Hebrew/Basic/5

 Basic Lesson 5 —

Welcome to the fifth basic lesson of Hebrew! In this lesson we're going to learn journey-related vocabulary and how to conjugate qal verbs in the present tense.

Dialogue
Sarah and David now both have ended their visit in Tel Aviv. They bid each other farewell.

On Voyage
If we want to ask where someone is going, we need to be introduced to a new interrogative pronoun, namely (meaning “where to?”). It is composed of the preposition “to” and a question word obsolete in modern Hebrew meaning “where”.

When we want to add a preposition to an interrogative pronoun in Hebrew, we simply attach the preposition directly to the question word: “from where do you come?” (remember, no auxiliary verb “to do” in Hebrew).

So, how are you going to get there? We add the preposition “in” before any mode of transport.

Here are some modes of transport:

Notes
 * is a phonological irregularity, since the accent here falls on the first syllable (ótobus).
 * The mode of transportation can be put anywhere in a sentence. The choice of where should you place it depends on what you want to emphasize.

Examples
 * He comes by train.


 * They (f) come by ship?

Qal Present Tense
If thus far we have only learned verbs with two radicals in their roots, now we shall tackle verbs with 3 radicals, since the overwhelming majority of verbs have them.

Let us take the verb (meaning “to write”, root: ):

Other verbs that conjugate the same:

Irregularities
When at the end of a root, some consonants change the conjugations of the verbs. These are known as weak radicals,.

When a root ends with, the said letter is omitted of all the conjugations except for the singulars. The masculine is regular, and the feminine replaces the with.

When a root ends with or, in the masculine singular a  is added to the final letter and in the feminine all of the  are replaced with.

Confusing? Here are examples for clarification.

Examples
 * (“to see”, ends with )


 * (“to travel, ride”, ends with )


 * (“to open”, ends with )

Notes
 * Roots ending with or  form an orthographic irregularity &mdash;  and  are pronounced nosea‘ and poteaħ, respectively.

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 say and ask where you are going.
 * How to say which mode of transport you are using.
 * How to conjugate verbs from binyan qal in the present tense.
 * How to conjugate verbs with weak radicals.

Review: Unit 1 >>>