sentences and examples, but today we have to go back to lesson 9…

In lesson 50 I gave you our first lesson for 2011 which was our first refresher. We did a refresher for the first eight lessons and some of you told me that it was great. As I promised you to give more refreshers from time to time, here is our second refresher.

Today’s menu: Refresher for lessons 9 to 12

Attention: The underlined letters represent the accent.

In lesson 9 we learned how to say:
   – I want – ani rotse (m), ani rotsa (f)
   – I see – ani roe, (m), ani roa (f) and
   – I understand – ani mevin (m), ani mevina (f).

Lesson 10 was an important lesson, where we learned how to say “yes” (ken) and “no” (lo).

We also learned that “there is no” and “there are no” are both expressed with one short word – ein.

I’m sure you remember that “thanks” or “thank you” is “toda” in Hebrew, and I want to remind you that for “thanks a lot” you should say “toda raba.“

In that lesson we also learned that “excuse me” is “sli^a,” for example:
   – Excuse me, what is the time please – sli^a, ma ha’shaa be’vakasha?

But the most important thing we learned in lesson 10 was to ask “how much”
Examples:
   – How much is the bracelet? – Kama ole ha’tsamid?
   – Excuse me, how much is the fish? – Sli^a, kama ole ha’dag?
   – How much is the dress? – Kama ola ha’simla?

Kama ole for masculine and kama ola for feminine.

In lesson 9 and in lesson 11 we learned how to count from e^ad to shneim-asar (from 1 to 12) in masculine and feminine.

After learning and reading the Hebrew numbers one through twelve, I gave you an example for the six new words we learned in the following section:
“You can just imagine what we are going to do next week regarding “the bracelet and the ring” (ha’tsamid ve’ha’tabaat), the color of your “dress” (simla), and what are you going to do with a “bottle” (bakbuk) of wine, sweet “cake” (uga) and a “goooood  book” (sefer tov)…”

Lesson 12 will finish our current refresher with the table below:

This table is an excellent opportunity for you to see what we learned in our last lesson, lesson 58, when I taught you that most of the time the suffix for plural words in the feminine is “ot,” and “im” in the masculine.

Lehitraot in lesson 60…
Wow 60!?!

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