#hebrew basics

Hi Again!

Now that you’ve hopefully started to get Hebrew writing, it’s time to start with the language itself, beginning with the very base of the language - basic language structure.

First and foremost, here is a table of personal pronouns, since they’re pretty necessary for this lesson, and don’t require too much explaining behind them:

An easy way to remember them is:

1st person pronouns always start with אֲנ an-.

2nd person pronouns also always start with א alef, but always have a ת tav in them.

3rd person pronouns always start with ה he, and are monosyllabic.

Male plural pronouns always end in a מ mem, while female plural pronouns always end in a נ nun.

אֲנוּ ánu is pretty much only used in formal settings, speeches, documents etc., not even in Biblical texts (it rose later in history).

אָנֹכִי anokhí is archaic these days, used primarily in Biblical texts and in some set phrases (e.g. אֲנִי וָאָנֹכִי aní va’anokhí ‘me, myself and I’), as well as serving as an adjective meaning ‘selfish.’

Moreover, some speakers merge the 2nd and 3rd person masculine and feminine plural pronouns, using only the masculine form. I don’t like prescribing you a correct and an incorrect way to say something - but I’ll let myself do so here. This is a language changing as we speak, and as of now this in-distinction is still pretty much universally viewed as incorrect. You can, and probably will, see it online or in speech, but most speakers (at least those I speak to) still make the distinction, especially with verb conjugations (as explained further in the lesson), and some will correct you if you don’t make it yourself.

What you might have noticed as well is the lack of a neutral pronoun. Hebrew nouns are all either male or female, and to refer to an inanimate noun you would simply refer to it by its appropriate pronoun. שֻׁלְחַן shulchán (table) is of masculine gender, so one will refer to it as הוּא hu (he); קַעֲרָה ka’ará (bowl) is of feminine gender, so one will refer to it as הִיא hi (she).

Side note: as there are no gender neutral 2nd and 3rd person pronouns, this creates some problems in feminist and LGBT circles. It’s simply impossible to refer to a group of people by a gender-inclusive pronoun, neither is it possible to refer to someone without explicitly saying what binary gender your referring to them with.

Before I explain sentence types I need to set out word order. Since verbs are conjugated to encode tense, number, gender and person (1st, 2nd and 3rd persons) of the subject, Hebrew generally has pretty free word order. This is because it is usually clear who the subject is through conjugation and context. Another consequence of this is frequent dropping of subject pronouns, since it is already specified through the verb.

However, most sentences still fall under SVO word order - where the subject comes first in a sentence, then the verb, then any objects the subject acts upon. For example:

1. אָכַלְתִּי תַּפּוּחַ. akhálti tapúach. - I ate an apple. (literally: I-ate[S+V] apple[O].) 2. יוֹנָתָן לִטֵּף אֵת הַכֶּלֶב. Yonatán litéf et hakélev. - Yonatan pet the dog. (literally: Yonatan[S] pet[V] direct object preposition the dog[O].) 3. הַסַּפְרָן יִתֵּן לִי אֵת הַסֵּפֶר. hasafrán yitén li et haséfer. - The librarian (m) will give me the book. (literally: the-librarian[S] will-give[V] to-me[O] direct object preposition the-book[O].)

(Note: even if it doesn’t look like it, the period / full stop comes after the text - to the left. So do exclamation and question marks. Typing right-to-left text embedded in a left-to-right language is very annoying, so you should get used to punctuation, vowel points and generally everything to not fall where you actually put your cursor. It’s terrible. Also, vowel points don’t get bolded with the rest of the text?? w h y)

Occasionally, in more higher speech as well as in Biblical texts, Hebrew also shows VSO word order. Hence, all of these sentences could alternatively be said like so:

1. אָכַלְתִּי תַּפּוּחַ. akhálti tapúach. - I ate an apple. (literally: I-ate[S+V] apple[O].) 2. לִטֵּף יוֹנָתָן אֵת הַכֶּלֶב. litéf Yonatán et hakélev. - Yonatan pet the dog. (literally: pet[V] Yonatan[S] direct object preposition the-dog[O].) 3. יִתֵּן הַסַּפְרָן לִי אֵת הַסֵּפֶר. yitén hasafrán li et haséfer. - The librarian (m) will give me the book. (literally: will-give[V] the-librarian[S] to-me[O] direct object preposition the-book[O].)

