Holidays
Free Hebrew lessons – September 2010 – Training – Day 37
Shana Tova (Happy New Year),
Yes, today is the first day in the Hebrew calendar.
Yesterday evening we celebrated our New Years Eve (Erev Rosh Ha-shana), but I can’t tell you how it was, since I wrote this lesson two days before…
In our previous lessons we learned the plural form in the present tense. Now that we have learned the singular form in the present, in lesson 34, and the plural form, last week, you can now begin to conjugate verbs yourself…
But we won’t try to do that until Lesson 39 (two weeks from now).
Today we’ll learn only a few words regarding the important holiday of Rosh Hashana.
Today’s menu: Happy New Year
Attention: The underlined letters represent the accent.
Happy
For “happy” we say samea^ (masculine), and sme^a (feminine).
New
For “new” we say ^adash (masculine), and ^adasha (feminine).
Year
Year is a feminine noun. So in Hebrew, year is shana.
Therefore, if “year” is feminine, we have to choose the feminine words for “happy” and “new” (sme^a & ^adasha) to create the blessing “Happy New Year”, right?
Logically, the answer is yes, but actually not… (don’t kill me!)
For “Happy New Year” we say “Good Year”. This is our blessing for the New Year.
Hopefully you will remember that “good” is tov (masculine) and tova (feminine).
Therefore, for “Good Year” we say Shana Tova.
The name of this holiday is Rosh Ha-shana.
New Year
We’ve just learned how to say “new” and “year”, but for the expression “New Year” we say “Head of The Year”.
In Hebrew the word “head” also symbolizes a beginning.
For “head” we say rosh, and for “Head of The Year” we simply say Rosh Ha-shana.
After this short lesson, we know that today, (Thursday, Sep 9th) is Rosh Ha-shana for the Jewish people, and the blessing you can say is Shana Tova.
Shana Tova and lehitraot in lesson 38…
