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- "כשאת שותָה קפה את לא ישנה."
34 Comments
Well, not grammatically, but as regards content: You have to work very hard to make a dollar these days or The only place you can get great pizza is in Houghton does not adress you personally, but a general person, a John Doe. The usual way to express this in Standard Hebrew is indeed the impersonal plural, but quite informally, as Yarden mentioned, the English model to express it is possible in Hebrew too.
I was wondering about the correct way of constructing the impersonal in this case. My understanding (guess) is that the proper way is the impersonal plural, כש שותים קפה לא ישנים , while an informal way is כשאת שותָה קפה את לא ישנה , (and I suppose כשאתה שותה קפה אתה לא ישנ ), and that כשאת שותים קפה לא ישנים is neither. Is that correct?
725
A correction. It's כששותים. Also, it's אתה לא ישן (you forgot the nun sofit). As for your last example, it's incorrect, because you can't combine את with שותים. Or was it a typo?
Also, as described in this article, "אַתָּה evidently expresses a relatively interactive orientation, even when uses gererically". So while כְּשֶׁשּׁוֹתִים… sounds more like an scientific fact, כְּשֶׁאַתָּה שׁוֹתֶה… sounds more like an incentive to reduce coffee consumption.
96
There is a difference in nikkud (and thus meaning) between the two words: יָשָׁן is an adjective which means old (used to describe an object, as TeribleT mentioned), and יָשֵׁן is a verb, which means "is sleeping"
148
This one came up as a listening exercise, but it doesn't seem to have any sound. Anyone else had an issue with it?