"אני נועל נעליים."

Translation: I wear shoes.

[jin__wu]

I love how it literally says "I am shoeing shoes", if only the verb shoeing existed in English.

[Larry824711]

It does, but only for horses. :-)

[Martha804540]

As close as English comes is "I am shod in shoes"

[oldshoe5]

Does נועל mean the act of wearing shoes, the act of putting on shoes or both?

[misterram]

Both :)

[Laraswife]

Is נעליים the dual form? Would you say נעלים for lots of shoes?

[misterram]

The plural is נעליים as well. נעליים can mean a pair of shoes and lots of them.

[Aerologia]

I guess it's the relic from old dual?

[DerAndereLerner]

The ending 'יים' comes from 'שתיים', which means two.

[Jonathan72274]

All the speaking is way too fast. Please add an option to make it slower

[Yeruchum]

where is there two yuds?

[YardenNB]

Generally speaking, when it's an /i/ sound that comes immediate after or immediately before another vowel, where the other value is not represented by a letter; however, it remains single in the beginning of a word even if followed by a vowel without a letter. Telling example: the word "pie" (as a type of cake) is written פאי in Hebrew. The mathematical constant "pi" is also written פאי, but some prefer to spell it without the silent א, and then they'd double the yod: פיי. Two states in the US: מיין vs. איווה (note איידהו, though: the א represents the consonant more than the /a/ vowel). The first names ירדן and ירוחם exemplify the exception for word beginning.

The motivation behind this arcane rule is to double in cases where a single yod would tempt one very strongly to read it as an /i/ vowel without the other vowel. If one sees נעלים one is tempted to read it as /na'alim/ (Hebrew being Hebrew, this will quite often be another existing word; in this case it is!).

[danny912421]

But in this example, wouldn't you say that the double yud is here because originally this was dual number, while plural would have just one. But since נעלים isn't plural for shoes, נעליים stayed as de facto plural of the word. Unlike examples such as חודש-חודשיים-חודשים.

[YardenNB]

Well, I would say that because originally this was dual, it's pronounced /na'alayim/ and not /na'alim/; that's a strong fact of how Hebrew speakers speak. How you spell /na'alayim/ is another question, up to experts' decisions and standards. As it happens, with niqqud you'd use one yod.

[ParenteCandido]

It looks like in Portuguese: eu calço calçados. :-)

[BrianTice]

With the doubled verb (emphatic construction), how is "I do wear shoes" wrong?

[danny912421]

The verb is not doubled. נועל is the verb (present tense masculine singular form) and נעליים is a noun - shoes.

If you wanted to make it emphatic, you might say אני כן נועל נעליים.

[VforBBforV]

I remember the word for shoes because the Hebrew sound reminds me of the English word "nails"- as in hobnail boots...as in shoes
My mind works in bizarre ways, but maybe this will help someone else remember! :-)