Rabbi Binyamin Yuhanan - Biblical Hebrew Part 5

good evening we are learning hebrew biblical hebrew from the first hebrew primer and we are in chapter four page 25 nouns and verbs and today we're going to learn the masculine form of uh hebrew nouns and verbs unlike english hebrew language has nouns that are masculine in nature and feminine in nature and unlike english from the verb you can um you can know if you're talking about a female or a male in other languages it is also like that in russian for example we also have um gender assigned to nouns and from the verb we know if you're talking to or about a male or female before we start the chapter we have a review of everything we have learned so far and we read words that are on on page 25 now line one av david yosef moshe me is uh line m [Music] or halim line 17 ko matsu this finishes the oral review everyone should say all these words for themselves now we go to page 26 and here from now on we will have vocabulary at the beginning of each chapter these are frequent words and they should be memorized starting from top right avraham abraham ish man by it house ben son davar thing or word david david who he or it can also refer to an object and then in english will say it it can may be masculine who and it can also be feminine we'll learn about it in the next chapter next column remembered so on uh on the right side the right column we have all the nouns and pronouns and on the left side we also have um some verbs introduced the first verb zachar he remembered malach he ruled or he reigned and from the word the the two words are similar malach means he ruled means a king young man ahmad he stood shama he heard or he listened and shamar he guarded and kept so majority of hebrew words have accent on the last syllable and when it is not so when it is an exception then it is marked by that arrow going um towards the left over the letter that is um accented um so for example words by it there is an accent over uh there's a arrow over ba so it's by it not by it and on the left column this is a popular mistake when we say in shaharid hashem hashem often people say hashem and that is wrong the proper way to say is hashem hashem and one more example but rather okay now simplest hebrew sentence it's a a sentence is a group of words that express a complete thought for example david zakhar david remember abraham garden now there's a difference between english language and hebrew in english the verb normally follows the subject david remembered he stood it has to be like this you cannot say remembered david stood he that would be improper whereas in hebrew the verb usually precedes the subject but it may also follow it in hebrew both ways are correct you can you put the verb before and you can put the verb after but usually it's before the noun in english the noun comes first in hebrew usually the verb comes first but it's okay if the noun comes first as well for example you can say david zachar david remembered or you can say zakhar david in english it would be the same david remembered who ahmad or ahmad who both mean he stood now go to page 27 what is the subject of a sentence the subject of a sentence is a noun or a pronoun that performs the action in the sentence that's the the subject of the sentence that performs the action in this sentence which means the noun is what does what the verb describes a noun is a word that names a person place object or idea the nouns in the vocabulary of this chapter are avraham ben a pronoun is a word used in place of a noun for example the words he she and it are pronouns the vocabulary of this chapter includes the pronoun who he or in english can mean either he or it masculine it next is verbs verb a verb is a word that describes the action of the subject in a sentence in the sentence david remembered the verb is remembered the verbs in this chapter vocabulary are zachar malach now we introduce something that is called perfect tense in english verbs describe action in past present and future tenses now in modern hebrew that's also true but in biblical hebrew we differentiate only two tenses perfect which describes a completed action which in english we would call past tense it happened already and imperfect which describes action which is not complete that would we would be present it's still going on it's not complete or future it's not complete because it didn't even start it will be all the verbs shown above are shown in the perfect tense because the root of a verb is described in a perfect tense in the past tense we say he guarded ahmad he stood because that is the simplest form only three letters mostly three letters that describe it in other um tenses it would have more um letters for prefixes suffixes all the verbs shown above are shown in the perfect tense in biblical hebrew the perfect tense is sometimes used to describe to describe present completed action or even future completed action as well as past completed actions so normally it's past because usually what's in the past is completed but there is such a thing as present completed and future completed in this book however the perfect tense will be treated as if it were equivalent to the english past tense to make matters um simple perfect tense means past tense imperfect tense can mean present or future in english there are many ways to describe action in the past in hebrew there is only one way and we will see an example of that now what's what's interesting is as we mentioned in our first class hebrew language is designed to be a cryptic language hebrew language is designed to be a language in which you code in which you hint a language where one thing one sentence can have multiple meanings and what allows it is the fact that the the vowels are not present some letters can be omitted like vav and ud sometimes alephism omitted and what we're about to learn that the same sentence in hebrew can mean five different things in english and depending on the context it will mean different things and you can interpret the sentence slightly out of the context and derive a different meaning from it for example the hebrew sentence david shamar can be translated into english as shown below david so simply we would say david guarded but besides david garden it can mean david did guard david was