Learn about letter shifting verbs in the verb group hit'pa'el
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Sherah:Hello and welcome back to hebrewpod101.com. This is Lower Intermediate, Season 1, Lesson 8 - Saving Water is Important in Israel! I’m your host, Sherah! |
| Amir:And I’m Amir. |
| Sherah:In this lesson, you’ll learn about letter-shifting verbs in Hebrew |
| Amir:The conversation takes place at the Levy family house in the afternoon. |
| Sherah:It’s between Gadi and his daughter Li’el. |
| Amir:The speakers are father and daughter, so they’ll be using informal Hebrew. |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Sherah:Water: now that’s a subject you hear a lot about when you live in Israel. |
| Amir:Water is a sensitive issue, because we don’t have a lot of it. |
| Sherah:Some years are better than others, but most of the time we really have to watch how much we use. |
| Amir:And try not to waste any. |
| Sherah:Because of this, Israelis have become very sensitive about how they use their water. Children are taught from a young age not to let the water run for no reason. |
| Amir:And you won’t see very many people using just a sprinkler on their grass, because so much of the water evaporates. |
| Sherah:Israelis use drip irrigation to water their plants and grass, and this helps to consume less water while keeping the plants growing. |
| Amir:Some years, the water situation is updated every evening on the news. |
| Sherah:Yes, there is all sorts of talk about this line and that line in the Sea of Galilee and how long before we are doomed if it doesn’t rain more. |
| 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 are going to talk about is זקוק. |
| Amir:זקוק means “in need of” and it’s the passive participle of a verb that was only used in Mishnaic Hebrew. |
| Sherah:The passive participle is used today though, right Amir? |
| Amir:Yes, we use it in sentences like אני זקוק למים עכשיו |
| Sherah:Meaning “I’m in need of water right now. “ |
| Amir:The second word we want to talk about is להיזהר. |
| Sherah:This means “to be careful” and is part of the verb group nif’al. |
| Amir:A word that you will hear a lot that’s related to this word is זהירות and it means “caution!” or “watch out!” |
| Sherah:The next word is קנקן and this is the word for “jug” or “pitcher”. |
| Amir:This is one of many words that follows an XYXY pattern. |
| Sherah:The word kan’kan is usually combined with the word for the liquid put in it, to further specify what it is. |
| Amir:Right, you have a קנקן מים which is a “water pitcher” and קנקן תה which is a “pot of tea”. |
| Sherah:The last word we want to talk about is להבא which means “in the future”. |
| Amir:Broken down into its three parts you have ל- meaning “for”, ה- meaning “the” and lastly בא which is “coming” or “next”. |
| Sherah:It’s kind of like “for the next time”, but we have an expression for that as well בפעם הבאה. Okay, now onto the grammar. |
| GRAMMAR POINT |
| Sherah:In this lesson, you’ll learn about letter-shifting verbs in the hit’pa’el verb group in Hebrew. |
| Amir:The sample sentence from the dialog is הסתכלת על הצמחים בגינה שלנו היום? |
| Sherah:Here, Gadi says, “Did you look at our plants in our garden today?” |
| Amir:The word we are focusing on here is הסתכלת. As you can see, it’s not recognizable according to the verb patterns that we have learned so far. |
| Sherah:Right, but it is part of the verb group hit’pa’el with a small twist. |
| Amir:Yes, the root is סכל and if you look at this word, you will see that the ‘ס has traded places with the ‘ת of hit’pael. |
| Sherah:If the letters were in the normal order, the word would be להתסכל or התסכלת as Gadi said. |
| Amir:The reason that the letters have traded places is that in the normal order, certain letters tend to disappear when they come after the הת’ of hit’pa’el. |
| Sherah:These are what we call “the hissing” letters - ז ש ש ס and צ |
| Amir:So, a few adjustments are made so that all the letters can be heard clearly. |
| Sherah:There are three different types of letter swaps, the first happens with sameħ, sin and shin and it is the most simple of the three groups. |
| Amir:In this group, the letters simply change places with the ‘ת of the verb pattern. |
| Sherah:להסתכל is an example of this, and as we know from the sample sentence, it means “to look”. |
| Amir:This letter swap is consistent through all the conjugations. For example, I would say אני מסתכל in the present, הסתכלתי in the past and אסתכל in the future. |
| Sherah:The next example verb from this group is להשתמש meaning “to use”. |
| Amir:The last example verb from this group is להסתדר or “to get along”. Here is an example sentence using this verb: למה אתם לא מסתדרים? |
| Sherah:“Why don’t you get along?” So, the next group of verbs with swapping letters is a little more complicated. |
| Amir:Right, the next group is made up of verbs with צ’ in the first root letter position. In this group, the ‘צ also swaps with the ת but then the ‘ת changes to a ‘ט. |
| Sherah:The first example verb from this group is להצטער which is “to be sorry”. |
| Amir:A second example verb from this group is להצטלם or “to be photographed. Here is an example sentence using this verb בואו, נצטלם ביחד |
| Sherah:“Come, let’s get a photo taken together.” The last group of letter-swapping verbs are verbs with the letter ‘ז as the first letter of the root. |
| Amir:With these verbs, the ‘ז also swaps places with the ‘ת. |
| Sherah:And then the ‘ת changes to ‘ד. So it’s similar to the last group. |
| Amir:The first sample verb from this group is להזדרז meaning “to hurry”. |
| Sherah:The second verb from this group is להזדקן which means “to grow old”. |
| Amir:And of course, we have an example sentence for you using this verb כולנו מזדקנים כל שנה. |
| Sherah:All of us are growing older each year. |
| Amir:Once you get a feel for the pattern for these verbs, you won’t try to say them according to the normal pattern anymore. |
| Sherah:Yes, they really stick with you. It sounds wrong to pronounce them like other hit’pa’el verbs now. So, that just about covers everything we wanted to share with you in this lesson. Don’t forget to check the lesson notes for more information. |
Outro |
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| Sherah:Ok, that’s all for this lesson. Come see us at HebrewPod101.com and leave a comment about what you’ve learned here. |
| Amir:Thanks for being with us, everyone, |
| Sherah:Bye! |
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