Archive for 'Grammar'
Have you seen Yehuda’s Illustrations? Posted by Ayana on Aug 6, 2018
Let’s talk all about the verb to illustrate. Last year, Maya and Yehuda wanted to move to Tel-Aviv. They were newly married and lived at Yehuda’s parents’ house, when Maya found a job at the big city. Like any other Israeli young couple, they wished to find a decent flat at a fair price to…
Hebrew Grammar: Feminine Nouns Posted by Ayana on Apr 2, 2018
Nouns in Hebrew – any noun – has gender: feminine or masculine. A noun’s gender is quite important because it can impact an entire sentence. The gender of the noun doesn’t only affect the pronoun, changing it to she or he. It also affects most of the words in the sentence. In Hebrew, adjectives and…
The Different Languages in Israel Posted by Ayana on Mar 12, 2018
The Israeli population is a linguistically diverse community. The state of Israel absorbs immigration daily, and thus we have many languages spoken in one small country. According to Ethnologue there are 37 languages in Israel. For comparison, there are only 24 in Germany, 15 in Spain, 12 in Switzerland. Language (feminine) = שָׂפָה Languages = שָׂפוֺת Official (to…
Happy New Year in Hebrew Posted by Ayana on Jan 3, 2018
Last September, Jews all over the world celebrated the Jewish New Year. They ate apple dipped in honey, they wore new clothes, went to the synagogue to listen to the blowing of the shofar, and greeted each other with Happy New Year שָׂנָה טוֺבָה (shana tova). The Academy of the Hebrew Language – an institution…
5 Hebrew Mistakes that Even Native Speakers Do Posted by Ayana on Aug 21, 2017
Hebrew is an old language with long history and lots of rules and exceptions. For example, the language distinguishes plural from single and masculine from feminine. Hebrew also conjugates verbs and adjectives according to the pronoun, the gender and the tense. And all this according to scriptures from more than two thousand years ago. No…
The Definite Article Prefix Hey Hayedia Posted by Ayana on Jun 26, 2017
In Hebrew, nouns are made definite by adding the prefix ה. This prefix is called ה’ הַיְּדׅיעָה (hey hayedia) and functions like the definite article ‛the’ in English. The word עִיתּוֹן (newspaper), for example, indicates any newspaper; while the word הָעׅיתּוֹן (the newspaper) refers to a specific newspaper. Here are some rules for the use…
The Hebrew Verb: Root and Binyanim Posted by Ayana on Jan 26, 2017
Hebrew verbs are small units that need to be constructed every time corresponding to the sentence context. There are three basic steps to this construction: the first includes the root. The basis of every verb is the root, since it is the one to deliver the content of the action. The second step includes the…