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- Topic: Hebrew >
- "אתה בא או הוא בא?"
47 Comments
Why does duolingo immerse me in a new alphabet without ever telling me what these letters are? It's like I'm seeing gibberish trying to guess all this stuff.
24
In the first set of tips, there is a link near the top of the page to an introductory post, which links to a very helpful resource for learning Hebrew letters.
Hebrew reads from right to left, that is why the ? Is on the left hand side
- 127
"you come" doesn't sound right in English.... although "do you come or does he come" is totally right, you should report that.
It should be known that Hebrew is read right to left. Therefor the question mark may look like it is in the beginning, it's at the end.
- 264
You put it at the beginning of the question. You can actually put it at the beginning of this sentence and It'd be correct. It's very formal though, and can often be omitting, especially on casual manner of speaking
What would be the written difference in hebrew betwen "...or he COMES?" and "...or IS he COMING?" in הוא בא
- 264
There's no difference, in Hebrew there are no tenses like the present simple/progressive, if you want to emphasize your meaning you'd add some time expression, such as 'is he coming now?'
The pronunciation of 'אתה בא' really threw me until I read it and then it seemed extremely obvious.
If the question mark should always come at the end of the sentence why does it appear at the beginning in the answer?
- 740
Remember that Hebrew is read from right to left. So, if the question mark is the left-most character, then it is at the end.
Not really. I assume you mean that it seems arbitrary that בא is sometimes translated as "come", sometimes as "is coming". That's done because Hebrew doesn't distinguish between the present continuous and the simple present. For clarification, the present continuous (or present progressive) is "is coming", and the simple present is "come".
Sometimes the most natural way to express an idea in English is with the continuous aspect, but other times it's more natural with the simple present. Hebrew just always uses its plain ol' present tense. :) As a result, you will sometimes translate the Hebrew present tense into the English present continuous ("is coming"), and sometimes into the simple present ("come").
Hopefully I correctly understood your confusion (just let me know if I didn't!) I'm just a beginner myself, so if any more knowledgeable people have corrections to my answer, please offer them. ^^
That was a great explanation! Hebrew is technically a simple language, but it's cultural context adds a level of intricacy which can make any language difficult to ever truly master!
I grew up in a more or less bilingual family and I've been at about caveman level reading/writing/speaking the Hebrew language for long enough I finally got embarrassed enough to refresh myself- who knows, maybe I'll get from caveman-level to toddler-level in the next decade! ;)
Sometimes the boxes with the Hebrew words do not appear and marks it correct.
בא it is present and present continuous. No different verb for it!!!! So, my andwer is correct!!
- 132
Are you coming or he is coming, this is also considered as a a question form. But it didn't work with Duo.
The answer is given as "You're coming or he has coming?", which doesn't make sense.
Argh. The recording sounds like someone stuck a random m-sound in the last third.
