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ALL S1L3 022112 Hpod101 Recordingscript
ALL S1L3 022112 Hpod101 Recordingscript
All About S1 #3
Painless Hebrew Grammar
# 3
HEBREWPOD101.COM ALL ABOUT S1 #3 1
Shira: All About Hebrew Lesson 3 – Painless Hebrew Grammar. [( ]שלוםSha'lom) everyone. Welcome back
to HebrewPod101.com. And congratulations to you on having the guts to click play on a grammar
lesson.
Amir: Well, what we do is take all that grammar and simplify it for you.
Shira: Yes. We're going to prove it for you today with a grammar head start.
--
Shira: Ok, first of all, we need to let you know the good news, which is that Hebrew is very similar to
English. In other words, it's an SVO language, where the sentence is structured as Subject, Verb, Object.
So if you are familiar with this basic structure, things will be easier for you.
Shira: It doesn't stop there. Just as English has three basic tenses, past, present and future, so does
Hebrew. The one big difference is that in Hebrew there are more conjugations of each verb.
Amir: Yeah. The verb must agree in both gender and number. Let's demonstrate what we're talking
about by using the most basic kind of sentence.
Shira: In a normal Hebrew declarative sentence, the word order is the same as a normal English
declarative sentence. Subject, verb, object.
Shira: "I study Hebrew" is precisely the same as English. [( ]אניA'ni) is "I," [( ]לומדLo'med) is "study" and
[( ]עבריתIvrit) is the word for "Hebrew." But that's the masculine form, I would say [( ]אני לומדת עבריתA'ni
lo'medet ivrit).
Amir: Yes. In the present tense, the verb changes according to the subject. For example, when the
subject is "I," the conjugation of the verb differs when the speaker is a man or a woman.
Shira: Ok, I guess here is where it gets a little more difficult than English.
Amir: It is, but in the present tense you only have to learn four forms of the verb conjugation. And
Hebrew is very consistent, so you'll be able to apply those four forms to most other words.
Amir: There are verbs that are partially irregular, but they still follow the same pattern as the regular
verbs.
Shira: "I drink tea." Again, the same structure as in English. And I would say [( ]אני שותה תהA'ni sho'ta teh).
Amir: And how about [( ]אני מלמד עבריתA'ni me'la'med ivrit), meaning "I teach Hebrew"?
Shira: That's a good one. My version is [( ]אני מלמדת עבריתA'ni me'la'medet ivrit). So you can see how
easy it is to start speaking Hebrew. You can already make three sentences.
Amir: What?
Amir: Ah, yes. Making sentences negative. Ok, this is easy too.
Amir: Negation occurs before the verb and any prepositional phrase. And all we have to do is add our
negation word there.
Shira: So, for the example we just had, you just add the negation word [( ]לאlo) in front of the verb.
Amir: Ok, but we are studying Hebrew, so let's talk about something else.
Amir: Oh, this one is so easy in Hebrew. There's absolutely nothing to learn.
Amir: So let's start by saying "I am Israeli." [( ]אני ישראליA'ni is'ra'e'li)
Shira: Did you catch that. The literal translation of what Amir just said is "I Israeli."
Amir: That's correct. The verb "to be," [( ]להיותLihi'yot), doesn't exist in the present tense. You just put the
sentence together like you normally would and leave the verb out.
Shira: That's not the only thing that can disappear in Hebrew. In the past and future tenses, personal
pronouns are usually not present.
Amir: The subject of the sentence is understood through the verb conjugation. So unless you need
specific information about the subject, using it would be redundant. Let's see our sentence that we used
before, "I study Hebrew," to demonstrate this.
Shira: In the past, that sentence would be [( ]למדתי עבריתLama'de'ti ivrit). "Studied Hebrew" are the only
two words there. The subject "I" is in the conjugation of the verb.
Shira: So that gives you a little taste of what the past and future tenses sounds like. So moving on.
Should we talk a little bit about the root system in Hebrew? It's very interesting.
Amir: Sure. Words in Hebrew are made up from three to four letter roots. The root gives the word its
essence, and when the word is applied to a pattern, it determines the word's part of speech and its
meaning.
Shira: This often comes in handy because even if you don't know a word, you can guess its meaning by
the root letters. Let's give some examples of this.
