- Forum >
- Topic: Hebrew >
- "לא, הוא לא רואֶה משאית."
70 Comments
111
Yes, true. They tried to make simple sentences with each of the alphabet sounds, but a few of the sentences turned out to be a bit hard. Anyway, Duo is a great help.
111
Yes, the point is to teach you the letters but I agree that the word "lorry" or "truck" and the structure is very hard to grasp. I did learn the alphabet before so the letters part is not as tough for me, but I'm having a hard time with some of the vocabulary.
Hi! Sorry for the off-topic, but will there be a page in Tips Notes explaining cursive Hebrew letters or will we have to look it up on Wikipedia? :)
Because these block letters are not usually used when writing with hand.
19
I put this as my answer. לא, הוא לא רואה משאית It looks the same as the given answer, except I haven't put the vowel underneath the aleph. I'm not sure we can do this.. and we haven't been expected to do this so far! Anyway, it has been marked as "not quite right". Are we supposed to include the vowels in our answers, and if so how do we do it?? Thanx.
744
That was impossible to understand, I know the word for truck but I couldn't make out the word before that, the word for 'see' because I don't feel it was said clearly enough, he was speaking so fast!
I had to listen to this 6 times before I could make out what he was saying. The fact that the Hebrew R does not sound like an English R makes it extra difficult. And the sentence is spoken very quickly relative to what level I'm at. On the other hand, I did guess it right after listening carefully over and over.
Before I answer your question, something to note is that the discussion threads are not monitored by the developers or course creators. So when you say 'you just do for us learners', be aware that anyone who answers you is just as likely to be a learner (although there are some native speakers of Hebrew on these threads who might answer if they see your question).
In answer, the system of dots and lines that sometimes appear near various letters, are used to give you a guide to pronunciation. They are not always provided because modern Hebrew that you'd see written in 'everyday life' tends not to use them. However, sometimes they tell you the gender of the word or its matching subject, as in the case here. The three dots under the aleph make it an 'eh' sound, while what appears to be a little T under the aleph make it an 'ah' sound.
Ro'eh matches with the masculine subject (הוא in this case) while ro'ah matches with a feminine subject. This can be useful if you have a sentence where there is more than one potential subject that are differentiated by gender.
However, it can be confusing when Duo says in other examples 'another answer is...' and gives the sentence with various dots and lines under a word as if we had given a specific answer and it was giving us the alternative. This being despite the reality is that most people do not have keyboards that allow for putting in these markers in the first place. You'll get used to that.
No, Hebrew does not.
We call "is", "are", "was" helping verbs in English, because they are not really essential. Hebrew and some other languages simply don't have helping verbs, as they are completely unnecessary.
For example, I could rewrite what I just wrote without them, and it still makes sense: We call "is", "are", "was" helping verbs in English, because they not really essential. Hebrew and some other languages simply not have helping verbs, as they completely unnecessary.
That makes for "improper" English, but it still makes perfect sense.
I am loving how efficient sentences are when written in Hebrew.
727
From מַשָּׂא (masá, “cargo”) + ־ית (forming words describing vehicles). Compare from the same root נָשָׂא (nasá, “to carry, to bear”).
source:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D7%9E%D7%A9%D7%90%D7%99%D7%AA