"יש לי אפרסק צהוב ואדום."
Translation:I have a yellow and red peach.
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Does this mean "a yellow and red peach" or "a yellow and a red peach"? How would you differentiate between these two sentences?
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The first three words mean "I have a peach". The next two words are adjectives that modify that one noun, that one peach, describing it as yellow and red.
You should probably point out how colours decline and how they overwhelmingly fit into the קָטֹל mishkal.
Colours in Hebrew generally fit into the CaCoC mishkal; declined, it’s CCuCa, CCuCim, CCuCot. Examples:
- אָדֹם, אֲדֻמָּה, אֲדֻמִּים, אֲדֻמּוֹת = red*
- כתום, כתומה, כתומים, כתומות = orange
- סגול, סגולה, סגולים, סגולות = purple
- ורוד, ורודה, ורודים, ורודות = pink
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כחול, כחולה, כחולים, כחולות = blue
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The reason this adjective starts with CaC instead of CC is that א (as well as ה, ע, and usually ח) can’t have a shva, so it gets an epenthetic vowel. Furthermore, if the word starts with a sonorant (ר, ל, נ, מ) and a shva, the shva is usually pronounced like a segol.
There’s also an -ish struct, קְטַלטַל, e.g. כְּחַלְחַל ‘bluish’ (suffixes appended normally, not vowel or stress shifts).
I would really like a more detailed description of this sort of stuff with all the terms in the lesson notes. It seems like otherwise we have to memorise individually words that have systematic patterns which are both useful and interesting to know :(
I agree! I was aghast to see the almost complete and utter absence of these structures in the tips and notes. That’s like Hebrew grammar 101. Nothing makes sense in this language without it.
Im guessing a single pleach that is multi colored, because "peach" isn't in the plural form. I could be wrong though. Anyone else have an explanation?
You say that you guess a single peach is in view because “peach” isn’t in the plural form.
However, if the meaning of the sentence is I have a yellow and a red peach and you mean that you have two peaches, each of a different color, then you would not pluralize peach in English and probably not in Hebrew either.
Three people said that this sentence is talking about one peach. Elias asked how to say I have a yellow and a red peach. If by that he was asking how to say the equivalent of I have a yellow peach and a red peach, and danny answered that this two-peach sentence would be the same as the Duolingo sentence, then danny is saying that this sentence is ambiguous. (One or two peaches might be in view).
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How would you say "I have a yellow and a red peach."? Do you have to say "יש לי אפרסק צהוב ואפרסק אדום." or is there another way?
I would guess that you could say, “יש לי אפרסק צהוב ואחד אדום.” — “I have a yellow peach and a red one.”
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No, what you wrote is incorrect. It makes no sense when translated literally. Since Hebrew doesn't have indefinite article, Elias's sentence would be the same as the one above.
In the grammar part is stated that in Hebrew two adjectives describing one substantive are usually connected by a Vav 'and’. Thus one would expect here the following solution to be correct, wouldn't you!? "I have a yellow red peach".