Sunday, April 17, 2005

Hebrew Verbs

Hebrew verbs differ from verbs in languages like English and French. Both in their formation and in the number of tenses.

In French, there is the infinitive form, to eat for example: manger. You can tell an infinitive when you see it because it ends in er, ir, or re. Then there is the present tense, two future ones, the conditional, and the subjonctive. Adding the past tenses brings the total to fourteen, and that does not count the imperitive, the present participle, or the construct 'am going to' As in: Je vais aller a la banque. I am going to go to the bank.

In Hebrew, on the other hand, there are only three tenses: the past, the present, and the future. There is also the imperitive, but as in French, I do not think that it is counted as a verb tense.

Hebrew verbs are formed from a root, usually three letters, but sometimes two and sometimes four. The terribly interesting thing about these roots is their forming different meanings through the benyanim. Benyan is building, and there are seven benyanim in Hebrew. (there being two weddings in my family this summer, I will use to kiss as example) nun-shin-kuf In pa'al: kiss, come together, touch. In pi'el: kiss, kiss repeatedly. In pu'al: be kissed. In hitpa'el: kiss each other. In hif'il: touch, couse to touch, be a tangent (geometry), launch (ship). And in huf'al: be touched, be launced (ship).

Notice that I only list six benyanim and not seven. According to my verb book, there are no roots that are commonly formed in all benyanim. If there was such a verb, then there would be 21 possibilities for that root: past, present, and future in each of the seven benyanim.

No comments: