83 Comments
No, this is just one of the several patterns. I imagine we'll dive into that soon enough, verb conjugation is fundamental to the language.
Not speaking to girls, speaking about girls. For instance, you would never say "אבא בא" (aba bah) even if you were talking to a woman because אבא is masculine. In the same way, you'd never say "אמא בא" (ima ba) because אמא is feminine. Use בא (ba) when the subject is masc. and באה (bah) when the subject is feminine.
Correct me if I'm wrong. [2019/03/25]
Hebrew may use the אהו"י letters as vowels, but sometimes there is no אהו"י letter but there is a sound like i, a, e, o, or u. For instance: the word סדרה (series) is prononced "sidra" - NOT "SDRA". The word ספר (book) is pronounced "sefer" - NOT "SFR". And the word אמא is pronounced "ima". Hebrew is an abjad - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abjad
but how do you know which vowel sound it is going to make? like how do I know if it's going to make an a,i,e, or o sound?
Unfortunately, you have to guess (or memorize...). If you're not sure about what you hear (is it "ha'eema ba'a? ha'ama ba? [the first one is correct]), you can always ask me.
In some cases the context will inform you of the vowel sounds. One root can have multiple meanings and can form several words just by changing the vowel sounds.
With Nikud, you would accent the letter has, but today nobody uses it so it just means people memorize it
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Unfortunately you only know from the context. Take ספר. Say-fer is a book. See-pare means he told. Sa - far means he counted. Seh-fehr means the book of. There may even be more combinations. I'm pretty fluent and my mind is always going through these combinations as I read. As you might guess, I read very slowly.
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Well hebrew is atough language lets say like english you know ( now read the word know and tell me why you dont pronounce it
This is actually the first time I've studied a language that has different conjugations in the third person singular for both masculine and feminine.
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Same here... Racking my brains trying to think of another one. I guess Arabic does the same...
There is no such thing as the imperfective tense. There are perfective and imperfective aspects. But in Russian, gender differences only exist in the past tense of verbs, regardless of whether they are perfective or imperfective, whereas in Hebrew they exist in all tenses - the past, the present and the future.
Thanks for the clarification. But it is worth noting that the phenomenon is not restrictedto Semitic languages.
The reason for Hebrew and Russian is the same, though -- the forms were originally participles, which (like many adjectives) have separate masculine and feminine forms.
Am I the only one who hears an "i" sound there somewhere? Where does that come from?
Hebrew may use the אהו"י letters as vowels, but sometimes there is no אהו"י letter but there is a sound like i, a, e, o, or u. For instance: the word סדרה (series) is prononced "sidra" - NOT "SDRA". The word ספר (book) is pronounced "sefer" - NOT "SFR". And the word אמא is pronounced "ima". Hebrew is an abjad - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abjad
In English "the mom" is hardly ever used - most often it's "my mom", "your mom" or simply Mom. When it it appropriate to say "HA IMA" in Hebrew?
In the case of the example used they are refering to a specific mom "the mom". Or maybe they want to know which parent; " the mom is coming" as opposed to "the dad is coming"
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So that we can learn how to use articles. I find it useful, even if this particular phrase isn't a common one.
However, it's certainly possible. I've said "the mom" or "the dad" before (in English), usually when referring to someone else's family, especially if I don't know them well.
E.G.: "There were kids were running all over the place. The mom was trying to round them up. I don't know where the dad was."
Or, in showbiz: The mom is played by Angelina Jolie.
A lot of sentences and phrases can sound odd in isolation like this, but make sense in context. You just have to be creative to think of a context, or simply accept that the phrases are to teach language concepts, even if the specific phrase might seem strange on its own.
Yes, but there are errors in the Japanese beta, so I always wonder if I can trust this one?
Can somebody explain Why do we have to say "ima" when there is א ?why and when does the sound of the letter change? That's the most difficult part for me ;(
If you think that א stands for any particular vowel, you are mistaken. Historically, it stands for the glottal stop, the sound pronounced in place of 't' after short vowels by some young native speakers of English (e.g. "ge' we'" instead of "get wet" or "bu'n" instead of "button"). Although it's true that most of the time it is followed by 'uh' vowel, it can be followed by any Hebrew vowel. In the case of אמא , it is 'ee' (/ee-muh/).
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Sorry :-) א is even pronounced sometimes as o... like את מי תאהב יותר (et mi TOHAV yoter) who will you love more.
yes, in Hebrew, there are no tenses-only past, present, future. he is coming and he comes are the same.
Hoo boy. What have I gotten myself into. The way you have to figure out the vowels on your own is giving me a massive headache. Glad I'm not the only one reading Ima as Ama, though...
Why there are no lessons to drill Hebrew letters? There go words right away... I can't read it...
Why does Duolingo ask you to type in hebrew if they don't provide a tool for it?, that's not fair, they should include the letters so we can type them, and also all the exercises should include pronunciation sound since there's no way to know how to pronounce a word by simply reading it.
How do I differentiate between "Is the mother coming?" and "The mother is coming"? They both seem to be האמא באה
In formal speech and writing, you would formally put a האם before a yes/no question. In every day speech and writing, "האמא באה" (the mother is coming) differs from "האמא באה?" (is the mother coming?) by the question mark and the intonation. In short: 1. האם is formal 2. intonation 3. ?
I added the Hebrew keyboard to my computer, so to answer questions I now switch between the Hebrew and English keyboards. You have to guess where the Hebrew letters are, so it is a little tedious, but it does work. :)
Here is a keyboard layout you (KrystaDawn) can place in a small window on one side of your screen to see where the keys are instead of having to guess. https://www.microsoft.com/resources/msdn/goglobal/keyboards/kbdheb.html
Here is more information about keyboards for both of you: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/16251269
With a virtual key board such as this, http://gate2home.com/Hebrew-Keyboard, you can type, copy and paste. You can also use the virtual keyboard utility of your operating system and change the input language to hebrew.
No; it's the ה that is in front of the אמא that means "the". אמא by itself is "mom", add the ה and it becomes האמא "the mom".
is there any way to type the vowel points? I'm having hard time w/o training wheels.
I followed the guidance of one of the students using https://www.branah.com/hebrew. It works, but it's a lot of work, it takes a lot of time. I still think that the ideal thing would be to provide an on-screen keyboard. In addition, I imagine that learning Hebrew should approach a somewhat meaningless theme for common purposes. I think that instead of learning that "The Father is coming", it would be better to start with: 'good morning', 'yes', 'no', 'Thank you', 'please', everyday thing.
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This is exactly how children are taught first reading at school. Short words with little amount of characters... cause its difficult enough :)
Why two different characters in the word mom? The first m drawn differently from the second m.
How do you know if it is, The mom is coming. or, Is the mom coming? If there is no word for is.
