#hebrewing

[hebrewing]

Hebrew Basics #2: Pronouns, Sentence Structure

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 :)

לְהִתְרָאוֹת!

[hebrewing]

Hebrew Basics #5: Verbs, pt. 3: Heavy Verb Stems

Hi everyone!

This lesson I’ll finally be finishing up Hebrew verb stems with the last group of stems: פֻּעַל, פִּעֵל and הִתְפַּעֵל - also called the heavy stems (בִּנְיַנְים כְּבֵדִים binyanim kfvedim) or the double stems (בִּנְיַנְים כְּפוּלִים binyanim kfulim).

The main feature distinguishing them from other stems is a dagesh on the 2nd radical letter, which also gives them their names (note that because ע is a guttural letter it cannot take a dagesh, so it doesn’t appear in the very name of the verb stems - but it’s there). Historically, this dagesh signified gemination, or doubling of a consonant, much like an Arabic shaddah. For instance: כָּתַב ‘(he) wrote’ would be pronounced katav, whereas כַּתָּב ‘reporter’ would be pronounced kattav. These days letters with a dagesh are not pronounced differently than the same letter without a dagesh, but its effect can still be seen - for example in בג״ד כפ״ת, that did not go under ‘softening’ when geminate, and therefore retain their hard pronunciation in verb and noun stems that contain a dagesh.

Now let’s leave the technicalities aside and dive into the verb stems’ individual meanings.

פִּעֵל is one of the most common verb stems in the language, and can take a wide variety of different meanings. From standard active verbs:

דִּבֶּר diber ‘to speak’ סִפַּר siper ‘to tell; to cut hair’ צִלֵּם tsilem ‘to photograph’

To more ‘powerful’ version of equivalent פָּעַל verbs:

שָׁבַר shavar ‘to break’ - שִׁבֵּר shiber ‘to break (purposefully)’ שָׁמַר shamar ‘to save’ - שִׁמֵּר shimer ‘to conserve’ חָשַׁב chashav ‘to think’ - חִשֵּׁב chishev ‘to calculate’

Or even causative verbs, like הפעיל:

גָּדַל gadal ‘to grow’ - גִּדֵּל gidel ‘to grow (e.g. a plant)’ קַר qar ‘cold’ - קֵרֵר qerer ‘to cool’ חַם cham ‘hot’ - חִמֵּם chimem ‘to heat’

In short, it’s a very versatile verb stem that carries a multitude of different, sometimes unrelated meanings.

פֻּעַל, much like הֻפְעַל, is the passive counterpart of פִּעֵל. No more, no less.

שִׁמֵּר shimer ‘to conserve’ - שֻׁמַּר shumar ‘to be conserved’ חִשֵּׁב chishev ‘to calculate’ - חֻשַּׁב chushav ‘to be calculates’ גִּדֵּל gidel ‘to grow’ - גֻּדַּל gudal ‘to be grown’ קֵרֵר kerer ‘to cool’ - קֹרַר qorar ‘to be cooled’

הִתְפַּעֵל is an interesting stem. It is the only third stem in a group, which poses the question: what meaning can it have? Both other groups have just an active stem (פָּעַל, הִפְעִיל, פִּעֵל) and a passive stem (נִפְעַל, הֻפְעַל, פֻעַל), so there’s no other ‘third stem’ you can compare it to and deduce its general meaning from.

That is, until you look at נִפְעַל again: As I said in lesson 3, many נִפְעַל verbs are passive counterparts to פָּעַל verbs, but many others are not: there are also stative verbs and verbs denoting processes. What I failed to say, however, is that some of these are reflexive verbs, where the subject acts upon themselves, in a way. The verb נֶעֱמַד ‘to stand up’ (which I deemed a verb describing the process of standing up) can also be seen as ‘to set oneself up’ - or the reflexive counterpart of הֶעֱמִיד ‘to set up,’ itself the causative form of עָמַד ‘to stand,’ or ‘to be standing’ (as in, to cause something/someone to stand up).