Amir: A good example is the root [ב.ת.( ]כka.ta.v). The verbs that come from this root are [( ]כתבkatav),
meaning "to write," [( ]נכתבNikh'tav) meaning "to be written," [( ]הכתיבHikhtiv) meaning "to dictate" and
[( ]התכתבHit'ka'tev) meaning "to correspond." The nouns, on the other hand, that come from the same
root are [( ]כתבKatav) meaning "handwriting," [( ]כתיבKtiv) meaning "spelling," [( ]מכתבMikh'tav) meaning
"letter," and [( ]הכתבהHakhtava) meaning "dictation."
Shira: They're all related. And they all sound similar. That's brilliant.
Amir: Now that we've covered word roots, let's have a closer look at gender.
Shira: In English, some nouns are automatically thought of as masculine or feminine, such as king, boy,
queen and girl. Everything else is referred to as it, such as pencil, dog and so forth.
Amir: In Hebrew, on the other hand, all nouns are assigned a gender. Some of them, like the words for
"man" and "woman," have an obvious classification, while other nouns that are usually thought of as "it"
in English are classified into one of these two categories in Hebrew. Here are some examples.
Shira: Boy.
Shira: King.
Shira: Circle.
Shira: Girl.
Shira: Queen.
Shira: "Brush." So the question then becomes how do you determine a nouns gender?
Amir: The end of the word will give you some clues as to what gender the word is. If a noun ends in a []ת
(tav) or a [( ]הhe'i), it's probably feminine. If it ends with any other letter, it's probably masculine.
Amir: Making a noun plural in Hebrew requires knowing its gender. Take a deep breath. It goes like this.
For masculine nouns, you start with singular [( ]ילדYeled).
Shira: King.
Shira: Kings.
Shira: Circles.
Shira: Girls.
Shira: Queens.
Shira: Brushes.
Amir: With most masculine nouns, we simply add [( ]יםYod mem) to the end of the word. With most
feminine nouns, we drop the [( ]הHe'i) or the [( ]תtav) at the end and add [( ]ותvav tav).
Shira: For instance, if you take the word for "leg," [( ]רגלRegel), it becomes [( ]רגלייםRagla'im) in the
plural.
Amir: And so forth. Now let's look at articles. "The" is the definite article in English. Well, in Hebrew the
definite article is actually a prefix.
Shira: You just add [( ]הHe'i) to the beginning of a word and voila, you have a definite article.
Amir: So adding a definite article to the nouns that we were just using would sound like this. []הילד
(Ha'yeled) meaning "the boy." [( ]הילדהHa'yalda) meaning "the girl." [( ]הילדיםHa'ye'la'dim) meaning "the
boys" or "the children."
Amir: Of course, we also have indefinite articles. The English ones are "a" and "an," depending on the
vowel sound. The Hebrew ones are…
Amir: That's right. They're just implied. When you say [( ]ילדYeled), it's understood that you're talking
about "a boy."
Shira: Wow, you Israelis are all about saving your breath.
Shira: We're missing a bit of color in our grammar study, don't you think? And by color I mean adjectives.
Amir: I agree. If you want to make your Hebrew more colorful, you can add adjectives.
Shira: Adjectives need to agree with a noun they're modifying both in gender and in number. Luckily
they basically use the same endings as nouns do.
Amir: This is what our nouns sound like when we make them more colorful. Shira, would you like to do
the honor?
Shira: Sure. Let's use the word [( ]גדולGa'dol), which means "big." The masculine singular is []ילד גדול
(Yeled Ga'dol) or "big boy."
Amir: The feminine singular is [( ]ילדה גדולהYalda gdo'la) or "big girl."
Shira: The masculine plural is [( ]ילדים גדוליםYe'la'dim gdo'lim) which can mean either "big boys" or "big
children."
Amir: The feminine plural is [( ]ילדות גדולותYe'la'dot gdolot) or "big girls."
Shira: The placement of the adjective is different from English. The adjective follows the noun instead of
coming before it.
Amir: That wasn't so tough. Hebrew uses those four endings all throughout the language.
Shira: Yeah. Remember that this is your head start on Hebrew grammar. Keep up with
HebrewPod101.com for more lessons that will teach you Hebrew in a way you want to learn, painlessly.