Lesson 37 - Eran's New Apartment

Learn Hebrew Pod - Lesson No. 37

שוק הפשפשים

And it sounds like Eran really scored with his new place . . . small and cute, right near the market, and a balcony facing the sea.  An apartment like this is not easy to come by . . . in Israel or anywhere else!

ערן

In Learn Hebrew Pod shiur mispar shloshim ve-sheva, we’ll get the grand tour of Eran’s new place and learn how to talk in Hebrew about all its features . . . the rooms, the furniture, and even those little decorative touches that make a house a home.

Eran: I'm gonna skip some letters and move on to the letter 'lamed': 'le' – 'to'.  This preposition also serves us when building the 'infinitive construct form' in Hebrew, and is sometimes pronounced as 'li' or 'la'.  But… since we are actually familiar with the 'le' preposition… let me think of another one…

Liat: Okay Eran, as I was the guest in your apartment, you may suggest another one

Eran: Okay, let's say, 'lifney' Ah, that's a nice Hebrew preposition, it means 'in front of' or ‘before’– 'lifney'.

Liat: It is a nice preposition. And so is mine, check it out: 'le-yad' – 'next to' – 'le-yad'

Eran: A very widely used preposition in Hebrew we should definitely have is 'mi' sometimes pronounced as 'me'. It means 'of' or 'from' – 'mi'.

Liat: Connected to that is 'me-achor' - 'from behind' – 'me-achor'.

Eran: mmm… the letter 'mem' is superb for Hebrew prepositions. I offer the 'mul' - ’opposite’, facing, 'against'… you used this preposition kshe-ha-it ba-dira sheli - when you were in my apartment, you said…

Liat: rega rega, wait Eran, we'll soon get to our Hebrew Dialogue, but let's finish the list first. You said 'mul' - ’opposite’. Ahh… I have another one with 'mem' the preposition 'min'. It means 'from'.  It is actually the declensional form of the 'mi'

Eran: nachon. Last but not least for prepositions starting with the letter 'mem' is 'me-al' 'above' - 'me-al'.

Liat: Take the 'mem' off the 'me-al' and we have another one: 'al'. This one means 'for' or 'on'… and it starts with the letter 'ayin'

Eran: As we already have a lot of Hebrew prepositions, I suggest we close this list alphabetically, by going back to the roots and using the preposition 'shel'-'of'.

Liat: Wonderful. That’s a nice list. Now, let’s proceed with our plan and mix these prepositions into a dialogue. So that when we meet Jonathan in Lesson B, our Hebrew students will already be quite familiar with the basic appearance and manner of Hebrew prepositions. bo natchil - let's start!

מיקום מצויין

Eran: Okay, So… when I moved into my new apartment, I invited you and Jonathan to visit. I gave you my address and…

Liat: When I arrived, I called from downstairs. I said…

ערן, אתה בבית?

Eran, are you at home?

...

Jonathan: As we know, grammatically, a sentence, whether it's in English or in Hebrew is comprised of two basic essential elements.  These two essential elements are the subject and the predicate. 

The subject is the part of the sentence which we discuss, the subject of discussion. The predicate is the part of the sentence in which something is being said about the subject.

In order to say something about the subject, the predicate is either:

An adjective - A description of the subject, such as in the sentence 'the girl is beautiful'.

Or

A verb, indicating an action taken by the subject, such as in the sentence 'the girl is eating'

When the predicate is a verb, meaning a verbal predicate, it is sometimes accompanied by a description component or by an object. Either of these is considered complementary components of the verbal predicate.

Please note again: Everything which is connected to the verb is either a

Description

Or an

Object

To discern between the two, we should ask ourselves if the complementary component is a description. If it's not, then it is an Object

If the complementary element is an Object, the next phase is to distinguish between a direct and an indirect object.

Let's relate all this to our current discussion of Prepositions in Hebrew:

Basically, Prepositions are connecting words. But it is important to understand the difference between Connecting Words and Conjunction Words:

Prepositions are used in the Simple sentence, that is, a sentence that contains only one verb.

If there is more than one verb in a sentence, we are dealing with a Compound or a Complex sentence. In that case, we are using Conjunction Words.

Examples of conjunctions are 'and', 'but', 'or', 'so', 'yet' etc.

This distinction is very important when dealing with Hebrew Prepositions: Personal Pronouns Declension, such as: 'ezzli', 'ezzlecha', 'ezzlenu' and so on, can only be used with prepositions, they cannot be used for Conjunctions.

Within the simple form of the sentence, prepositions can be used in one of the following three ways:

First -Between two nouns:

The restaurant in London

No verb is involved here. The preposition 'in' is used to further describe the restaurant.

Second – when the predicate is a verb  accompanied by a description.

A description is a type of a complementary component to the verb (The verbal predicate) which is not a 'necessary complement'. The meaning of the verb is not dependent on this 'complement'. These are usually verbs which indicate a state of movement or a state of rest. Examples for this are:

Rest, fly, stand, sit, etc.

As the description is not a 'necessary complement' for these verbs types, the prepositions used between these verbs and their descriptors are not are not dictated by the verb being used.

We can say:

Michal yahsva ba-mechonit – Michal sat in the car

Or

Michal yahsva le-yad ha-mechonit – Michal sat next to the car

Or

Michal yahsva lifney ha-mechonit – Michal sat in front of the car

Or we can just say:

Michal yahsva – Michal sat