guarding david has garden david head guarded and if you know english well you will know exactly the difference between these five expressions and all of them can be expressed with just two words david so we have to keep that in mind when we translate hebrew sentences we have to figure out which one of these it really is now we go to page 28 and here we learn a new um idea and that is the definite article in english there is an indefinite article a before the word or an am as a separate word as in a man or an i so in english it's a separate word and you have a definite and indefinite articles in hebrew there is no indefinite article a regular word by itself is already indefinite you just add a definite article when necessary and when you don't add definite article it means it's indefinite therefore the word mele can mean either king or a king depending on the context in both english and hebrew there is a definite article however in english the definite article is a separate word the in hebrew the definite article is attached to a noun and cannot stand alone it's a prefix the definite article is the letter hey and usually it has a vowel ah so a definite noun for example will start with ha followed by dagesh in the next letter for example melech and if you want to say the king it will turn to ha melech and now we have examples first we read the middle column indefinite now and then we add the definite article to it and we get the definite noun on the left side a young man the young man a word the word then the son buy it house ha buy it the house now what if the definite article uh precedes the five guttural letters we said that after the definite art article the prefix ha the next letter has a dagesh inside but there is no dagesh in the gathering letters when the definite article comes before a word that begins with one of the five gathering letters alef hey hat iron and rash the the ha sound can change to ha with the commas or hey so instead of just a line you might have a line with a little vertical line underneath or three dots and there is no digestion following letter now let's see the examples ish starts with aleph which is gatoro man ha ish and the aleph doesn't have the gesh cannot have um although in a couple places in the torah there is a dagesh in aleph but that's an unusual thing and the ha here comes with a kamats with a little t instead of a pata just a line starts with iron which is gatoral a city ha ha here but the meaning is the same whether there is dagesh or no dagesh now we go to page 29 nouns that are definite by nature some nouns are definite by nature in english we call them proper nouns they include the names of specific people and specific places the definite article is not usually used before a proper noun so the sentence is means the man remembered but if we speak about a definite man for example avraham zakhar then we don't need to say ha avraham zakhar because avraham is already definite you don't need double definite the king stood and we don't know who is the king but if you define who the king is david ahmad david stood then you don't need the definite article because david is already definite king david okay now exercises vocabulary drill read and translate the following words and here really every person should do it themselves using the vocabulary on page 26 the new words that we learned one ahmad stood ben translate it yourself and then i will tell you the translation ben son who he or it masculine [Music] he heard ish avraham abraham king a word or a thing zachar remembered a young man the young man now in exercise two we read and translate the following words number one avraham [Music] abraham heard malach hamelech david garden who malach he ruled number seven ahmad baid a house a young man remembered a man guard exercise 3 read and translate the following pairs of sentences here it shows you that in hebrew the noun and the verb can can be interchanged for example number one actually here we focus on the definite article a young man heard the young man heard number two ahmad bin a man guarded the man garden 4. a king ruled the king ruled 5 david zakhar davar david remembered a thing the man remembered the thing 6. who shamarbait he guarded a house hamelik the king guarded a house now in exercise four add the definite article ha to the following words don't forget to add the dagesh when you add the definite article as necessary which means if you would be writing this you would have to add the question if you are saying it you would have to put extra emphasis on the on that letter now we go to page 30. translate the following sentences into hebrew and here also you have to do this exercise by yourself with writing but i will help you you can um try on your own i'll try to do it slowly a young man heard or shama the young man heard [Music] number four the man guarded ha ish sham number four second sentence in four the man was guarding in english is different but in hebrew it's the same as the previous one number five the young man was guarding a young man had guarded number six a king remembered now in exercise 6 we read and translate into english number one avraham shama davar abraham heard a word number two malach david for those that just joined we are on page 30 exercise six number two malach david david ruled number three the young man remembered a word number four ben shamar a son remembered number five ahmad hamil the king stood number six zachar who buy it he remembered a house the man heard a word number eight habit ahmad the king ruled now exercise seven translate into hebrew again this should be done by every person and ideally you should write the sentence down number one the man stood haish ahmad or ahmad number two the man guarded a house um number three david heard a word david shama davar or shama david davar number four he ruled who malach or malachu number five abraham remembered a thing avraham zachar davar zachar avraham number six this son heard haben shama or shama haben number seven a king garden the young man remembered number 10 the king heard hamelik this concludes chapter four and in chapter four again we learned masculine nouns and verbs in the next chapter five we will learn feminine nouns and verbs we will stop at this point thank you for joining us all the best