"ילדים וגברים."
Translation:Children and men.
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Why does the vav before 'men' sound like an 'o' instead of a 'v'? I've noticed this whenever "and men" is referenced
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The "and" ו turns from "ve" sound to "oo" in a few occasions. One of them, here, where the word starts without a vowel - גברים = gvarim - the g goes right into the v, no additional vowel. To eliminate consecutive non-sounding (or nearly so) consonants the language turns the "ve" into "oo"
I'm no expert in such rules of the language, but just wanted to note that in a casual manner of speaking you can pretty much always say 've' and it would be perfectly acceptable..
(which is possibly a mistake but nowadays that's how people in Israel speak...)
So just to be clear, when it comes to "and" the 'o' version is common in colloquial Hebrew, sounds more natural, but is viewed as incorrect traditionally? When can it occur? Before consonant clusters?
The 've' version is more common in colloquial Hebrew. There's no 'o' version but rather an 'oo' version, (meaning it sound more like an 'u' sound). It's not very common in everyday talk.
No, they said the opposite of what you just said. They are saying that it is not proper to use the v sound with consecutive nonsounding consonants but that people have begun to do it commonly.
I think the important question here is, do you want to sound like a native Modern Hebrew Speaker? or like a radio announcer/religious person? The majority of modern hebrew speakers use the "ve" pronunciation every time. Only official scripts from the radio/TV use the "oo" pronunciation and very religious people reading from formal texts. So it is a question of register - not "proper".
So it's like oog b'v' reem? It's so fast it's hard to hear without knowing what it SHOULD be :-)
most people don't know when to use oo, so they just use ve, or quite commonly use oo incorrectly
I think the important question here is, do you want to sound like a native Modern Hebrew speaker? or like a radio announcer/religious person? The majority of Modern Hebrew speakers use the "ve" pronunciation every time. Only official scripts from the radio/TV use the "oo" pronunciation and very religious people reading from formal texts. So it is a question of register - not "proper".
An Israeli told me the -im / -ot "rule" is only helpful with verbs and adjectives. He says that so many nouns have the plural ending of the "wrong" gender that you cannot use it reliably with nouns. He believes there are too many to be called "exceptions" - better to just memorize the plural as you learn a new noun (like most of the times in German, I guess).
so from what I am reading, the "ve" turns into an "oo" sound because "גברים" starts with a "g" sound. But how this this different than "או"? When I heard it it sounded like he was saying "Children or men" not "children and men". Is it just contextual clues to tell the difference?
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Not quite. There are two occasions when ו is pronounced "oo". One is when the first letter of the word is ב, ו, מ or פ (BUMP is a cool mnemonic to remember them). Second is when the first letter of the word, and this can be any letter, has a shva under it, meaning there is no vowel attached to it, which is the case here. If the word were written with nikud, it would be גְּבָרִים. Note that this is considered formal and rarely used in everyday language. You will hear it, however, on TV, radio, lectures and some other more formal settings.
Second, ו is pronounced "oo" as in "good". On the other hand, או is pronounced "o" as in "got" (British English pronunciation). They are not the same sound.
In American English, got is pronounced with an ah sound. Are you saying that או (meaning “or”) is pronounced with an ah sound?
So the "eem" sound pluralises it? Also should I assume its like spanish where the plural of children bases from the male version of the word?
- 1420
Yes, in most cases ים says the word is in plural. Usually it is a noun that is masculine. I say in most cases, because, very soon you'll encounter the word "tasty" which is טעים "ta'im" in Hebrew. It has ים at the end, but this word is the singular form of the adjective.
So, there are two plural endings - ים is the usual plural ending for masculine nouns, like here ילד "yeled" is a child and ילדים "yeladim" is children; and ות is the usual plural ending for feminine nouns, like ילדה "yalda" is a girl and ילדות "yeladot" is girls.
There are, however, plenty of exceptions to this rule. One of the very first you'll come in contact is נשים "nashim" - women, which is the plural word of אישה "isha" - woman, both of which are obviously feminine. These exceptions you simply need to learn by heart.