Learn about words from the pi'el verb group which have four-letter roots
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Sherah:Hello and welcome back to hebrewpod101.com. This is Lower Intermediate, Season 1, Lesson 7 - What will you wear to Purim in Israel? I’m your host, Sherah! |
| Amir:And I’m Amir. |
| Sherah:In this lesson, you’ll learn about words with four letter roots in Hebrew |
| Amir:The conversation takes place at the Levy family house in the afternoon. |
| Sherah:It’s between Li’el and Dan. |
| Amir:The speakers are brother and sister, so they’ll be using informal Hebrew. |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Sherah:So, Purim! This is actually quite a fun holiday in Israel. Although I am always stuck for ideas on what to wear! |
| Amir:The whole holiday is centered around the story of Esther in the bible. |
| Sherah:Esther saved the Jewish people from being slaughtered by being in the right place at the right time. |
| Amir:Esther became queen to King Ahashverosh, and found out from her Uncle Mordecai that an evil man name Haman was going to slaughter the Jews. |
| Sherah:Right, so Esther went to the King and told him Haman’s plan and the King saved the Jews and got rid of Haman instead. To commemorate this act to save the Jews, Jewish people around the world celebrate Purim every year. |
| Amir:We do this by dressing up and coming together to celebrate. |
| Sherah:Not only that, Purim is a time when people give each other sweet gifts, and it’s also important to give to the poor during this time. |
| Amir:During the celebration, we read the scroll retelling the story, and many times even create a play to retell the story of Esther. |
| Sherah:And one food item that you see in all the stores during this time is a cookie called Oz’ne’i Haman or “Haman’s Ear”. |
| Amir:These cookies are named after the villain of the story of Esther. |
| Sherah:They are triangle-shaped cookies and they usually have a poppyseed or jelly filling in the middle. |
| Amir:When I was growing up, we dressed up one day for school and then for the actual Purim celebration. Today, the school has turned this holiday into a week long dress-up fest. |
| Sherah:Well, that’s fun for the children, but not so fun for the moms and dads who have to go finding and creating costumes all week long. |
| 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 we will cover is תכלת. |
| Amir:תכלת is a special word that we have in Hebrew that describes the color “sky blue”. |
| Sherah:Israelis use this word a lot more than we would use its equivalent in English. |
| Amir:It’s actually a very old word. It was originally used to refer to a certain color that was used in dying the clothing of the High Priest in the Temple. |
| Sherah:Right, and we don’t know what the source of the dye was, so we don’t know what the exact color was. |
| Amir:It doesn’t matter though, because today תכלת describes the sky blue color, and that’s how we use the word. What it once was may always remain a mystery! |
| Sherah:The second word we want to talk about is להתחפש or “to disguise oneself”. |
| Amir:It also means “to dress up”. It has the חפש root in it, which is connected to words about searching for things. |
| Sherah:Right, the verb is in the hit’pa’el verb group, so it’s interesting to follow that logic from “searching for something” to “disguising oneself” - essentially someone would have to search to figure out who you are. |
| Amir:The last word we’re going to talk about is לערבב. |
| Sherah:לערבב means “to mix” or “to mix up”. It’s part of the pi’el verb group and it has a four-letter root ע.ר.ב.ב |
| Amir:This is actually an example of how a three-letter verb root expanded to change the meaning just a little bit, and a new verb was created. |
| Sherah:The original verb is לערב and it means “to mix” or “involve”. The last letter of the root was doubled to make it “to mix up” לערבב. Okay, now onto the grammar. |
| GRAMMAR POINT |
| Sherah:In this lesson, you’ll learn about words with four letter roots in Hebrew. |
| Amir:Most words in Hebrew are built on three letters. |
| Sherah:But there are words that have a four letter root. Some of them go as far back as Biblical Hebrew, while others were creations from modern words absorbed into Hebrew. |
| Amir:Verbs with four letters roots are found in three of the seven verb groups, pi’el, pu’al and hit’pa’el. |
| Sherah:The verbs we’re looking at in this lesson are all from the pi’el verb group. |
| Amir:The example sentence from the dialogue is אני מערבב תחפושת של דרדס עם תחפושת של ספיידרמן. |
| Sherah:The word that we want to focus on from the example sentence is מערבב from the verb לערבב and this means “to mix up” as we learned in the vocabulary section. |
| Amir:Normally, in the pi’el verb group, the vowel pattern is ah-eh like in לערב. |
| Sherah:Right, so when you add another root letter to the pattern, you keep those two vowels and add a stop, or shva vowel, on the second letter of the root. |
| Amir:So, לערב becomes לערבב. Notice that there is now a shva vowel on the resh and the “eh” vowel has been moved to the last two letters. |
| Sherah:This pattern continues throughout all the conjugations. |
| Amir:In the present tense, the conjugations of לערבב are: מערבב, מערבבת, מערבבים and מערבבות. |
| Sherah:Later in the dialogue, Li’el used another four-letter verb לקלקל when she says “you’re ruining it”. |
| Amir:She says: אתה מקלקל את זה |
| Sherah:Here again, there is a stop or a shva vowel on the second letter of the root. This verb follows the same pattern as לערבב. |
| Amir:In the present tense, the four versions are: מקלקל, מקלקלת, מקלקלים and מקלקלות. |
| Sherah:This verb is made of two letters doubled, but it keeps the same vowel pattern. |
| Amir:Dan uses another verb like this when he says, “רציתי לבלבל את החברים שלי” |
| Sherah:Right, he used the verb לבלבל which means “to confuse”. |
| Amir:The four versions in the present tense sound very similar to לקלקל: מבלבל, מבלבלת, מבלבלים and מבלבלות |
| Sherah:So far, we have seen two different kinds of four letter roots, in the first case of לערבב the last letter was doubled to make the four root letters. |
| Amir:With לקלקל and לבלבל the root is made up of two letters that have been doubled. |
| Sherah:Another kind of four letter root is where a three letter root has been expanded by adding a ‘ש to the front of the root. |
| Amir:לשכתב is a good example of this. It means “to re-write”. |
| Sherah:The last group of four letter root words is made up of loanwords from other languages, or commonly used international words like “telephone”. |
| Amir:Right, we use the verb לטלפן to mean “to telephone” in Hebrew. |
| Sherah:So, here are a few sample sentences with commonly used four letter root verbs. Amir will give the Hebrew and I will give you the English. |
| Amir:First is: הילד משחרר את הכלב |
| Sherah:“The boy is freeing the dog.” The verb here is לשחרר and it is a verb where the last letter was doubled. |
| Amir:Next is: הם מעצבנים אותי נורא |
| Sherah:“They annoy me terribly.” The verb is לעצבן in this sentence and it means “to annoy”. |
| Amir:The last sample sentence is: אמא שלי מפרסמת את העסק שלה בעיתון |
| Sherah:“My mother is advertising her business in the newspaper.” This last verb is לפרסם, meaning “to advertise”. |
Outro |
|---|
| Sherah:Ok, that’s it for this lesson. Come see us at HebrewPod101.com and tell us what you’ve learned here in a comment. And remember to check the lesson notes to reinforce what you’ve learned. |
| Amir:Thanks for being with us, everyone, |
| Sherah:Bye! |
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