![]() ![]() Except for the infinitive and gerund, all these forms are conjugated to reflect the number, person, and gender (masculine or feminine) of its subject. Finally, a very small number of fixed expressions include verbs in the jussive mood, basically a third-person imperative. Verbs in five of the binyanim have an imperative mood and an infinitive, verbs in four of the binyanim have gerunds, and verbs in one of the binyanim have a past participle.There are two genders: masculine and feminine.There are three persons: first, second, and third.There are two numbers: singular and plural.Verbs have three tenses: present, past, and future.Each binyan has its own conjugation pattern, and verbs in the same binyan are conjugated similarly.As a result, different verbs share the same basic meaning but differ in voice, valency, aspect, or any combination of these features. Most roots can be assigned to to more than one binyan, so that more than one verb can be formed from a typical root. The roots are assigned to one of seven constructions that are called binyan. All Hebrew verbs are formed from three- or four-consonant roots that define the basic concept of expressed by the verb. Hebrew verbs are constructed very differently from verbs in Western European languages.A direct object is marked by the preposition et-, e.g., Adam kara et ha-sefer ‘Adam read the book’.To express possession, modern Hebrew uses the preposition shel ‘of’, as in ha-dal shel ha-beyt ‘the door of the house’.The definite article ha– is placed both before the adjective and the noun, hence ‘the big camel’ is ha-yeled ha-gadol, literally ‘the boy the big.’.Adjectives agree with nouns in number and gender.Nouns may change their internal vowels when they take the plural ending. Plurals are formed by adding the suffix – im to masculine nouns, e.g., yeled ‘boy’ and yeledim ‘boys’, and – ot to feminine nouns, e.g., mita ‘bed’ and mitot ‘beds’. Some nouns also have a dual number for paired objects. Nouns have two genders: masculine and feminine, e.g., yeled ‘boy’ and yalda ‘girl’.Syntactic functions of nouns in the sentence are represented by prepositions.Nouns, articles, adjectives, and pronouns The description below is that of Modern Hebrew. There are significant differences in the grammar of Modern as opposed to Biblical Hebrew.Prefixes and suffixes are added to roots to modify word meaning and express grammatical relations.Changes in the vowels or their omission affect word meaning, e.g., the root K-T-V produces katav ‘he wrote’, ktav ‘writing’, katuv ‘written’, and miktava ‘desk’. Many words consist of three consonants separated by vowels.The grammar of Hebrew is fairly typical of all Semitic languages: ![]() Modern Hebrew has the following consonants: loss of voiceless and voiced pharyngeal consonants, which are present in Arabic, but pronounced as velar stops / k/ and / g/ in in the speech of most Hebrew speakers, with the exception of those who speak the Oriental dialect.pharyngealization, i.e., pronouncing consonants with constricted vocal cords.spirantization, i.e., pronouncing a stop, as a fricative, e.g., pronouncing /b/ as a /v/.gemination, i.e., doubling of consonants.The term “interrupted vowel” refers to a vowel followed by a glottal stop.Ĭonsonants in Biblical Hebrew had several characteristics that are not present in Modern Hebrew, for example: ![]() In Biblical Hebrew, each vowel had three forms: short, long and interrupted, however this distinction has been lost in Modern Hebrew. The phonemes /e / and /ə / have merged in the speech of most Israeli speakers. Spoken Israeli Hebrew has six vowel phonemes, i.e., sounds that differentiate word meaning. Hebrew is unique in that it was resurrected from being a written language to becoming one that is spoken today as a first language by millions of people. There are other surveys that place the number of Hebrew speakers worldwide at 9 million, but this figure does not indicate what is meant by “speakers”. In addition,Hebrew remains the liturgical language of Jews worldwide. It is the language of most newspapers, books, magazines, radio, and television. Hebrew is the medium of instruction at the university level as well. Government schools teach in either Hebrew or Arabic, however, Hebrew is a compulsory subject through the tenth grade in all schools, even the Arabic ones. It is used for official, public and private purposes throughout Israel, wih the exception of the Arab sector, where Arabic is used. Today, it is the official language of the State of Israel. It became an official language of British Palestine in 1922. This figure includes those who speak it as a a native language and those for whom it is a second language learned to varying degrees of proficiency. Hebrew is spoken by about 5 million people in Israel ( Ethnologue). ![]()
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