lessons 5 and 6

anee ohevet shokolad

אני אוהבת שוקולד

Shalom!

Today's course is about learning and loving and about the most important question of all: mah?  what?

מה                               mah                            what

אני לומד                      anee lomed                   I learn (masc.)

אני לומדת                    anee lomedet                I learn (fem.)

עברית                          'ivrit                              Hebrew

?מה אתה לומד             mah ata lomed?              what do you learn? (masc.)

?מה את לומדת             mah at lomedet?            what do you learn? (fem.)

אני לומדת עברית          anee lomedet 'ivrit          I learn Hebrew (fem.)

אני לומד עברית            anee lomed 'ivrit              I learn Hebrew (masc.)

אני אוהב                      anee ohev                       I love (masc.)

אני אוהבת                    anee ohevet                    I love(fem.)

?מה אתה אוהב             mah ata ohev?                 what do you love (masc.)

?מה את אוהבת             mah at ohevet?              what do you love (fem.)

שוקולד                         shokolad                         chocolate

אני אוהב שוקולד           anee ohev shokolad          I love chocolate (masc.)

אני אוהבת שוקולד        anee ohevet shokolad        I love chocolate (fem.)

why don't you try out my free memrise course:

http://www.memrise.com/course/78569/modern-hebrew-for-beginners-2/

Verbs and their conjugations.
I will focus on the present tense for quite a while. I have prepared a number of  verbs that seem very important to me and I'll repeat them over and over again in the present tense before attacking the past tense. The plural forms will come even later.

present tense
in the present tense in the singular tense there are only two forms, a feminine and a masculine form.

I learn (masc.)  +  you learn (masc.)    +  he learns    =       lomed
ani lomed              ata lomed                    hu lomed
(the third person pronouns will be coming soon)

I learn (fem.)   +   you learn (fem.)     +  she learns    =       lomedet
ani lomedet           at lomedet                  hee lomedet

present tense - simple and continuous forms
Hebrew has only one present tense and it is used for the continuous form as well. There is no distinction between I learn and I am learning it is all the same form. This is sometimes a bit tricky when writing the memrise lessons and I am sometimes using the simple and sometimes the continuous form just as it seems more logical. But it is not always clear what is more logical...

types of conjugations
there are quite a few verbs that work like 'ohev - ohevet' and 'lomed - lomedet'. Other types of conjugation will follow soon.

progression of this course
as you will see this course's focus is very much on verbs. I have a list of about 20 verbs and I think they are the most important to start with. I would like to use them until the grammar is really clear before introducing more verbs.
At the beginning I will introduce the present tense in its masculine and feminine form  (singular). In a second step I will bring in the infinitive. And then I'll start with the past tense of those same verbs. The plural forms will come later because I want to keep the progression steady and not too steep. Once the singular forms are well assimilated the plural forms will be introduced and thoroughly trained as well.
Most courses I know have a very steep learning curve because they always try to introduce the complete paradigms.
This course is based on small and steady increments where the grammar is illustrated with many examples, each of which can be trained in detail on memrise.