Hebrew/Basic/1

 Basic Lesson 1 —

Welcome to the first basic lesson of Hebrew! In this lesson we're going to learn some basic greetings and basic grammatical features of Hebrew. First read the following dialogue and do the exercise related to it.

Dialogue
Two strangers, Sarah and David, meet each other in one of the many cafés of Tel Aviv. The following conversation takes place:

Greetings
Words marked with ° have their accent falling on their penultimate syllable, as in bóqer. In all other cases, the accent will fall on the last syllable.

Asking for Names
and both mean “what's your name?” (lit. “how [do] they-call to-you?”). One is directed to a male and one to a female. Therefore, when asking a male for his name, say the former, and when asking female for her name, use the latter.

You may respond by saying your name, or, if you want to introduce yourself, saying (lit. “they-call to-me...”). It doesn't matter if you are a male or a female here.

Examples
 * Someone (to Boy):
 * Someone (to Girl):
 * Someone:

How are You?
Just like asking for names, and  (lit. “what [is] your-peace?”) alter whether asking a male or a female. As before, the former is used when asking males, and the latter females.

(lit. “what [was] heard?”) means the same, but it is slightly less formal. It does not declend in gender.

Examples
 * Someone (to Boy):
 * Someone (to Girl):
 * Someone (to Someone):

Grammar: Genders
Hebrew has two grammatical genders: masculine and feminine. Each noun has an inherit gender, and that affects the adjectives that describe it and the verbs it does.

Unfortunately, Hebrew's choice of genders may defy common sense, as ancient languages sometimes do, and the gender of a noun usually can't be learned by just looking at the word. However, a good rule of thumb is that words ending in or  are mostly feminine, and words ending in other letters are mostly masculine.

The genders are marked by m and f for nouns.

Vocabulary
Transliterate and translate the following Hebrew expressions to English.

Translate the dialogue from the beginning of this lesson.

Summary
In this lesson, you have learned: Practice what you've learned in the exercises.
 * How to greet people.
 * How to say and ask for names.
 * How to ask and say how you are.
 * Genders.

Next lesson: Basic 2 >>>