Vocabulary (Review)

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Lesson Transcript

Shalom, ani Yana! Welcome to Hebrewpod101.com’s Alef-Beit be-kalei kalut.
The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn the Hebrew alphabet: the alef-beit!
In the last lesson we learned to write the most important word in Hebrew- אהבה- the word for love.
Do you remember the niqqud for אהבה?
If you're not feeling confident about it, review the last lesson before continuing on from here.
In this lesson we will learn one new Hebrew letter and three more niqqud!
Are you ready? So let’s start! Bou nathil!
The sixth letter is 'Vav'!!!
The sound of 'vav' is 'v’ or “o” or “u”
and it is written like this:
ו
That’s it! Only one stroke from top to bottom.
The print version is the same with only a small difference:
ו
In Hebrew 'vav' is not only the name of this character, it’s also a word by itself. It means a hook. Doesn't vav look like a hook?
You can write this word like this:
It’s just the the letter 'vav' two times!
If you want to add niqqud- it will look like this
now we move on to the next niqqud symbol-
'Hirik'- ִ- with the sound 'i' (like in See)
It’s just one dot under the letter.
'וִ'.
Now you can write a very common name - one that belonged to the second, and perhaps most famous, king of the ancient Kingdom of Israel:
דָוִד-is 'David'. It’s written with two 'dalet' and one 'vav'. the niqqud here is important- otherwise it can have different pronunciation and meaning. Let’s write this word.
דָוִד
and now in print-
דָוִד
The next niqqud for this lesson is 'Shuruk'-וּ-
With the sound 'u'. This is how you make vav sound like a 'u'.
for example if we take the same letters from 'David' and instead of 'Hirik' we add 'Shuruk' it will be-
דוּד- 'dood'- electric water heater.
Perhaps now you can appreciate the power of learning the niqqud when you’re first studying Hebrew! Let’s write this word:
דוּד
and now in print-
דוּד
Notice how Shuruk goes to the left of the vav.
Seem complicated?
Don't worry- we will review them all at the end of this lesson. But not before we will learn the last niqqud for today-
'Holam male'- וֹ- sound 'o'.
This is how you make 'vav' sound like 'o'.
Let’s write this.
דוֹד- 'dod'- uncle.
ד
וֹ
ד
and now in print-
דוֹד
Notice that holam male appears above the vav.
Now, 'Shuruk' and 'Holam male' are only written with the letter 'vav' and not with any other letter! Hirik, however, will appear below other letters
Now lets see all the last three examples together and make sense of them;
first we had-
דָוִד - 'david'- David
דוּד- 'dood'- electric water heater
דוֹד- 'dod'- uncle
Now let's have a short quiz. I'll show you the niqqud symbol next to a letter- and you have to pronounce its sound;
Ready?
ָ
וּ
ִ
וֹ
ַ
Now it's time for Yana's insight.
Since you will not see any niqqud in modern readings in Israel, you will have to guess by the context of the sentence which pronunciation and meaning it has. It all comes with the experience of studying Hebrew vocabulary.
Another tip is when writing the letter 'vav' it is important to keep the length of the stroke inside the frame- otherwise it becomes a different letter.
But that is for later!
So in this lesson we studied the letter 'Vav' and three niqqud in Hebrew- 'i' (Hirik) 'u' (Shuruk), 'o' (Holam male).
In the next lesson we will learn two more Hebrew letters -- one that is used for sounds that aren’t from Hebrew at all - and one for a sound you may hear only in Hebrew... Can you guess what they are?
See you then!
Bye!

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