Holidays, Days Off
Free Hebrew lessons – December 2010 – Training – Day 48
Shalom le’kulam (Hi everyone),
In our previous lesson we talked about the websites I build and I taught you some useful sentences in Hebrew. On the same day (last Thursday), a big blaze started in Israel and killed 42 people. Five million trees went up in flames.
My brother (a^ sheli) who lives very near (she’gar meod karov) took some photos (tsilem kama tmunot). Here is one of them:
Today, we will talk about happy things.
Today’s menu: Holidays and Days Off
Attention: The underlined letters represent the accent.
We use the word holiday to describe time we spend touring or for national or religious events:
I went on holiday to Israel last year. Businesses were closed during Yom Ha’atsmaut (Independence Day), which is a national holiday.
In Hebrew “holiday” is ^ag, but when you say “I went on holiday,” you should say “yatsati (I went) le’^ufsha.” Hey, where is the word ^ag?
What we can learn here is, that when we say “holiday,” the simple translation is ^ag, but when you use it to describe a time you spend traveling and sightseeing, the word you want to use is ^ufsha.
In other words, ^ufsha is a vacation.
We use days off to talk about time we use for things other than work:
I am taking a couple of days off to visit my parents.
In Hebrew “day off” is yom ^ufsha and “days off” is yemey ^ufsha
Most Israelis say it incorrectly.
For “day off” they say yom ^ofesh and for “days off” they say yemey ^ofesh.
The word ^ofesh means freedom…
Maybe because the Israelis think a lot about freedom, they use it incorrectly when they just take a day off. Although… a day off from work is definitely a sort of “freedom.” 😉
Happy Holidays!
Lehitraot in lesson 49…
