Lesson 35 - Going to the Bank

Learn Hebrew Pod - Lesson No. 35

In addition, we’ll learn a little bit about Israel’s banking system and her currency--the New Israeli Shekel (or Shekel Chadash).  Like so much in Israel, the shekel represents a blend of the very modern and the very ancient.  It has been the currency of the modern State of Israel since 1980, but its first known usage dates all the way back to around 3000 BCE!

לשלם

Liat: Jonathan! We have not started our Hebrew lesson yet. Me and Eran were just discussing one of the most exciting moments in his life… not Hebrew grammar… rak shni-ya - just a second… we are talking about… money!

Eran: ken… anachnu medabrim al kesef.

Liat: kesef… efshar la-asot harbe dvarim im kesef - there are a lot of things you can do with money…

Eran: ken… im ha-ya li harbe kesef, if I had a lot of money… ha-iti achshav, I would right now…

Liat: Go traveling in Europe for a whole year - nosa-at le-ti-yul be-Eyropa le-shana shlema!

Eran: Get a beautiful red Chevy - Shevrolet aduma, yefeyfi-ya, or a Harley Davidson motorcycle - ofano-a Harley Davidson…

אופנוע הרלי דייוידסון

Liat: or both - o shne-hem :)

Eran: ken, or both. aval…

Liat: ken, eyn lanu kol kach harbe kesef - we don't have that much money.

Eran: nachon. aval, when you entered, Jonathan, I was in the middle of telling Liat that maybe I don't have millions yet… but, today, I did get the money for my performances in Jerusalem last month, so the first thing I did this morning was go…

בנק

Jonathan: la-bank.  Now I get it! Okay, I actually think that going to the bank is a very important topic for us to review in our conversational Hebrew lessons. This can be a topic through which we can also continue studying the cardinal set of Hebrew masculine numbers. This is the set of numbers, Hebrew employs for counting masculine nouns… such as the Shekel - Israel’s currency. Liat, ma at omeret?

Liat: ra-a-yon mezzu-yan, Yonatan - An excellent idea, Jonathan. Okay… let me sit here… behind this counter, and Eran, you will stand here, ken, bedi-yuk kacha - just like that… as you just went to the Bank today. Let's try to improvise together, le-alter be-yachad, a conversation between you and the bank clerk - sicha beyncha ve-beyn ha-pkida ba-bank. ani ha-pkida, you got it? - hevanta?

פקידה בבנק

למשוך כסף

Eran: yalla, me-ule. bo-i ne-alter - Let's improvise!

...

Jonathan: In Hebrew lesson 5, we began learning the subject of Hebrew numbers. In that lesson, while studying the Hebrew names for the days of the week, we became acquainted with the numbers one through seven, in their ordinal masculine form, from rishon -first, to shvi-i – seventh.

The next Hebrew lesson where we learned about numbers was lesson 8-B when we learned about how to say and ask the time in Hebrew. 

There we mentioned for the first time that basically, Hebrew uses two different sets of words for numbers.  One set for masculine and the other set for feminine.

When saying or asking the time, we employ the feminine set, because in Hebrew, we specifically indicate the time by the hour, and hour is a feminine noun, hence we use the cardinal/counting feminine set of numbers. We learned the numbers achat ad shtem-esre - one to twelve.

Extending our knowledge of the ordinal masculine set of Hebrew numbers, was one of our missions in lesson 9-B.

When discussing the different seasons of the year, we indicated the different months each season takes place at, and through that, studying the ordinal set from rishon – masculine first, to shneym-asar – masculine twelfth.

In Hebrew lesson 14 we took a big step forward on our numbers quest: we learned the cardinal/counting feminine set of Hebrew numbers up to mata-im – two hundred.