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| 13540 |
Hebrew
I'm trying to learn Hebrew, but have not gotten much past "shalom" lol. Can anyone teach me some basic greetings, i.e. "how are you?" Also, how to spell them? Thanks in advance!
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Language pair: English; All
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| 13587 |
Re:Hebrew
Here's a start for you:
Hello = Shalom
Goodbye = Shalom
Peace = Shalom
Thank you (very much) = Todah (rabbah)
My name is = Shmi
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Language pair: English; All
This is a reply to message # 13540
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| 13992 |
Re: How to greet
Hi,
there are several ways to say "how are you". The most common one is: "Ma shlomcha?" (to a male person) or "Ma shlomech?" to a female person. In Israel you will often hear: "Ma nishma?" (no gender changes), which is rather slang, but very common. Then there is "Ma ha-matsav?" ("How is the situation?"), which is comparable with "What's up" and "Ma ha-injanim?", which is popular amongst young people.
If you're fine, you answer "be-seder" or "be-seder gamur" or "metzujan" or, if you are religious, "baruch haShem".
I hope I could help you!
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Language pair: Hebrew; All
This is a reply to message # 13540
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| 14127 |
Re:Re: How to greet
That's a great help, thank you very much! Another question: when there is more than one character for a sound (i.e. tet and tav, sin and samech) is there a general rule as to which should be used? Are there any differences between the pronunciations of such letters, such as in the tongue position? And how about aleph and ayin? I run into the same situation there.
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Language pair: Hebrew; All
This is a reply to message # 13992
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| 14250 |
Re:Re:Re: How to greet
Shalom!
There are unfortunately no general rules to the use of letter pairs, except in cases of the female plural -ot, which is always vav and tav or the female ending -it, which is jod and tav. In foreign words, tet is generally used, e.g. in "universita", "student" etc. In such cases, samech is also used rather than sin. This can be useful to remember when you try to spell words taken from other languages.
I'll write about the pronounciation in the next message, since I'm only allowed 900 characters...
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Language pair: Hebrew; All
This is a reply to message # 14127
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| 14251 |
Re:Re:Re: How to greet
Ok, now the pronounciation:
Historically there were differences in pronounciation between the letter pairs, but nowadays you pronounce them in exactly the same way.
Aleph and ayin are two differnt sounds, though. Aleph is a so called "glottal" sound, while ayin is produced further down in your throat, just as chet is produced further down that chaf. You should have someone do it for you, so you can hear the differences, but if you can't, it doesn't really matter, because even in Israel most people don't make a difference, at least not if they are of European origin. So, you can pronounce an ayin as an aleph and a chet as a chaf and that's fine (at least in the beginning :-))
Best wishes,
Sara
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Language pair: Hebrew; All
This is a reply to message # 14127
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| 14442 |
Re: How to greet
That's wonderful. Thank you so much!
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Language pair: Hebrew; All
This is a reply to message # 14251
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