Possessive
Free Hebrew lessons – July 2010 – Training – Day 33:
Hi,
Hot, very hot and humid, so… let’s try to cool off a bit…
In our previous lesson we learned more about the word “from.” We learned how to say “from me” (mi’meni), “from you” (mi’m^a), “from him” (mi’meno) etc… and we began to explore word endings in Hebrew, and the information they tell us.
Today we’ll do a short review of “from,” learn something interesting about “water” and “sky,” look at the important possessive word “mine,” and finally, start looking at “tenses” in Hebrew. That sounds like a lot, but it will be easy!
Today’s menu: New words-water, sky; the possessive word “mine”; introduction of “tenses”
Attention: The underlined letters represent the accent.
First, since it’s hot today, let’s drink some water…
Water
For water, you should say maim, in Hebrew.
In Hebrew the word for water, maim, is written using only three letters – “mem,” “yod” and “mem“.
Now for the interesting part…You can see that the first letter and the last letter are the same. This means that you can read it from right to left and also from left to right. It’s like a circle, like a mantra, a whole.
The idea conveyed is, that water is something endless, where it begins and ends no one knows…
Sky
For sky, you should say shamaim, in Hebrew.
The meaning of the word “sham” is “there,” and the meaning of “maim” you just learned… Therefore “sky” (shamaim), means “there is water.”
If you open the first book in the Bible, Bereshit, you will see in chapter 1 verse 6, God separated the water which was under the sky from the water above the sky. This is a curious thing, but it can help you to remember how to say “sky” in Hebrew.
OK, now that we have had enough water… we can go ahead with our lesson.
In our previous lesson we learned the word “from” and I asked you to pay attention to the suffixes.
| English | Heblish | Suffixes |
| From me | Mi’meni | i |
| From you (masculine) | Mi’m^a | ^a |
| From you (feminine) | Mi’me^ | ^ |
| From him | Mi’meno | o |
| From her | Mi’mena | a |
| From us | Me’itanu | nu |
| From you (plural masculine) | Mi’kem | em |
| From you (plural feminine) | Mi’ken | en |
| From them (masculine) | Me’hem | hem |
| From them (feminine) | Me’hen | hen |
Today I will show you a new word and its inflection – Mine.
| English | Heblish | Suffixes |
| Mine | Sheli | i |
| Yours (masculine) | Shel^a | ^a |
| Yours (feminine) | Shela^ | ^ |
| His | Shelo | o |
| Hers | Shela | a |
| Ours | Shelanu | nu |
| Yours (plural masculine) | Shela^em | em |
| Yours (plural feminine) | Shela^en | en |
| Their (masculine) | Shelahem | hem |
| Their (feminine) | Shelahen | hen |
First, if you compare the two tables, you can see that there is something common between all the words in both tables – the endings. The suffixes are the same…
Second, notice in the table for “mine” that the first four letters are the same for each inflection, the letters “shel”
Possessive
The word “shel” in Hebrew means “of” or “belonging to.”
Examples:
– This is my book – ze ha’sefer sheli.
– Whose book is this? – shel mi ha’sefer ha’ze?
– This is Yaron’s book – ze ha’sefer shel Yaron.
– Right, this is his book – na^on, ze ha’sefer shelo.
In Hebrew there are 4 tenses but only 3 are really important to know: Past, Present and Future. That’s it!
Personally, I think that it’s enough.
– We are talking about yesterday, last year, our wedding…
– We are talking about today, what we are doing now and…
– We are talking about tomorrow, next year, our pension, etc… right?
So, these 3 tenses are what we need to learn. We already talked about tenses in lesson 14, and I won’t talk about them today; I just wanted to introduce the subject, again. Next lesson, we’ll really dig into tenses.
Today we’ve learned:
1. How to say “water” and “sky,” maim and shamaim,
2. We’ve seen that the inflections for “from” and “mine” give us the same suffixes – (personal endings),
3. We learned the word for “of / belonging to”, shel, and its inflections and…
4. We mentioned the 3 tenses in Hebrew: past, present and future.
Lehitraot in lesson 34 … 😉