In 1, the verb and the subject are conjoined, therefore flipping their order doesn’t make any sense and the sentence stays the same.

That being said, these days SVO word order is a lot more common that VSO, especially in speech, so don’t worry too much about it, just know it’s used. Personally, I tend to used VSO in some cases for school essays, but that’s about it - and even this is mostly my personal tendency. Again, don’t think about it too much.

Sentence Structure - Syntax!

Hebrew sentences are generally separated into two categories: verbal sentences and nominal sentences. A verbal sentence, מִשְׁפָּט פָּעֳלִי mishpát po’olí (more commonly pronounced po’alí), is a sentence that contains a subject (some type of noun or verb phrase) and an action verb, also called the predicate. This, you might recognize, is the basic sentence structure of English as well. In fact, the vast majority of languages only possess this type of sentence. Nominal sentences are where stuff gets interesting.

A nominal sentence, מִשְׁפָּט שְׁמָנִי mishpát shemaní, as you might have guessed, is a sentence where instead of a nominal subject and an action verb - there’s just another noun (or adjective) acting as the predicate. These are characteristic to Semitic languages and Russian (I’m not sure about other Slavic languages), among others. For example:

1. הַדֹּב הַזֶּה מְאֹד יָפֶה. hadóv haze me’ód yafé. - This bear is very pretty. (literally: bear this very pretty.) 2. אֲנִי רְעֵבָה. aní re’evá. - I am hungry. (literally: I hungry (female)) 3. הוּא כֶּלֶב. hu kélev. - He is a dog. (literally: he dog).

To negate the sentence, simply put לֹא

As you might have noticed, the key characteristic is where English would put the verb to be, Hebrew just doesn’t put anything, because there is no equivalent in Hebrew. The languages simply lacks a copula (the linguistic term for verbs like to be, whose purpose is linking the subject to a non-verb predicate).

Well… not quite.

You see, without a copula, there would be no way of indicating different tenses. When the sentence is word-for-word ‘I hungry’ or ‘he dog,’ where do you mark the tense? For this there’s a nice and clever solution - copulae! Yep, Hebrew didn’t wanna feel left out of the copula club so it made itself copulae of its own.

There are many types of copulae, to mark different types of relations, but for now I’ll introduce you to most common and most simple one. To mark present tense sentences use the 3rd person pronouns הוּא, הִיא, הֵם, הֵן, and for past and future tenses it uses conjugations of the verb הָיָה hayá*, ‘to be,’ as following:

*I refer to all verbs in this series with their 3rd person, masculine past tense form. This is because verb infinitives in Hebrew, as you will learn, are not a great way to represent the verb, and the 3rd person masc. form of a verb is considered the most basic form of the verb in all different conjugations.

If this seems like a lot to take in - it’s because it is. Hebrew verb conjugation is pretty complicated, and it doesn’t help that הָיָה hayá is quite an irregular verb. I don’t recommend you try and understand it fully, as I’ll be teaching everything you need to know about Hebrew verb conjugation pretty soon. For now, just take it at face value.

Notes:

If you have keen eyes, you might notice the /i/ after the /h/ in the transliteration of all future tense conjugations, that shouldn’t be there according to the vowel points. If not, notice it now. This is because it’s difficult to pronounce a /h/ without any consonant afterwards, so a dummy vowel was inserted after it. This is a common phenomenon in Hebrew with some consonants, but I won’t explain it now, as it’s quite complicated. (the different vowel points in the 1st person is just that I found two different vowel markings that seem to have no real difference between them)

For the present tense 1st and 2nd persons no copula is used. My guess is that this is because the subject can only ever be ‘I’ or ‘you’ when talking about 1st and 2nd person subjects, so repeating the same pronoun twice is useless. This is the case for 3rd person subjects as well: if the subject itself is ‘he,’ ‘she’ or ‘they,’ you don’t repeat the same pronoun as a copula.

