Rabbi Binyamin Yuhanan - Biblical Hebrew Part 6

welcome to another hebrew class we're learning biblical hebrew and we are in chapter five of the first hebrew primer last week we learned nouns and verbs that are masculine and today we're learning nouns and verbs that are feminine but before we do review on page 31. read and translate the following group of sentences number one david zakhar david remembered who zakar he remembered he remembered a thing or a word number two who samar he guarded [Music] a young man guarded by the young man guarded a house number three ahmad ish a man stood a mad [Music] the man ruled have been the shama the son heard as you notice here we are reviewing masculine nouns masculine pronouns and masculine verbs as well as um the definite article ha and we're using so far only um past tense verbs what we we call perfect tense verbs now number five shama haish davar the man heard a thing em a word shama avraham abraham heard a word the young man heard a word so this is also a good way to review the vocabulary the new vocabulary we learned we are reviewing it now to to memorize it better now number six a king guarded me [Music] a king guarded a son david hamill [Music] david the king guarded a son number seven avraham ahmad abraham stood [Music] abraham heard amen eight ish shamar bite a man guarded a house the man ruled ahmad haish the man stood number nine buy it ahmad a house stood habit ahmad the house stood ahmad the house stood here we see an example that in hebrew the verb and the noun can be interchanged in their positions number 10 ben zakhar ish a son remembered amen [Music] the son heard a king [Music] the king guarded number 11 who shama [Music] he david remembered and now we turn to page 32 and we start today's class first we have new vocabulary and here we will learn one masculine word the rest are going to be feminine words or words that are neither feminine nor masculine as well as um another verb one more verb okay we start on the right column page 32 have father father of course is masculine and father and of can also mean ancestor which means it can mean direct father or it can mean anyone that is your ancestor could mean grandfather great-grandfather or a forefather of father now you may hear the word abba being used instead of which also means a father but the word abba with an aleph at the end is actually aramaic av is hebrew abba is aramaic and similarly when we learn the word for mother in hebrew it will be aim aim is mother in hebrew ima is aramaic also mother so in aramaic many hebrew nouns have aleph at the end so that's the that's how you differentiate uh aramaic from hebrew and if you want to see the hebrew word in aramaic often you just have to take out the aleph like abba you take out the aleph and you get av or ima you take out the aleph and you get aim so the custom is to call your father abba instead of of or instead of the biblical avi in the torah when a son wants to speak to his father he says avi my father but in modern days we use abba instead okay now the second word is directional word to i'm going to i'm going to words next word isha a woman or specifically a wife so if we speak about a woman in relationship to a man it means a wife ish for example his woman would mean his wife my woman means my wife um means animal any animal domesticated or wild but more specifically behemar refers to domesticated large animals which in english we call cattle like cows bulls calves altogether are called behema but daughter he is a pronoun means she or it if it refers to a feminine noun he it or she now a verb walked or went walked just means without any direction or went from here away from here went he went away okay next column yerushalayim the name of the city of jerusalem now the rule is that in hebrew every name of a city or a country is feminine so when you see a name of a city or a country it's automatically feminine yerushalayim min means from el means to mean means from mitzrayim name of a country egypt feminine family a young woman as opposed to na'ar young man young woman ruth a name of a girl sarah now in the vocabulary list we will use m at the end of the word for masculine and f after word for feminine nouns when there is an unexplained dagesh in a vocabulary word as uh in the word isha above considered part of the spelling the word has to be spelled like that the dagesh is part of the word and we mentioned that the gesh often means doubling of a letter now then the third rule we will be using the biblical spelling of jerusalem as yerushalayim even though it sounds like there is a youth in there between the last lament and men but in torah in the prophets it is spelled without that yud rather than the current spelling of yerushalayim with the youth both words are pronounced the same now in aramaic in aramaic the word yerushalayim is also spelled without the youth but it's also pronounced without you yerushlem but in hebrew we say yerushalayim even though it's written without a youth for those that just joined were on page 32 of the first hebrew primer we're in chapter five and now we're learning about the gender of nouns this is something that is unfamiliar to english speakers but in other languages um nouns have masculine or feminine gender in english only a few nouns are specifically masculine or feminine for example man is masculine woman is feminine waiter is massive waitress is feminine in hebrew all nouns are either masculine or feminine even though the things they describe may have no male or female qualities we're not talking about a man or an animal that has male or female qualities we're talking about a thing a table a chair uh but nevertheless in hebrew all nouns are either feminine or masculine those that come from russian speaking background they are familiar with this in russian we have three genders we have she he and we have it in hebrew it's either she or he even it can sometimes be masculine sometimes feminine okay um the word davar a word is masculine is an example the word davar is masculine and follows the rules of masculine nouns later we will know we will learn that depending whether it's masculine feminine the plural form will be different and um now and verbs will have different form in past present and future tenses the noun for example which means family is feminine and follows the rules of feminine