"הרופא לא האמין שאני חתול."
Translation:The doctor did not believe that I am a cat.
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Update (3 years later): after further incidents of this kind, the doctor has now been disbarred from the medical profession.
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Is it correct in english: ...that I am a cat? (because I'm still a cat, not that I was a cat)
Yes, "the doctor didn't believe that i am a cat" and "the doctor did not believe that i was a cat" could both be used. (*A delusional person would, in my experience, more likely use "that i am not a cat!!")
In the notes of the lesson it is written: "all hiph'il verbs in the past tense start with "hi"." But in this case it starts with a "he" sound. Are there more hiph'il verbs like this one (לְהַאֲמִין) that in the past start with a "he" sound?, is there some kind or rule to detect them?
It is הֶאֱמִין because, if you have a guttural or aleph as first consonant in the Hiphil, the first syllable opens up, here to the soft combination [heXe], sometimes to the hard combination [heX] like in הֶחְסִיר.
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I am a native speaker of American English (East, South& Midwest), and I agree with you.
Only if you were a cat and are no longer a cat. Like if the spell wore off. If you're still a cat, you are a cat not "was" a cat.
Even if you are still a cat, the sentence refers t the time when the doctor refused to believe it. I agree it should be "was."
In English, you might say “yesterday I saw my newborn granddaughter and she was beautiful”. You probably still think that your granddaughter is beautiful, but you use “was beautiful” because you saw her yesterday. (“... and she is beautiful” is also a perfectly normal way to say it.)
However, just because English can use the past tense to refer to a present reality, that doesn’t mean that Hebrew does the same thing. So your best bet would be the “I am a cat” translation.
סוף סופ . אבל הוא היה צריך לעשות בדיקות דם רבות, וגם הייתי צריך לענות על הרבה שאלות לפני שהוא היה בתוח! Translation: Finally! But he had to do many blood tests and I also had to answer a lot of questions before he was sure!
