advanced hebrew

[bluemarkus]

i have some more questions, probably some native speakers can help me out for an apple and an egg

difference between aleph and ayin: is there like a rule of thumb about which words are written with aleph and which with ayin ? i mix them up quite a lot.

does anybody have a list with hebrew plurals of shmot etzem(nouns) ? in the meantime i know quite some nouns, but often the plurals not well enough !

same goes for adjectives: i often only learn the male form, but need the female as well... if anybody knows a website where they are listed that would be so cool...

apart from that my hebrew is progressing and i am really glad that i have the honor and privilege to learn the language of heaven. greetings and encouragement to all others who learn as well. dont give up u have a lifetime to master the laschon hakadosch

MB

PS: anybody interested in vocabulary, hit me up, i have in the meantime 6000 words on quizlet.com, it is a great place to do vocabulary and makes the learning process entertaining and rewarding.

 

[yonah_mishael]

For adjective/noun pluralization, I would suggest that you get a hold of a Hebrew school dictionary. I've got the Ariel school dictionary, and it gives all of the relevant forms: absolute singular, construct singular, absolute plural, construct plural. Quite useful in those instances where the plural doesn't follow logically (like עדשה > עדשים for lentils).

For alef and ayin, I only have this help:

If a word deals with time and you have to choose between the two, choose ayin.
רגע - moment
עת - time
עתה - now
שעה - hour
שעון - watch, clock
עכשיו - now
עתיד - future
עבר - past

The words dealing with "bad" use ayin, too.
רע - bad, evil
רשע - wicked
פשע - crime
גרוע - bad
תועבה - abomination
עוון - iniquity
עבירה - sin, transgression

Of course, these words use ayin.
עבד - slave
עבודה - labor
בעל - master
עונש - punishment

I don't know what pointers I can give beyond that.

I've never had a problem separating the two. I guess I have a sort of photographic memory, because I can feel which one is which and can picture the word. I hope these groupings help. I don't have any large groups. Perhaps such a thing can be found somewhere online.

 

[yonah_mishael]

By the way, this isn't considered "advanced" information. Noun formation (including אב >אבות and שולחן > שולחנו&#1514 is still part of basic Hebrew.

The Academy put together a page on this, but they don't give any real help for remembering. Their only help is in telling us that הסיומות -ים ו-וֹת במקור אינן סיומות זכר ונקבה, והבחירה באחת מהן הייתה תלויה בעיקר במשקלו של שם העצם (the endings -im and -ot were originally not masculine or feminine endings, and the choice of one or them was dependent mainly on the paradigm of the noun). In the next sentence, they tell us that the forms only have a set arrangement in the forms of adjectives, not of nouns. At one point, I heard the statistic that 30% of Hebrew nouns have a "reversed gender plural," which means that we cannot think of it as "irregular." Anything that happens to 30% of the vocabulary stock cannot be considered "irregular."

This response from the Academy is even more problematic for those who are learning Hebrew as a second language.

I just happened across this list in a Google search, and it lists masculine nouns with -ot endings. I think this is what you were looking for.

 

[yonah_mishael]

I don't think "advanced Hebrew" is allowed on this forum. At one point, we had a Hebrew conversation going between myself and another poster, and it was deleted (assuming because the forum is English and the moderators are not trained to interpret Hebrew and therefore decide what is over the line and what is acceptable). Advanced Hebrew would imply that we have open free conversations in Hebrew and exchange our own ideas and discuss the ideas of others in the language. Anything dealing with word formation (morphology) and regular lexical phenomena is still in the category of "basic" and would be covered in the first year of a teacher-led course.

 

[bluemarkus]

wow yonah thank u a lot for the reply, this is really helpful, i´m gonna integrate it right away into my material, probably a new quizlet-thread will be helpful..

i agree word formation is very basic, theres still a lot left to be learned.

 

[yonah_mishael]

No problem, Markus. I'm always happy to help. Let me know if you have any other questions. (Including more advanced ones, which might be even more interesting!)

 

[bluemarkus]

cool, awesome. I did much vocabulary in the last months and listening comprehension and have progressed to an acceptable level. but now that i´ve learned to type regular hebrew keyboard i should focus more on writing and correct spelling since i make very many mistakes usually. but all good things take some time... i still can remember 22 months ago i thought "wow this alphabet looks really strange and random" haha..

 

[yonah_mishael]

Then you've come a long way.

!מזל טוב

 

[bluemarkus]

ya, now 2 years and going. but say, yonah, how can i produce a dagesh, the little dot inside a ב or פ ? the other nikkudei i do by pressing "alt" in conjunction with the numbers keys. but the dagesh ?

 

[yonah_mishael]

Dagesh is on the = key. If you want, I have a different system of doing it. I've put together a PDF to show how. Wanna see?

 

[bluemarkus]

כֹכ-כְכֶכֻכָכַכֵכִכֱכֳכֲ

in this line you can see what i get from the number keys nikkud-wise.
from the very right key producing a "kholem" to the "khataf patakh" on the left.

seing your PDF would be great ! write me a PM or mail (markuslebt@yahoo.de)

i think the "alt" key method is great, only the dagesh is missing in the repertoire which would be helpful at times to discern between a hard kaf and a weak kaf e.g.

 

[yonah_mishael]

!שלחתי לך מייל בעברית עם קובץ מצורף. בהצלחה

 

[bluemarkus]

HELLO jason,

i now figured out how to get the dagesh, i fixed my caracter palette problem (mac user).
i hope its gonna keep working cuz i hav problems using this whole unicode thing, its quite complicated..

heres a whole array of dagesh ---> חּחּחּפּפּפּכּכּכּכּ

 

[yonah_mishael]

Yeah, but we don't put dagesh in chet. LOL

 

[bluemarkus]

i know LOL. i just created a whole new keyboard layout with an application called "ukulele", but then i found the dagesh under the "tav" key. dang that took quite a while but now at least i know where it is and dont always have to keep the Palette open.

now i´m completely covered keyboard-wise...which is....good !!

 

[yonah_mishael]

I'm glad you've got it worked out. Come to think of it, since you're using Mac, my instructions probably didn't help you at all anyway!!

Typed by hand:
בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ׃
לֹֽא־יִהְיֶה לְךָ אֱלֹהִים אֲחֵרִים עַל־פָּנָי׃

Do you have access to the meteg/siluk or makaf (&#1470? I can type those without pulling up the character map, which I guess is like your Palatte.