Jill Suzanne Jacobs - Hebrew For Dummies

מָלִי נִשְּׂקָה אֶת פָרֶאד ( moh -lee neesh- kah eht fred ; literally : Mollie kissed Fred.)

מָלִי אֶת פָרֶאד נִשְׁקָהּ ( moh -lee eht fred neesh- kah ; literally: Mollie Fred kissed.)

אֶת פָרֶאד נִשְׁקָהּ מָלִי (eht fred neesh- kah moh -lee; Fred [is] kissed [by] Mollie.)

All these sentences, despite their different word order, mean essentially the same thing: Mollie kissed Fred.

To say there is or there are, use the word יֵשׁ(yehsh) before the noun you want to talk about. To say there isn't or there aren't, use the word אֵין (ayn) before the noun. For example:

י ֵשׁ בָּנָנוֹת (yehsh bah- nah -noht; There are bananas.)

אֵין בָּנָנוֹת (ayn bah- nah -noht; There aren’t any bananas.)

Now, you can find any noun in this book, put a יֵשׁor an אֵיןin front of it, and you’ll be speaking Hebrew!

When you make a question, you don’t change the order of the words, as in English. You can ask a question in a few ways. The first way is by simply taking a statement and putting a question mark in your voice (by raising your voice at the end of the sentence). Thus, when asked with the proper intonation, this statement can be a question: ? יֵשׁ חָלָב בַּמְּקָרֵר(yesh ha ḥ- lahv bah-mahk -rehr? ; There’s milk in the refrigerator?).

Another way to turn this statement into a question is to add the word נָכוֹן(nah -chohn; correct) to the end of the statement. In grammarspeak, this word is called a tag . For example:

? יֵשׁ חָלָב בַּמְּקָרֵר נָכוֹן (yehsh chah- lahv bah-mahk -rehr , nah- chohn? ; There’s milk in the refrigerator, correct?)

Yet another way to turn a statement into a question is to add the question word, הַאֵים(hah- eem ), in front of the sentence — for example ? הַאֵים יֵשׁ חָלָב בַּמְּקָרֵר(hah -eem yehsh chah- lahv bah-mahk -rehr ; Is there milk in the refrigerator?). This last option is the most formal option, so you won’t hear it often.

Although Hebrew differs from English in that you don’t need to flip the order in a statement to turn it into a question, the word-order flexibility of Hebrew allows the speaker to stress a particular part of the sentence by putting it at the beginning.

If someone just said there are no strawberries in the fridge, for example, you might ask ? יֵשׁ בָּנָנוֹת (yesh bah-nah- noht ; literally: Bananas?; But are there bananas?). Or you might ask ? אֵין בָּנָנו (ehn bah-nah- noht ?; literally: Bananas there aren’t?; Aren’t there bananas?).

In Hebrew, you can recognize the different parts of speech — such as nouns, verbs, and adjectives — by their distinct patterns. Sometimes, however, a word is both a verb and a noun, and adjectives and adverbs can take on many forms, so I can’t offer any easy clues for distinguishing the various parts of speech. You just need to memorize the vocabulary; then you’ll know.

In Hebrew, all nouns are either masculine or feminine. They’re conjugated according to number (singular and plural). The noun book (a masculine noun), for example, can be conjugated two ways:

סֵפֶר ( seh- fehr; book)

סְפָרִים (sfah- reem ; books)

Look at this example of a feminine noun:

מַזְלֵג (mahz- lehg; fork)

מַזְלְגוֹת (mahz-leh- goht; forks)

When masculine nouns are conjugated in the plural, they usually have an ים( eem ) ending, and when feminine nouns are conjugated in the plural, they usually have an וֹת( oht ) ending. The Nonbinary Hebrew Project proposes adding ה to the suffixes of most words to create a third, nonbinary gender category: מִגְדָּר רָחָב( migdar rahav) .

Check out Table 2-1for some common Hebrew nouns.

TABLE 2-1Identifying Some Common Nouns

In English, when we speak of a direct object, we mean a noun that is acted on by the verb. In the sentence “He ate a cookie,” for example, the word cookie is a direct object. In Hebrew, you say this sentence like this:

הוּא אָכַל עוּגִיָּה (hoo ah- hahl oo-gee- yah ; literally: He ate cookie.)

Notice that Hebrew doesn’t have a word for a in this example. The a is simply implied.

You can always spot an indirect object in Hebrew because it’s always preceded by a preposition. If you want to say “He gave a boy a cookie,” the word boy is an indirect object. He is being given something, but he isn’t directly acted on. Another test for an indirect object: It can have to before it (“He gave a cookie to a boy”). In Hebrew, you say that phrase this way: הוּאנָתַן לַיֶּלֶד עוּגִיָּה (hoo nah- tahn lah- yeh -lehd oo- gee -ah; literally: He gave to boy cookie.).

In Hebrew, you can tell when a noun is being used as a definite object ( the hat as opposed to a hat) because it has the prefix הַ ( hah ) attached to the word it modifies. Take the noun כּוֹבַע ( koh -vah ; hat). If you want to indicate that הַכּוֹבַע is a definite object, just add the prefix: הַכּוֹבַע (hah- koh -vah ; the hat).