Learn why the word פנים (panim) meaning "face" is plural
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| Hi everybody! Idit here. Welcome to Ask a Teacher, where I’ll answer some of your most common Hebrew questions. |
| The question for this lesson is… |
| Why is the word פנים (panim) "face" in Hebrew plural? |
| This question has to do with an interesting phenomenon of the Hebrew language. There are a few nouns in Hebrew which are plural in their grammatical form, but singular conceptually. Sound confusing? Let’s break it down. |
| The four main nouns that are singular but plural grammatically are -- |
| חיים (ħayim) “life” |
| מים (mayim) “water” |
| and |
| שמים (shamayim) “sky” |
| in addition to the noun from this lesson's question-- |
| פנים (panim) “face.” |
| As you can see, all of these words have typical plural masculine endings - ים (im). Grammatically speaking, these words are plural. They don't have a singular form, and the adjectives attached to them will take a plural form as well. Some examples would be-- |
| חיים ארוכים (ħayim arukim) “long life” |
| מים חמים (mayim ħamim) “hot water” |
| שמיים מעוננים (shamayim me’unanim) “cloudy sky” and |
| פנים יפים (panim yafim) “pretty face” (or יפות [yafot] -- this noun is both feminine and masculine.) |
| So why are these words plural? |
| There is no definite answer to this question, but there are a few interesting theories. One of those theories suggests that these words are plural because all of these nouns are constantly changing; each of them is one noun that actually has many forms and cannot be captured by a singular noun. |
| How was this lesson? Pretty interesting right? |
| Do you have any more questions? Leave them in the comments below and I’ll try to answer them! |
| להתראות! |
| (lehitra’ot!) |
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