nouns there may be nothing male or female about either a word or a family but every hebrew noun is either masculine feminine and you have to remember which gender it is again because if you forget and you use a masculine word as a feminine word and you apply feminine verbs to a masculine word it will not be correct now first we learn singular nouns later we will learn how to make a noun plural feminine singular nouns feminine singular nouns can often be identified by specific characteristics usually nouns ending with uh ah at the end uh with kamatsu and hey are usually feminine examples are mispaha you have a kamatsan ah and hey making the ah sound mispaha tells you that it's a feminine again usually there are exceptions but most of the time nouns ending with ah are feminine another example young woman ending with the ah hey at the end r sound is feminine also nouns ending with letter tough are usually feminine for example but a daughter and met truth are both feminine again there are exceptions but usually nouns ending with either a hay at the end sound ah or tough at the end are feminine names of cities and countries are nearly always feminine is an example it's a feminine word and egypt is feminine now on page 33 we learn about how to identify masculine singular nouns there are no characteristic endings for masculine singular nouns whereas feminine nouns usually end with hey then ah sound or tougher than masculine nouns can have any ending so general rule is if a singular noun does not have a feminine ending of a with a head and or tough it is probably a masculine singular however there are some exceptions the only certain way to determine the gender of a noun is to look it up in a hebrew dictionary we will indicate the gender of each noun in the vocabulary list for each chapter and in the glossary in the back of this book all nouns introduced in chapter 4 were masculine nouns and in chapter five except for of all of them are feminine nouns okay now gender of verbs in hebrew every verb has both masculine and feminine forms in english a verb is a verb and you can use the same verb for feminine masculine singular plural doesn't matter in hebrew it does matter and the verb also identifies who you're talking to or about so therefore hebrew language has less words than english because you don't need to use pronouns because your verbs already contain pronouns and not only that the hebrew verb the hebrew verb will tell you the tense present past or future it will tell you whether you're speaking to a singular person or um many people it will tell you if you're talking directly or about someone you or they for example or you or he and it will tell you if it's feminine or masculine so in hebrew language just one word one verb can require you to use a few words in english because again in english um you will need a separate word to tell you the the pronoun um and sometimes a future tense you have to add the word will in in hebrew future tense is contained um within the verb so uh verbs in hebrew are more complicated and therefore you need more memories memorization it's not enough just to translate the verb you also have to know rules how to use that verb and one verb can come in many many varieties that is why in hebrew we speak about roots we look at the root of the verb and you memorize the meaning of the root every everything else you can derive using a few rules that we're going to use that we're going to learn once you know for example went past tense singular male that's the root usually we describe the root in past tense singular male that's the standard root because it's the simplest it usually is the shortest three letters most verbs in hebrew have three letters and in its root form it means he did something he went or he walked and then by changing the verb changing the kudo the vowels or adding a prefix or suffix we can change the verb from uh past to present to future and we can apply to not only singular but to plural or to a feminine word and so on okay now masculine singular verbs we are on page 33. in the last chapter all their verbs were used in their masculine singular form and they all had the same pattern of vowels that's another complication in hebrew that verbs come in different patterns and the rules of how to use verbs depend which pattern they fall in the pattern for the masculine singular verb form in the perfect tense is shown below so all the words that we learned so far are the simple pattern with the first letter having a kamats vowel and the second letter having a patah vowel for example sharma he heard he ruled it's good to remember the patterns because then you will figure out how to change new verbs based on the verbs that you already know now feminine singular verbs to make a feminine singular form of these verbs using the same verbs how can you apply to a female a hay is added to the three letters of the masculine singular verb so the feminine form of the verb will have four letters the fourth letter is a prefix a suffix the pattern for the feminine singular ver verb form in the perfect tense is shown below so the first letter will have a commas then shiva then another commas so unlike the he the the masculine verb that has a kamatam pata the feminine form will have four letters and it will have commands and commands again so for example instead of shama now notice that the word shama even though it ends with the ah sound is is masculine because it doesn't end with a hay it ends with its root letter which is in shama however the word she heard is feminine and it ends with a sound with a hey at the end she heard shamra the form of shamar he he guarded she guarded she remembered he remembered she remembered [Music] now we turn to page 34. agreement of subject and verb in hebrew the subject and verb in a sentence must have the same gender since each noun is either masculine feminine and each verb is either masculine feminine there must be agreement of sub of the noun and the verb if the subject is masculine the verb must be masculine if the subject is feminine the verb must be family for example who ahmad he stood who is masculine and ahmad is muscle he ahmada she stood in english it's the same stood but in hebrew ahmad from masculine a madhav for feminine david shamar david david guarded sarah garden now roots the hebrew language is built on a system of rules