future tense (1)
ha atid shel anashim?
today we'll start tackling the future tense with six well behaved verbs. To demonstrate how they work I will have to use two hebrew letters we don't have in the latin alphabet: the 'alef א and the 'ain ע
So far I used the apostrophe ' to signal the presence of either 'alef or 'ain because it doesn't make a difference in the pronunciation but to understand the future tense we have to be more precise to see the underlying consonant structure of the verbs.
so, the followin examples will look a bit strange because I am mixing the two alphabets
(but underneath each bold line there will be the usual transcription/pronuncation in brackets.)
ok, so here comes the construction of
the first person singular in the future tense:
in Hebrew the future tense is constructed with prefixes
and the sign for the first person singular it is the
א
the three 3rd p. sg. masc. 1st p. sg. masc. 1st p. sg.
consonants past tense present tense future tense
X X X - XaXaX XoXeX אeXXeX
r tz h - ratzah - rotzeh - אertzeh - I will want
('ertzeh)
ע s h - עasah - עoseh - אeעeseh - I will do
'assah 'osseh ('e'esseh)
sh t h - shatah - shoteh - אeshteh - I will drink
('eshteh)
k n h - kanah - koneh - אekneh - I will buy
('ekneh)
r א h - raאah - roאeh - אerאeh - I will see
(ra'ah) (ro'eh) ('er'eh)
s ch h - sachah - socheh - אescheh - I will swim
('es-cheh)
look closely at the very regular 3 root consonant structure of these verbs and how the vowels show wether its present, past or future
vowels for the past: a - a
vowels for the present: o - e
vowels for the future: e - e
now wouldn't it be great if all verbs adhered to these rules? Unfortunately they don't. They do all sorts of things and take different vowels and what have you, but it's not as bad as it sounds and we'll do it very slowly with lots of examples.
Hi! First of all I wanted to tell you that I really like the way you teach Hebrew :) I'm learning a lot. Now I'm doing
ReplyDelete"Modern Hebrew for Beginners", the problem is that in the practicing when I have for exmple: I am Moshe and I have to write the answer, I can't know if I have to write it with the English keybord or the Hebrew one so maybe you can correct it and to write (english) or (hebrew) next to the word/s we have to translate because it says I wrote it wrong but I know the answer...Thanks so much to read my comment, I hope you can solve it , it woulb be great :) I like the way you teach Hebrew, you make it easier :)
Dear Maria Dolores
ReplyDeletethe lessons are organised in pairs, one without and one with the Hebrew alphabet: the exercises in the odd numbered lessons (1,3,5,7,9...) need to be written with the English keyboard, the even numbered lessons (2,4,6,8...) with the Hebrew keyboard.
There is a detailed explanation in the first blogpost as well.
Unfortunately it's not possible for me to put a alphabet tag on the individual exercise levels in memrise. This means that for the repetition you can't repeat the content for the whole unit but you have to go down to the individual levels to repeat / water the individual sentences. I wrote the lessons before they changed the repetition / watering method and couldn't forsee this change. Sorry for the complication.
Thanks for writing and please feel free to write anytime something is unclear. I really want to improve this course and feedback is essential.
Anna