I have suffered greatly, but I bring you my overview. Since this was about phrases, I’m going to structure it differently - and go over the phrases one by one.
The simplest way to say hello is שלום - pronounced “shalom,” it literally means peace (insert ”in Hebrew we don’t say “hello” we say “peace” and I think that’s beautiful” joke here, there’s a lot of that in Hebrew). My fellow Jewish ppl (and… most people with half a decent amount of cultural literacy) will recognize the word from the common Saturday greeting שבת שלום (Shabbat Shalom)
You can, of course, greet with the time of day, as you can in English. These follow a fairly easy-to-follow format: X tov, where X is the time of day
בוקר טוב means “good morning” and it’s pronounced “boker tov”
ערב טוב means “good evening” and it’s pronounced “erev tov” (this is easy to remember if you’re Jewish/converting!!! Lots of things use the word ערב)
לילה טוב means “good night” and it’s pronounced “lyla tov”
I’m putting “welcome” here because it is often used as a form of greeting. Welcome in Hebrew is a fucking cluster fuck from hell without proper instruction and I cried a lot.
There are four forms of Welcome. I’m sure this is common for most things, but usually in Duolingo we aren’t introduced to all of them at once I cried
These all mean literally something along the lines of “a blessing has come” which is nice and almost makes up for Duolingo’s bad form in teaching this
Singular Masculine form of welcome - so you are addressing one (1) man/person who wishes to be addressed in the masculine form - is ברוך הבא, pronounced “baruch haba”.
Singular Feminine form of welcome - so you are addressing one (1) woman/person who wishes to be addressed in the feminine form - is ברוכה הבאה, pronounced “barucha haba’a”
Masculine Plural form of welcome - also used for addressing a mixed gender group of people, or when no one in particular is being addressed, is ברוכים הבאים, pronounced “bruchim haba’im”
Feminine Plural form of welcome is ברוכות הבאות, pronounced “bruchot haba’ot”
Goodbye is the same word as for “see you later” and it’s להתראות, pronounced “lehitra’ot”
There are many ways to say “how are you”. I thought I was confused by the many ways to say this. I had not yet realized how bad “welcome” would be, and thus, I now find “how are you” to be a piece of cake. I’m sure I’ll say the same about welcome in the future but right now I’m really bitter.
The formal way of saying how are you literally means “what is your peace”. It is spelled מה שלומך and is pronounced one of two ways - “mah shlomcha” when addressing a masculine individual and “mah shlomeych” when addressing a feminine individual
An informal way of saying how are you literally means “what is heard” and is spelled מה נשמע and is pronounced “ma nishma”
A way of informally saying how are you or something like “what’s happening” or “what’s up” is מה קורה (which literally means what’s happening) and is pronounced “ma korey”
We learned words for “good” (טוב) “bad” (רע) and “sad” (עצוב) already, which could be used in combination with אני (”I”) to answer that question. Now we’ve learned בסדר, pronounced b’seder, which means fine. I’m curious as to if it has any relations to the word seder, סדר, which means order?
Maybe is אולי, pronounced “oolay”. Idk where else to put it so it’s going here.
You also can ask “are you okay” with אתה or אה and בסדר - so אתה בסדר and variations thereupon means “are you okay”
Please (and also… you’re welcome? sometimes?) is בבקשה and pronounced “bevakasha”
You’re welcome is אין בעד מה and is pronounced “eyn ba’d ma” - it probably literally means something along the lines of “it was nothing”
Thank you/Thanks is תודה and it’s pronounced “todah”. To say “thank you very much,” you say תודה רבה - pronounced “todah rabah”. רבה literally means “great” which is cool to learn cause it’s used in a lot of Jewish things (like Hoshanah Rabah).
Sorry/excuse me (a word, I’m told, which is rarely said in Israel) is סליחה, pronounced slicha
To say good luck, you literally say בהצלחה - which means “(may you go) in/with success” and is pronounced behatslicha
To say congratulations, you say מזל טוב. It is not pronounced MAzel tov. It is pronounced maZAL tov. This is Hebrew, not Yiddish. Fun fact, it also means “you’ve had good luck!” in literal translation.
Have fun/Enjoy comes in three forms, to torture me, specifically.
תהני, pronounced “tehani”, I think is the masculine form???
תהנו, pronounced “tehanu”, I think is the feminine form???
תהנה, pronounced “tehane”, I have no idea. none.
I probably mixed all of this up
There are two ways to say “bon appetit/enjoy your meal”
בתאבון is pronounced “betavon”
בתיאבון is pronounced “beti’avon”
I have no idea why you would use one and not the other. I’m sad about this lack of knowledge.
To say “my name is”, you say קוראים לי (pronounced korim li) followed by your name. So, I would say קוראים לי מהח (I think that’s how I’d transliterate my name. Ironic that the pronunciation is actually clearer in Hebrew letters than in English ones since my name is Scottish and has a “ch” in it that no one uses…). Literally it means something like “call me [name]”.
You can also say, apparently, [name] השם שלי הוא, according to some of the exercises. I have questions about this. First of all, it uses one of the words for G-d, HaShem, which, do people actually say this? I know HaShem means the name, but like, it seems to really just be used to mean G-d. Second of all, the last word, pronounced “hoo”, just means he, so would you change it to… איה if you wanted the feminine form? No explanation is given for this. You’d pronounce it “hashem shali hoo” (or hashem shali hee for the feminine form? probably?) and it means… something. Either “my name is” or maybe “G-d calls her/him”? I don’t know. I require answers. Why wasn’t this taught better. Why was it an option at all.
To speak/speaks is מדבר for singular masculine, pronounced “medober”. For feminine, it’s מדברת, pronounced “medoberat”. As you do.
English is אנגלית, pronounced “anglit”, and Hebrew is עברית, pronounced “ivrit”
So, for me to say I speak English, I’d say אני מדברת אנגלית. For me to say I don’t speak Hebrew, I’d say אני לא מדברת עברית
And that’s all of it. Phew. I get that Duolingo tries to mimic immersion which is widely considered to be the best form of language learning, but I really need like, rules, and explanations, just occasionally. Geez. @jewishamericanbatmelech I look forward to any insight you have about any of this because Suffering.
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