אהבה

– love, and חיים

– life (as in !לחיים

– to life / cheers!), are two basic Hebrew words that come together to form the beautiful expression אהבת חיי

– the love of my life.

Modify the end of חיי

so that it matches the subject of your choice, for example:

רק בגיל מבוגר היא הכירה את אהבת חייה.

Only at an older age did she meet the love of her life.

In אהבת חיי

, the word אהבה

appears with a ת instead of the ה which is normally the final letter of the word. That’s because אהבת חיי

is an “of” (construct-state) expression, so that it means literally “the love of my life”.

In a similar way, חיי

means “my life” or, “the life of me (belonging to me)”.