This is getting a bit into verb conjugations, but the 2nd person plural past tense forms (now try saying that three times in a row) have two pronunciations: the top is the ‘correct’ one used formally, and the bottom is the one you’d actually hear pretty much everywhere, as it fits the conjugation pattern more regularly.

The 2nd and 3rd person feminine plural future tense conjugation, as marked on the table, is very rare nowadays, and shifting towards merging with the equivalent masculine conjugation. In fact, even the 2nd person plural past tense conjugations (marked with the 3), are starting to lose their distinction between masculine and feminine, just like the pronounced mentioned in the beginning of this lesson, but this is still widely considered a grammatical mistake and I do advise that you keep the distinction - people will just correct you otherwise.

The examples above in different tenses would be:

Past: 1. הַדֹּב הַזֶּה הָיָה מְאֹד יָפֶה. hadóv haze hayá me’ód yafé. - This bear was very pretty. (literally: bear this was very pretty.) 2. אֲנִי הָיִיתִי רְעֵבָה. aní hayíti re’evá. - I was hungry. (literally: I was hungry [female]) 3. הוּא הָיָה כֶּלֶב. hú hayá kélev. - He was a dog. (literally: he was dog).

Future: 1. הַדֹּב הַזֶּה יִהְיֶה מְאֹד יָפֶה. hadóv haze yihiyé me’ód yafé. - This bear will be very pretty. (literally: bear this will-be very pretty.) 2. אֲנִי אֶהֱיֶה רְעֵבָה. aní eheyé re’evá. - I will be hungry. (literally: I will-be hungry (female)) 3. הוּא יִהְיֶה כֶּלֶב. hú yihiyé kélev. - He will be a dog. (literally: he will-be dog).

Exercise

For the next 10 sentences, I’ll leave out the copula, and you should fill it in according to the tense and gender given in the brackets… if you even need the copula!!! muahahahaha

Don’t worry, they’re as simple as it gets.

1. הַכּוֹס ___ יְרֻקָּה. hakós ___ yeruqá. (fem. sing. past) 2. בְּנִי ___ חָכָם. bní ___ chakhám. (masc. sing. future) 3. מָסָךְ הַטֶּלֶוִיזְיָה שֶׁלִּי ___ לָבָן. masákh hatelevízya sheli ___ laván. (masc. sing. past) 4. הַלֵּב ___ הָאֵיבַר הֲכִי חָשׁוּב בַּגּוּף. halév ___ ha’evár hakhí chashúv bagúf. (masc. sing. present) 5. כְּרוּבִית ___ יֶרֶק. kruvít ___ yérek. (fem., sing., present) 6. מֶזֶג הָאֲוִיר מָחָר ___ קַר. mézeg ha’avír machar ___ kár. (masc. sing. future) 7. הֵן ___ בָּנוֹת נִפְלָאוֹת. hen __ banót nifla’ót. (fem. pl. present) 8. הַשֻּׁלְחַנוֹת שֶׁלָּהֶן ___ חֻמִּים. hashulchanót shelahen ___ chumím.(masc. pl. future) 9. הַהֲלִיכוֹן ___ מָהִיר מִדַּי. hahalichón ___ mahír miday. (masc. sing. past) 10. מִשְׁקָפַי ___ חֲזָקִים. mishkafái ___ chazaqím. (masc. pl. present)

Answer Key

1. הָיְתָה haytá (The cup was green.) 2. יִהְיֶה yihiyé (My son will be smart.) 3. הָיָה hayá (My TV screen was white.) 4. [הוּא] / - ; hu / - (The heart is the most important organ in the body.) 5. [הִיא] / - ; hi / - (Cauliflower is a vegetable.) 6. יִהְיֶה yihiyé (The weather tomorrow will be cold.) 7. - (They are wonderful girls.) 8. יִהְיוּ yihiyú (Their (f) tables will be brown.) 9. הָיָה hayá (The treadmill was too fast.) 10. הֵם / [-] ; hem / - (My glasses are strong.)

In the present tense examples I marked the option more likely to be heard with square brackets. I’m not sure why it is for each example, but the other option just sounds less natural.

Aaaaand that’s it for today!

Next time… Verbs??? probably

See you next week :)