"אני אוכל את האוכל."
Translation:I eat the food.
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similar sentence with audio:
Same root, different pronunciation: אוֹכֵל "eats" [okEl] is stressed on the last syllable, but אֹ֫כֶל "food" [Okel] on the first.
The number of times I keep confusing the direct object marker for You (feminine)... 8-/
Well, אֶת does not mean the, but is a grammatical particle which indicates that a determined object follows a transitive verb and is therefore only translated by word order in English. Your problem would be similar to saying: Why does the s in he eats mean third person, when there is already the pronoun he".
We have been training sentences with direct objects all along and this את only comes up now that we are talking about food. Is there something specific for food? In אני רואה ספר יפה there is a direct object, yet no את precedes it. The tip is not being helpful.
Well, אֶת is only put before determined direct objects, so the difference is not about food, but due to סֵ֫פֶר is being A book, but הָאֹ֫כֶל THE food.
Why is eat and food somethings without the vav after the aleph? Is there something to know is was the one without a typo? Why does the New Comprehensive Shio Dictionary has no vav after the vav in either food or eat?
Well, in the traditional defective orthography you wrote אֹ֫כֶל food without a vav, because it is a segolate of the type KoKK-, where you have forms like אׇכְלִי [okhli] my food written with a Kamatz Katan, so that out of reasons of uniformity of the different forms וֹ was not used in all its forms.
I can't even read my own question it's so full of typos! Thank you for trying to help me; it seems to be over my head, but I'll keep going and maybe it will come to make sense. I looked at a Hebrew verb book too. Apparently it's present tense that has the vav, and also the first person future . I made a list of all the "vav" verbs presented so far: אוהב, אוכל, בוחר, גומר, הולך, זוכר, חושב, חוזר, יודע, יוצא, יורד, יושב, כותב, לובש, לומד, מוכר, מוצא, סוגר, סופר, עובד, עוזב, עומד, עוצר, פוגש, פןתח, רואה, רוצה, רוקד, שואל, שומע, שומר, שותה?
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Agreeing with YardenNB's summary...adding a little more. Yod and vav are semi vowels...even in English 'y' can function as a vowel. Hebrew has come a full circle in terms of spelling. Way back in history no vowels were written at all. Then semi vowels started being used as vowels at the ends of words. Then they started being used as vowels in the middle of words. But the only words that were given these vowels were the ones where the vowels never changed. Later on, the niqqud system was perfected and added to the system already in use. So when using niqqud, some vowels are marked twice. Some vowels that could change under certain circumstances were not marked with vav or yod in the old system, but in modern Hebrew, which is generally written without niqqud they are often added to help word recognition. So as Yarden NB says, yods and vavs are used when writing without niqqud, but not when writing with niqqud. But there are some exceptions to this rule. One of these, of course, is the feminine plural ending. Even when written with full niqqud, it stays the same. Another is the word טוב, meaning good. There are some words such as בוקר /גדול which were originally written with or without the vav, so both are equally correct when you are using niqqud. In general, because Duo is not using niqqud, it makes full use of vowel letters. But outside of Duo, expect variations.
Thanks, I didn't know a lot of it.
"Then they started being used as vowels in the middle of words. But the only words that were given these vowels were the ones where the vowels never changed."
Can you give more details on what it means "the vowels never changed"?
To summarize IngeborgHa14 in simpler words, אוכל for food is written with vav when writing without niqqud, and without vav when writing (properly) with niqqud. Regarding the verb, you already figured it out (-:
The simple answer to MourningWa’s question is that the rules for writing with niqqud are flexible. Also, more vav and yod are used when there is no niqqud.
I think there is almost zero flexibility in the rules for writing with niqqud (maybe some particular words here and there with two allowed forms), and quite little flexibility without niqqud. Whether all people (and even writers, and even language editors) know the rules well enough to always get it right, or be disturbed by mistakes, is another matter.
