Lesson 4: Hebrew pronouns

Lesson 4 :Hebrew pronouns

The agenda of the previous three lessons was to introduce you to the Hebrew language. You only repeated phrases from the list. Now to actually start using those phrases we need pronouns, so we can build phrases like “you need” or “we want”.

It might sound a bit trivial for some of you who already know this material and consider it trivial. Nevertheless, some more practice never hurts.

The most remarcable thing about Hebrew is that unlike European languages, here we have masculine and feminine form of pronouns for "you" and "they". Another thing which might be confusing for English-speaking students is that in Hebrew both the forms "thou" and "you" still exist and are actively used.

The last but not the least source of confusion is the fact that she in Hebrew is pronounced exactly like English word "he": הִיא

(Hebrew, what a language! Me is who, who is he, and he is she!)

The above table is quite enough for everyday spoken language, although I could give more flavor for nearly each one of the pronouns. Maybe I'll do it it some other section later.

Now, if you want to build up a phrase saying "we want" or "they need", it should come in appropriate gender and number.

In Hebrew, there is a difference in the plural and singular ending for famine and muscular. You already know how to say "I want / I need" in masculine and feminine form, or such.

Now let's see how the verbs we've learned in the Lesson 3 change their gender and number (in present tense.)

WANT

HAVE (to)

Please, note the non-vocalized spelling.

NEED

Now try to build phrases similar to those from the Lesson 3, using plural forms for "we" and "you".

This lesson is probably too "grammatical", so I'll try to liven the things up in the next lesson.

Good luck!