a hebrew root is a set of letters usually three which expresses a general idea the vowel patterns and additional letters before and after the root are added to give it a specific meaning many words with similar meanings are created from each root for example forms the verb malach he ruled shin mem raish forms the root of shamar he guarded iron mandala it forms the root of ahmad and zayn forms the root of zahara now we're gonna give other examples of using the same root for different words for example same letters coming from the verb but we can make a noun from it he ruled and the one that rules consistently is called a melech the ruler the king and the larger structure a place where the king rules is called kingdom so the word malhot is feminine melech is masculine malachi is a verb all come from the root to rule he guarded the person who guards cons consistently constantly is sho mer a guard so you see the way you make a noun is different we don't say shemer just like melech and we don't say molech just like chomer each verb you have to look for patterns and from verbs you can you can make nouns ahmad he stood and the the something that stands permanently is called a mood it's a noun derived from the root in mem dali and a place where you you stand is ahmed zakhar he remembered and a noun from zahar remembrance is like we say remembrance for exodus from egypt and uh zikaron a memorial from the same root zein khafresh to remember now verb roots there is an especially important relationship between hebrew roots and hebrew verbs every verb in hebrew has a root generally composed of three letters so far we introduced these verbs shama he heard he walked shamar the three consonant letters in each of these verbs are the root letters of the verb from now on each new verb will be introduced in its root form with dots between the consonants and without vowels when when there are dots between the letters it shows you that this is not a word it's a root so the ru we're on page 34 on the bottom the root for the word to hear shama is shin mem ayan the root for the word walk is the root for the word god shamar is sin remember zahar zain khafresh now we go to page 35 singular perfect patterns past tense of hebrew verbs derive from the root so again as as we mentioned the most simple verb that matches the root is masculine singular past tense so if the root is shin mem iron the masculine past tense is shama he heard and the feminine feminine singular perfect again perfect means past tense is shama forms the verb masculine singular verb shamar and feminine singular verb shamrah mein laminghav [Music] now the word and in hebrew is a prefix the english word and is not a separate word in hebrew instead the letter v is attached to the beginning of a word that makes hebrew more compact you don't need three letters you only use one and you don't need a space so really instead of four letters we use only one [Music] for example of a father and a father the king and the king the word and ordinarily takes the shiva vowel it could if it's a definite um noun have a r sound but if it's a an indefinite noun it has a schwa vowel now examples david david and abraham and root second line david ahmad david stood uh sorry david stood and he walked the young man and the young woman the word and the prefix vav is sometimes written with a va and a dot on a side which pronoun is pronounced as oo it may also appear as uh with various vowels as v or va these variations do not change the meaning of and for example then o o'bat a son and a daughter by it a house and an animal david virus alain david and jerusalem a word and a truth in the above examples notice that the pronunciation of words containing the bigoted catholic letters that have and pay may change the change in pronunciation does not change the meaning of the word for example ben and instead of saying ubat properly it's been okay now we turn to page 36. we learned the word from which means min the use of from in hebrew the word mean from has two forms it can either appear as a separate word min it can also be attached to a word as a prefix with just a man as a me or me for example from a house me by or from the house mean habit min hamelech from the king an example of this is found in kadesh in an ashkenazi tradition during the year the words is uh spelled as two words min ko from all but between rosh hashanah and kippur they combine the two and they say mikol instead of mean call they say one word mikol because they want to add one more word above and above when speaking about hashem since kadish must have the same number of words always so when it's necessary to add another word we combine two words to form one this way we free one extra space for another word but in uh safari tradition we always say min ko we always say two words even between roshani and kippur because we do not add an extra layer in kadish our kadesh is the same throughout the year now the use of it in hebrew the masculine pronoun who he is also used for it when referring to masculine nouns the feminine pronoun he she is used for it when referring to feminine nouns for those that just joined us we're using the first hebrew primer and we are in chapter 5 on page 36 okay so in um english we have it we have she he and it in hebrew you don't need it because every hebrew word word is either she or he already in english we reserve she and he for important things like people or cities or big objects like boats but all other small nouns we use it and even for animals we use it but in hebrew as well as in russian we use she and he for um masculine and feminine nouns even if it's not people okay now for example [Music] the house stood and it guarded a family so in english the word veru would be translated as and it instead of and he because in english we don't refer to a house as a he hamish the family remembered and it went to jerusalem so here the the word he he referring to the family we translate as and it in even though mishpaha refers to a group of people but since it's a unit we refer to it as singular now exercises we have eight exercises until the end of the chapter number one read and translate each of the following words and state whether they are masculine or feminine this exercise everyone should do on their own as well i will do it and please follow along and try to be a little bit ahead of