Lesson 44 - The Computer Repair Shop

Learn Hebrew Pod - Lesson No. 44

And even for the geeks, there are moments when computers are not so beautiful.  Every now and then . . . you boot it up and there's a clunk instead of a whir . . .  Or even worse . . . a dreaded message like: Please insert bootable media in drive?  When was the last time you backed up??  Oy vey!!

In Learn Hebrew Pod shiur mispar arba-im ve-arba, we’ll take a trip to the computer repair shop with Jonathan.  

We’ll learn lots of Hebrew vocabulary related to those crazy machines that can make us so happy . . . or make us want to throw them out the window!  

We’ll meet our last-but-not-least Hebrew building block--binyan Hufal.  And, of course, we’ll see how Jonathan’s computer adventure turns out.

Eran, Jonathan and Liat

Our Intermediate Level Hebrew Teachers

Jonathan: Well, you remember, of course, that in shi-ur mispar arba-im ve-shalosh - Lesson 43, we were going to discuss the Hebrew building block Huf-al.  But you and Eran had an excellent idea--ra-a-yon mezzu-yan--that we should wait to discuss our final Hebrew building block on our final intermediate-level lesson.  So instead, in Lesson 43, we talked about the very important grammar topic of milot yachas--Hebrew prepositions.

Liat: And we also talked about the very important topic of running errands!

Jonathan:  nachon! Well, it turned out that the very next day I ended up having to run a very important but very unexpected errand . . .  

Eran: Yes, Jonathan, I remember that day very well.  I called you to discuss some ideas for the upcoming review lessons, and you were just walking out the door to take your computer to the repair technician.  As I recall, you were a little bit . . . well . . .

Jonathan: Panicked, freaked out.  You can say it like it was.  My computer had completely crashed.  It wouldn’t even boot up.  Other than what fits on my iPhone, that computer has everything (everything!) on it--all the plans for our future Hebrew lessons, the verb conjugations, the grammar topics . . .

מחשב, טלפון נייד וטאבלט

Liat: Wow . . . that sounds like a good reason for panic!  But, Jonathan, kfi she-anachnu yod-im - as we know, ata machur le-machshevim - you are a computer geek.  So batu-ach - for sure, you had all the data backed up.

Jonathan: Well . . . sometimes even for computer geeks, the best intentions go astray . . . So yes, I was more than a little bit worried.  Fortunately, I know a great computer technician who was able to figure out very quickly that the problem was just the computer’s power supply and that none of the data on the hard drive had been damaged.

Fortunately, I know a great computer technician 

Eran: eyze mazal!  It sounds like the whole future of the Hebrew language was saved!  :) And I’ll bet you learned your lesson about backing up!

Jonathan: I can promise you, I did!  Now every day at 3 a.m.--kol yom be-shalosh ba-boker--my computer is set to run a full backup routine.  And this whole experience got me thinking about how much we all depend on our computers, so . . .

Liat: Let me guess . . . so you decided to change the topic for today’s Hebrew lesson . . .

Jonathan: nachon Liat, it seems you have gotten to know me well over the past forty-four lessons!

ארבעים וארבע

Liat: le-mazali, Yonatan.  So . . . I have a feeling that our Hebrew dialogue will have something to do with computers.  But will we still be studying Huf-al?

Jonathan: betach!  We wouldn’t want to neglect Huf-al!  But you know . . .  as I see it, having our last intermediate-level lesson also dedicated to the topic of computers is just the natural thing to do.

Eran: ani maskim, Jonathan - I agree . . . For forty-four lessons they’ve been with us all the way . . . the podcasts, the audio/visual lessons, the Hebrew vocabulary presentations... and the games . . .

Liat:  I think it’s high time we gave them a dialogue of their own . . .

Jonathan:  Just like the one I overheard as I was leaving the computer repair shop. Would you like to read it, for the first time just in Hebrew?

Eran and Liat: ken! bo-u natchil!

Jonathan: I'm sure we were all able to hear and identify the Hebrew verbs that began with the 'hu' sound. 

One verb which appears both in a feminine and a masculine conjugations 'muchana' and 'muchan' is not in the past tense but in the present, These conjugations do not begin with the 'Hu' prefix but with a 'mu' prefix.

As in the Pu-al building block, the present tense of the Huf-al actually creates a kind of Hebrew 'verbal adjective'. It acts as an adjective in that it describes a noun, but it is actually a verb that is conjugated in these Hebrew building blocks’ present tense. 

We will refer to this in a more comprehensive manner in our future advanced lessons.

Eran: For the remainder of our lesson we are going to review how to conjugate verbs in the Huf-al building block, in the past, present and future tenses. 

In this lesson we have chosen to work only with Hebrew verbs that have all natural letters in their root, meaning that we will not conjugate any verbs that have a 'hey', 'alef', 'ayin' or 'chet' in their root.

Liat: The Huf-al building block conjugations will be reviewed in the first table of each tense. Two more tables (one for the singular and one for plural personal pronouns conjugations) will be then dedicated to a comparison between how Hif-il, the active building block, and Huf-al, the passive building block, are conjugated.

Eran: We will practice the conjugations for the root letters: G, D, and R – gimel, daled     ve-resh.

Jonathan: The best way to understand how the different roots are conjugated is to focus on the different components that are added to the verb stem, that is, to the different vowels, prefixes, infixes and suffixes that are added to the root letters.