"הציפורים אוכלות לחם."
Translation:The birds eat bread.
23 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
38
Because it's a grammatical female, it's one of the exceptions where "ים" is the plural marking of a female noun. There are a few such exceptions and also a few where "ות" is the female marking of a male noun, just to annoy. :-)
38
I found this, it's a lot of historical and technical details in Hebrew but there's also a comprehensive list:
Masculines ending with ות: https://www.safa-ivrit.org/irregulars/pluralfm.php
Feminins ending with ים: https://www.safa-ivrit.org/irregulars/pluralml.php
314
Here's a flashcard deck called "Hebrew Irregular Plural Nouns". The creator of the deck says that all listed words with plurals ending in "-ot" are masculine, and those with plurals ending in "-im" are feminine.
https://quizlet.com/6657379/hebrew-irregular-plural-nouns-flash-cards/
b103 rich739183
314
Here's an article titled "Misleading gender of Hebrew words" and based on this course.
https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/36423456
b103 rich739183
I would appreciate it if duolingo would contribute to the education of the population by telling the truth: birds should not eat bread. Stop the encouragement. Give them whole grains instead, wheat, millet, for example, and during the winter something fatty, like sunflower seeds. Much better than bread, thank you
that's a great quastion, the ציפורים is one of the exceptions. there are about 35 feminine words that have plural suffix of masculine, and about 150 masculine words that have plural suffix of feminine. these words are different under the influence of Aramaic, which was widely used at the time of Chazal
1078
What does "ציפורים" mean? I think it's the feminine form of birds, meaning all the birds are ladies. But what then is the masculine plural and the plural for a mixed group of birds?
1078
Thank you. So just to clarify "ציפורים" means any group of birds whether male, female or mixed and because the word is feminine any following verb has to have a female ending. Is that correct?
1426
It has to be "definite direct object" to use את. If it were "the bread", then you'd say את הלחם. Here, it's just "bread" לחם.