Your Daily Dose of Hebrew

יוֹם חוֹל While Saturday and Sunday in most Western countries are days off, the average secular person today don’t consider either one of them particularly holy in the religious sense. Hebrew, however, makes that distinction, so that even secular Jews call Sunday through Friday ימי חול – weekdays, or literally, profane (as in non-holy) days. […]

עִסְקָה If a business is an עסק and business in the general sense is עסקים – literally, businesses, then a business deal is an עסקה  For example: היינו כל כך קרובים לסגור את העסקה. We were so close to closing the deal. In fact, עסקה as deal harks back to the original meaning of עסק […]

קָרוֹב The Hebrew word for close – קרוב in the masculine – can refer to emotional closeness just as it does to physical. For example:  פעם היינו מאוד קרובים אחד לשני. Once we were very close to one another. קרוב can also refer to a relative, though people usually use the full term, קרובי משפחה […]

פַּעַם הָיָה Sometimes there’s a gap between what we say and what we mean, and I’m not talking about lying. Take for example the expression used to be in English – what does once upon a time have to do with using? Hebrew’s term for this is more straightforward: פעם , literally, once, is how to […]

בְּדִיּוּק כָּמוֹנִי In Hebrew, if you want to express that someone (or something) is just like someone (or something) else, you’d use the word בדיוק – exactly, followed by some form of כמו – like. For example: היא נראית בדיוק כמו אמא שלה. She looks just like her mother. The word כמו will get an ending […]

חֹמֶר לְשִׁנּוּן Review Material Can’t read Hebrew yet? You spent time on your Hebrew this week. Use these review materials to make it yours to keep.  Flashcards . Scatter . Gravity . Test שבת שלום, וסוף שבוע נעים! Shabbat Shalom, and have a nice weekend!

הִמְנוֹן Hebrew’s word for anthem – המנון – borrows from the Greek ύμνος – hymnos. The national anthem or literally the state anthem is המנון המדינה. For example: המנון מדינת ישראל הינו “התקווה”. Israel’s national anthem is HaTikvah. (literally, The Hope) Listen to and learn התקווה here. חג עצמאות שמח! Happy Independence Day!

In celebration of Israel’s 70th, the Academy of the Hebrew Language – האקדמיה ללשון העברית – opened up a vote to the Hebrew-speaking public for the most Israeli word for each of Israel’s 7 decades. We at Ulpan La-Inyan thought it apt to introduce these words to you, to help you increase your Hebrew vocabulary […]

לִפּוֹל The root of the word ליפול is נ.פ.ל – since early Hebrew speakers found it troublesome to say לנפול, the nasal n sound disappeared, leaving only a trace in the hardening of the פ – from a f sound to p. In variations of ליפול, though, the n sound remains. One example is in the past tense – for […]

הֲכִי טוֹב, הַטּוֹב בְּיוֹתֵר, הַמֵּיטָב If you look closely at the three expressions above for the best, you’ll find the word טוב – good – in all of them, in some form. Each of these expressions is useful in different contexts: הכי טוב is an everyday expression, for example: היא החברה הכי טובה שלי. She’s my best […]

אָמָּן Looking at the word אמן without vowels, out of context, you might think it’s the Hebrew version of amen. But if אמן appears in a phrase such as הוא אמן – he is an artist, the experienced Hebrew reader would know that it refers here to an artist. Although there’s no ו after the letter א, the […]