Learn about superlatives
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Sherah:Hello and welcome back to hebrewpod101.com. This is Lower Intermediate, Season 1, Lesson 10 - Who’s the best soccer player in your Israeli school? I’m your host, Sherah! |
| Amir:And I’m Amir. |
| Sherah:In this lesson, you’ll learn about superlatives. |
| Amir:The conversation takes place at the Levy family house in the afternoon. |
| Sherah:It’s between Dan and Li’el. |
| Amir:The speakers are brother and sister, so they’ll be using informal Hebrew. |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Sherah:Soccer is an extremely popular in Israel, both as a participation sport and a spectator sport. |
| Amir:It’s actually the most popular sport in Israel, followed by basketball, surprisingly. |
| Sherah:As for the spectator sport, Israeli soccer has five levels. |
| Amir:The Premier league is the highest and most popular of these. |
| Sherah:In Hebrew, this is called Leaget ha-al. |
| Amir:Israeli soccer fans are very loyal, even when their teams are not in the premier league. |
| Sherah:Of course, they prefer it when their team is in the premier league though. |
| Amir:Well, of course! Up to 20,000 fans come to the premier league games. |
| Sherah:The fans are usually decked out in the colors of the team like in English soccer or American football. |
| Amir:We don’t go quite as far as American football, but we do dress up a bit. |
| Sherah:Here’s a little bit of history about Israeli soccer - it has been around since the British Mandate. |
| Amir:Yes and it was so popular, even back then, that when new the immigrants came in the early days of the country, they formed soccer teams along with their social movements. |
| Sherah:Yes, that’s why some of the teams have names like Beitar and Ha-Poal. These were the social movements that helped create the country. Listeners, you should check out a soccer game if you get the chance. Okay, now let’s move onto the vocab. |
| KEY VOCAB AND PHRASES |
| Sherah:Let’s take a closer look at the usage of some of the words and phrases from this lesson. The first word that we want to talk about is משחק. |
| Amir:משחק means “game” but it can refer to anything from sports games, board games, a play or even imaginary play. |
| Sherah:It’s a very widely used word in Hebrew. There are two phrases that use this word that we want to mention. The first is משחק הוגן. |
| Amir:משחק הוגן is “fair play” you will hear kids say this when they are playing together and something isn’t fair, and you will also hear it in professional sports.. |
| Sherah:The second phrase we want to mention is משחק ילדים which is translated as “child’s play’. |
| Amir:The next word we want to talk about is סיכוי, meaning “chance” or “prospect”. |
| Sherah:When you use the plural of this word, סיכויים it means “odds”. |
| Amir:The last word we want to talk about is the verb לפספס. |
| Sherah:This is a slang word in Hebrew and means “to miss” or “to miss out”. |
| Amir:You can use it when you miss out on something like פיספסתי את המסיבה |
| Sherah:Right. Amir said, “I missed the party”. You can also use it like Li’el did when she said that Yonatan was missing out. |
| Amir:Yes, and that was הוא מפספס. |
| Sherah:Okay, now onto the grammar. |
| GRAMMAR POINT |
| Sherah:In this lesson, you’ll learn about superlatives in Hebrew. |
| Amir:The sample sentence from the dialog that we want to talk about is הוא השחקן הטוב ביותר בבית הספר |
| Sherah:Right, a superlative is the highest order of something, like the best, the most beautiful, the highest, or the smallest. |
| Amir:In Hebrew, there are two ways that we show the highest order of something. |
| Sherah:Right, the first one we want to look at was in the sample sentence, and that is using the word ביותר. |
| Amir:Right, again Dan said הוא השחקן הטוב ביותר בבית הספר. The phrase that we are looking at in that sentence is השחקן הטוב ביותר. |
| Sherah:Directly translated this says, “the player the good in the more”. |
| Amir:That sounds funny, doesn’t it. |
| Sherah:But it actually just means the best player. This is the pattern you need to learn for superlatives - it starts with a descriptive noun. |
| Amir:This is the noun that you want to use to emphasize something about a person, place or thing. |
| Sherah:In the sample sentence the noun was השחקן or “the player” because they wanted to talk about the kind of player that Tal is. |
| Amir:The next part of the phrase is the adjective and as we know from earlier series, if the noun has a -ה, the adjective also needs it. |
| Sherah:Right, so we have the noun and then an adjective, both with the definite article -ה and the adjective needs to agree in number and gender with the noun. |
| Amir:And lastly, we have the word ביותר which is basically “the most”. |
| Sherah:The last part of the phrase does not change according to the number and gender of the noun. |
| Amir:So, let’s look at another example sentence. Later in the dialogue, Li’el says הוא הבחור היפה ביותר בבית הספר. |
| Sherah:Right, she says “he’s the handsomest guy in school”. The superlative phrase in this sentence is הבחור היפה ביותר |
| Amir:Yes, הבחור is “the guy” יפה is “handsome” or “pretty” and ביותר is “the most”. This follows the exact same pattern. |
| Sherah:So, let’s look at a few more examples. Amir will give the Hebrew and I’ll give the English. |
| Amir:האיש הנחמד ביותר |
| Sherah:The nicest man. |
| Amir:החתולה החמודה ביותר. |
| Sherah:“The sweetest cat.” Notice here that the noun and the adjective are in the feminine. |
| Amir:הילדים המלוכלכים ביותר |
| Sherah:“The dirtiest children.” Here the noun and adjective are in the masculine plural. |
| Amir:So the second way to show a superlative in Hebrew is by using the word הכי which also means “the most”. The phrase structure is a little different for this though. |
| Sherah:Right, in this case you have the noun you want to emphasize first, just like in the other phrase. The noun is followed by the word הכי and then the adjective ends the phrase. |
| Amir:Another difference is that the adjective doesn’t require the definite article -ה like in the other phrase we learned. |
| Sherah:So, let’s hear two examples of this. Amir will give the Hebrew and I will give the English. |
| Amir:האיש הכי נחמד |
| Sherah:The nicest man. |
| Amir:הילדים הכי מלוכלכים |
| Sherah:“The dirtiest children.” |
Outro |
|---|
| Sherah:Okay, that’s all for this lesson. Come visit us at HebrewPod101.com and leave a comment telling us what you’ve learned in this lesson. |
| Amir:Thanks for joining us, everyone, |
| Sherah:Bye! |
| MARKETING PIECE |
| Amir:Dear listeners, ever pressed for time? |
| Sherah:Listen to the Dialogue Lesson Recap! |
| Amir:These audio tracks only contain the target lesson dialogue. |
| Sherah:So you can quickly recap a lesson. |
| Amir:Spend a few minutes learning on the days when you don’t have time to study a full lesson. |
| Sherah:The audio tracks are just a few minutes long... |
| Amir:but you’ll still pick up key Hebrew phrases along the way. |
| Sherah:Go to HebrewPod101.com, |
| Amir:and listen to this lesson’s dialogue only audio track. |
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