lesson 65
do you know Rony Edry and his amazing peace campaign?
so how do we say We love you (plural) in Hebrew?
anachnou ohavim etchem!
and now comes the grammar, brace yourselves:
we did ohev - ohevet the present tense of to love very early on in this course. ohavim is the masculine plural form and has the plural ending -im we encountered -im already in the sentence mah omrim be ivrit? (how do we say in Hebrew). The plural verb forms will be discussed in depth in the next lessons. For today we just need ohavim.
we learned to say I love you (singulr) quite a while ago:
anee ohev otach anee ohev otcha anee ohevet otach anee ohevet otcha
and we did anachnou (and the others) in the last lesson
etchem is the direct object of anachnou and that's why the atem becomes etchem
in grammatical terms the sentence looks like this:
we (the subject of the sentence) love (act on) you (the direct object of the sentence)
anachnou ohavim etchem!
we just revised the form of the direct object of the personal pronouns in the last lesson:
oti = me
otcha = you (masc.)
otach = you (fem.)
oto = him
otah = her
and here are the new plural forms:
otanou = us
etchem = you (masc.)
etchen = you (fem.)
otam = them (masc.)
otan = them (fem.)
it's a bit finicky to always distinguish between the masculine and the feminine forms. But in real life you don't need the feminine forms all that much because they're only used if the group you address or talk about is composed entirely of women. As in French, if there's one male you immediately switch to the masculine form. Languages arent very political correct. Most languages are in fact quite chauvinistic. But it really doesn't matter whether I like it or not, it is just as it is. And it makes our lives as learners much easier.
This was quite bit of dry grammar today. Unfortunately we can't do without. But the next lessons will be easier again with lots of repetitions and lots of examples.
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