הִתְפַּעֵל’s main meaning is the reflexive form of many, but not all, פִּעֵל verbs:

סִפַּר siper ‘to tell; to cut hair’ - הִסְתַּפֵּר histaper ‘to have a haircut’ קֵרֵר qerer ‘to cool’ - הִתְקָרֵר hitqarer ‘to become cold (to make oneself cold)’ חִמֵּם chimem ‘to heat’ - הִתְחַמֵּם hitchamem ‘to become hot (to make oneself cold)’ צִלֵּם tsilem ‘to photograph’ - הִצְטַלֵּם hitstalem ‘to have one’s picture taken’

Another different, yet related meaning is reciprocity. Reciprocal verbs are verbs where the given action is performed mutually in-between a pair or group. This might seem like a difficult quality to grasp, but in reality in isn’t very complicated. For instance:

כָּתַב katav ‘to write’ - הִתְכַּתֵּב hitkatev ‘to correspond by text (to write to one another)’ לָחַשׁ lachash ‘to whisper’ - הִתְלַחְשֵׁשׁ hitlachshesh ‘to whisper to one another’* *Consonant reduplication helps emphasize the reciprocal meaning of the verb דִּבֶּר diber ‘to speak’ - הִדַּבֵּר hidaber ‘to communicate by speech (to talk to one another)’** **This is a very tricky verb to translate, since it is quite rare outside of mediation circles

Some of these verbs have difficult translations, mostly because such a concept doesn’t really exist in English. But a point you need to remember throughout your language studies is that translations aren’t language. To learn a language, you should not rely on translations to understand a given text. Every language has its unique grammatical constructions and ways of speech that might not be translatable to English. This is especially prevalent among languages distant to English (an example close to me is Korean, which I have been studying myself), and although Hebrew and English sentence structure is relatively similar, they still have vastly different grammar.

If you have a keen eye you might have noticed some strange pronunciations that seem to deviate from the regular הִתְפַּעֵל pattern:

הִסְתַּפֵּר histaper ‘to have a haircut’ הִצְטַלֵּם hitstalem ‘to have one’s picture taken’ הִדַּבֵּר hidaber ‘to communicate by speech (to talk to one another)’

One reason behind this is assimilation, where a consonant’s pronunciation changes because of the surrounding consonants. This is done by speakers in order to make pronunciation easier. For example, if you insert the root ד־ב־ר into the הִתְפַּעֵל stem you should get *הִתְדַּבֵּר hitdaber. However, the /td/ consonant cluster is hard on the tongue, so over time the /t/ assimilated into the /d/ to form a consonant cluster /dd/, or one geminate /d/ consonant (which eventually got to be pronounced only as one /d/): הִתְדַּבֵּר > הִדְדַּבֵּר > הִדַּבֵּר. 

Another reason is consonant metathesis, where two consonants change places in order to make pronunciation easier. This can be seen in הִסְתַּפֵּר histaper, where the /s/ and the /t/ switched places to make a /ts/ cluster into an easier /st/ cluster: הִתְסַפֵּר > הִסְתַּפֵּר.

Explaining the change for each consonant combination is cumbersome, so here’s a list of changes:

ט and צ, marked with an asterisk, are quite complicated. You probably noticed I wrote them as /t’/ and /s’/ instead of plain /t/ and /ts/. This is because they weren’t all pronounced as they are today. If you recall, in lesson 1 I recalled many “historical reasons” that there are so many homophones in Hebrew. This is because over its history in the diaspora, certain communities (namely Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews) merged many of those consonants, and in modern times, since the Sephardi reading of the Bible was adopted as the pronunciation of Hebrew after its revival - these mergers stuck. Among these, Sephardim and Ashkenazim merges ת and ט. Originally it was pronounced as an “emphatic” consonant, meaning it came more “from the throat” (If you are familiar with Arabic, it was pronounced like Arabic ط): hence I wrote it as /t’/.