me and if you want you can also write whether it's feminine or masculine ben is son masculine but daughter feminine ish man masculine isha woman feminine avraham a young man masculine a young woman feminine melech a king masculine a family feminine of a father or an ancestor masculine behema an animal or cattle feminine yerushalayim jerusalem feminine a word or a thing masculine buy it and here the word by it is a an exception even though it ends with a tough but it is a masculine noun this is an exception and we see it from the above sentence habit ahmad since we use a masculine verb the house stood and it and the pronoun is also masculine so from here we see that the word by is masculine even though it ends with the tough and the last one fifteen mitzrayim egypt feminine exercise number two read and translate the following verb forms and write them in their root forms he walked she walked same route ahmad he [Music] exercise number three on the bottom of page 36 number one david zakhar read the following sentences aloud and translate these are full sentences david remembered ahmad avraham abraham stood sarah sarah stood of a father garden the young woman he walked she walked now we turn to page 37 exercise number four circle the correct form of the verb in each sentence read and translate so here it's like multiple choice you have to form your own sentence david and you have a choice since david is masculine you have to circle shama david s again all the exercises should be practiced by every person individually exercise number five read the following sentences aloud and translate number one the young woman walked and she stood number two the king ruled and he remembered sarah guarded and she stood ahmad david david stood and he ruled number five the family ruled and it remembered a son abraham heard and he remembered and he walked number eight the animal stood and it walked exercise six from now on we introduce a new exercise it's called substitution exercise this exercise contains a series of sentences with underlined words each sentence is followed by a list of words to be substituted for the underlined word every time a word is replaced the rest of the sentence may need to be changed to agree with the new word so this is a very good exercise it will basically tell you now speak to a man now speak to a woman now speak to plural men plural women now speak in uh past tense future tense and you have to create a new sentence pay careful attention to the use of masculine feminine words verb forms and pronouns the first sentence will be done for you and you have to rewrite the sentences below replacing the underlined word with each word in the list that follows and then read the sentences aloud and translate so we're going to do the this exercise together but again it's very important that each person does his own exercise for example hanar ahmad and the word hanar is underlined which means we're going to replace the word hanar with other words and see how the sentence changes you you you use isha instead of hanar so the verb also changes now exercise two now we have to do it ourselves david david heard the girl or he listened to the girl to the young woman now substitute the word david with one of his words is line 3 abraham remembered a word from the king now the word abraham we substitute with one of these six words he she he since she is feminine the word zakhar also has to become feminist he is and he heard and he listened to the family now the word melech king we substitute with one of these five words ahmad both verbs and pronouns change because the word is feminine the man from jerusalem he she is feminine therefore the man guarded an animal and he walked to egypt now we substitute the word haish with one of these four words sara shamra [Music] so now line 6 the young woman listened to the father and she went to jerusalem and to the young man now we substitute the word hanara the young woman to with one of these four words david david david the man from egypt is very important exercise everyone should do it now we turn to page read and translate each hebrew sentence now um we're doing exercise seven translate the english sentences below using the hebrew sentence above as a guide so here we're practicing not only translating hebrew into english but also english into hebrew high in exerci um exercise seven one ish [Music] the man guarded a king and the woman guarded an animal now a the man guarded samar the man guarded a king the woman guarded a king the woman guarded an animal the man guarded an animal and the woman guarded the king ha'ish the men guarded a word and the woman guarded a word samar davar the king from jerusalem rule david and he listened to david a the king ruled the king from jerusalem ruled malach miru the king ruled and he listened the man heard a word ha ish the man listened to david haish david the man from jerusalem listened to the king now third sentence root remembered a young man from egypt and she walked to jerusalem a root remembered a young man a young man from egypt remembered a young woman she remembered a young woman from egypt a young man remembered a young woman from jerusalem and he went to egypt now all these sentences should be written out by every person for practice very important now the last exercise 8 is relatively easy read and translate the following sentences the father guarded a son and a daughter and he heard a word from jerusalem 2. stood and she remembered a man and a woman from egypt and she listened to the young man and she went to the young man third sentence the family stood and it guarded a house and it ruled fourth sentence the father guarded and the woman stood and the daughter went to egypt sentence 5 the king from jerusalem ruled and he remembered an animal from egypt and he walked to egypt he went to egypt and he guarded an animal ex-line six the young man remembered a young woman from jerusalem and he remembered a young woman from egypt and he walked to jerusalem or hashem we finished chapter five now we know singular masculine verbs singular feminine verbs we know pronouns we know and and we know definite article ha and we know mean from and we know el tu and we know a bunch of words um vocabulary nouns pronouns uh verbs hashem we're ready to go so bizarre next week we will learn plural nouns and verbs thank you for listening