צ was pronounced differently between communities, but originally it was pronounced similarly to ט, “from the throat” (like Arabic ص). However, the Ashkenazi pronunciation /ts/, as if it were a combination of ס and ת, stuck in Modern Hebrew.

The different consonant morphings happened centuries before the Jewish diaspora, so the consonants were still pronounced as they were originally. Back then it was easier to pronounce /s’t’/ than /s’t/ because both consonants were emphatic, so it morphed. These days it seems pointless, since ט and ת have the same phonetic value, but the correct spelling is nonetheless הִצְטַלֵּם. Many speakers make the mistake of writing הִצְתַּלֵּם, but it is just that - a spelling mistake.

Past Tense

Verbs marked with 2, as usual, undergo vowel reduction that turns a shva into a hataf /a/ (סֲ) under certain guttural letters, but you might have noticed something particularly strange in these verbs under the פֻּעַל stem - the characteristic /u/ (סֻ) changes to an /o/ (סֹ). This is because of a phenomenon in Hebrew called “dagesh compensation,” תַּשְׁלוּם דָּגֶשׁ tashlum dagesh, where the vowel before a guttural letter with a dagesh gets intensified to accommodate the reduction of the dagesh.

Dagesh compensation typically happens in the double stems, however it occurs in נִפְעַל as well, in future tense conjugations. It goes as follows:

I marked where compensation occurs in bold, because it does not occur before every guttural letter.

Take note that although the vowel point changes in the first column, םַ, the pronunciation actually stays the same.

Furthermore, each letter handles vowel reduction differently, as you can see. א always takes a hataf (םֱ, םֲ, םֳ) instead of a shva, ר never, and under ה, ע, ח whether the shva changes to a hataf changes on a case to case basis. Keep in mind that this also means the pronunciation is different: when the reduced vowel is rendered as a םְ it can be pronounced either as a /e/ or as no vowel, depending on the following consonant; when it is rendered as a hataf it can be pronounced either as /a/, /e/ or /o/, depending on the identity of the hataf.

If the guttural vowel has any vowel other than םְ, it is conserved and does not change in spite of the vowel intensification (a can seen in the last column, נִפְעַל).

I didn’t write the vowel forms in the tables according to the correct compensated forms (due to the 2nd radical of פ־ע־ל‎‎ being a guttural) because that would mean a very messy table. I expect you to think for yourselves and write for yourself what the correct forms of the verbs, taking dagesh compensation into account. It isn’t that hard actually, just knowing where /i/ becomes /e/ and when /u/ becomes /o/. (I did, however, include two forms when the vowel on the 2nd radical gets reduced, because that’s what I’ve been doing until now and I like consistency)

Future Tense

1st person conjugations have a different bowel of the prefix (א־) because the vowel on the א either changes to a hataf (אְ > אֲ) or it intensifies (אִ > אֶ).

Luckily that’s all There needs to be explained here. Everything peculiar here, you should already know the answer to from previous lessons

That’s it!

Next lessons I’ll be delving into the present tense and infinitives. Until then - keep your eyes peeled for more lessons!

See you next time :)

[hebrewing]

Announcement: Temporary Hiatus

Hey everyone.

As you know, I’m an 18 year old Israeli student. I started this project as a way to pass time before my encroaching enlistment to the IDF, mostly as a personal test to see how well I can teach about my mother tongue. It has proven quite fruitful and I do enjoy writing these lessons very much. But there’s a catch.

I’ll be enlisting a week from the day I’m writing this. For the first couple months of my military service I’ll only be at home once a week at best, so sadly I won’t be able to write any new lessons as they do take quite a bit of work (and a computer).

I already have a rough map of where I want this blog to continue, and I do wish to continue doing this, but unfortunately I will have to delay it by a couple months at least.

I finished verb basics to lay out a base for upcoming lessons. You can check that out here: 1, 2, 3.

See you next lesson!