Learn how to use the passive participles "open" and "closed"
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Sherah:Hello and welcome back to hebrewpod101.com. This is Lower Intermediate, Season 1, Lesson 2 - Hurry, before the Israeli supermarket closes! I’m your host, Sherah! |
| Amir:And I’m Amir. |
| Sherah:In this lesson, you’ll learn how to use the passive participles “open” and “closed” in Hebrew |
| Amir:The conversation takes place at the Levy family house in the afternoon.: |
| Sherah:It’s between Gadi and wife Ma'ayan.: |
| Amir:The speakers are married, so they’ll be using informal Hebrew. |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Sherah:So, fridays in Israel are really interesting |
| Amir:Yes, because it's the day that everything winds down for the weekend. |
| Sherah:Kids usually attend school for just half a day. |
| Amir:For some people who work on fridays it will be a half day, and then there are other people who have it off. |
| Sherah:Most people spend at least part of the day cleaning the house for the shabbat. |
| Amir:And shops usually close between two and four, so if people need to do last minute shopping, they need to do it before four. After that, everything closes down until Saturday night. |
| Sherah:Some people use Friday to catch up with friends and meet them for coffee. |
| Amir:In religious families, all the cooking and cleaning has to be done before sunset. |
| Sherah:No one works from sunset on Friday until sunset on Saturday night so you have to get everything done beforehand. |
| Amir:Israel is an intense country, so it’s nice to feel everything slow down on Fridays. |
| Sherah:Yeah, it’s really nice to know that on Friday afternoons, you can totally relax and not be expected to do anything. |
| KEY VOCAB AND PHRASES |
| Sherah:Let’s take a closer look at the usage of some of the words and phrases from this lesson. The first word that we want to talk about is מקפיא. |
| Amir:מקפיא is a noun derived from the verb להקפיא, meaning “to freeze”. |
| Sherah:As you may have guessed then, מקפיא is a freezer. This is a good example of how a root used in a certain verb group creates a family of words in Hebrew. |
| Amir:This word is taken from the hif'il verb group. It’s important to know too, that hif’il verbs carry a causative action.. |
| Sherah:So the underlying meaning is to cause something to freeze. It makes a lot of sense - you cause something to freeze by putting it in the freezer or מקפיא. |
| Amir:The second word we want to talk about is כמעט. |
| Sherah:This means “almost” and it’s used the same way as we use it in English. |
| Amir:If you get כמעט טוב in school, it means fairly good and it's the same as a C grade. |
| Sherah:Another phrase using this word is כמעט שלא. This means “hardly” or “scarcely”. |
| Amir:And the last word is shawarma. |
| Sherah:Schawarma is originally a Turkish creation that is found all over the Middle East. |
| Amir:Schawarma is meat placed on a spit that cooks all day long, and is then shaved off and put in a pita with vegetables and sauce.. |
| Sherah:Yum, shawarma is so good! I love it with lots of Tahini and garlic. Okay, now let’s move onto the grammar. |
| GRAMMAR POINT |
| Sherah:In this lesson you’ll learn about passive participles in Hebrew. |
| Amir:Our sample sentence from the dialogue is לך לראות אם הסופר עדיין פתוח |
| Sherah:Ma’ayan says “go see if the supermarket is still open”. Right here in the dialog we see the word patu'ħ used to show a passive state “open”. |
| Amir:It's used almost like an adjective and has four forms just like adjectives do. |
| Sherah:This passive participle is derived from the verb לפתוח which means “to open.” |
| Amir:There are many other passive participles that are formed from verbs in the pa'al verb group, and they all follow the same pattern. |
| Sherah:Right, the pattern uses the 3 root letters and the vowel sound oo, and the typical adjective endings that show gender and number for the noun they agree with. |
| Amir:Here are the 4 versions using the word “open”. פתוח is the masculine, פתוחה is the feminine. |
| Sherah:פתוחים is the masculine plural and פתוחות is the feminine plural. Here are example sentences with all 4 forms of פתוח. |
| Amir:The first sentence uses the masculine singular: הסופר פתוח |
| Sherah:The supermarket is open. |
| Amir:Next is the feminine singular: המכולת פתוחה |
| Sherah:The mini-market is open. |
| Amir:Next is masculine plural: המשרדים פתוחים |
| Sherah:The offices are open. |
| Amir:Last is feminine plural: הדלתות פתוחות |
| Sherah:The doors are open. |
| Amir:As you can see, in Hebrew the passive participles have the same endings as adjectives and are used a lot like an adjective. |
| Sherah:They also agree with the subject of the sentence in the same way. |
| Amir:In the dialog, Gadi uses the passive participle for “closed”, which is סגור as well. The example sentence from the dialogue is: לא הוא היה סגור. |
| Sherah:Right, he said “no, it was closed”. He was referring to the supermarket, so the word סגור agrees with סופר. |
| Amir:The 4 forms of סגור are: סגור, סגורה, סגורים and סגורות. |
| Sherah:In this last sentence, Gadi used סגור in the past by adding a היה in front of the passive participle. |
| Amir:You can use a passive participle in the past or the future by adding the verb להיות or “to be” between the subject and the passive participle. |
| Sherah:Let’s hear two examples of this. The first is in the past, let’s say that “the offices were open”. |
| Amir:המשרדים היו פתוחים. |
| Sherah:And now in the future: The mini-market will be open. |
| Amir:המכולת תהיה פתוחה |
| Sherah:Some other common passive participles used in Hebrew are: שבור or “broken” and פנוי meaning “vacant” or “free”. |
| Amir:Others are נסוי meaning “married” and גרוש which means “divorced”. |
Outro |
|---|
| Sherah:Ok, that’s all for this lesson. Come see us at HebrewPod101.com and talk to us about what you’ve learned here. |
| Amir:And remember to check the lesson notes. Thanks for being with us, everyone, |
| Sherah:Bye! |
| MARKETING PIECE |
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35 Comments
HideHello Listeners! Can you use the passive participles "open" and "closed" in a sentence? Let's practice here!
Hi Allan Tanzman,
Thanks for posting your question!
You have a very sharp eye! 😄 That's correct. However, this is an issue of semantic vs. textual translation...
Sometimes, similar ideas are said a little differently in different languages, and this is a good example of such a case.
If we were to translate every word, rather than the phrase as a whole, then we would translate as you've suggested, with "היום". In most cases, we prefer the more natural translation (i.e. the way the phrase would actually be formulated in English).
I hope that helps 😄
Yours,
Roi
Team HebrewPod101.com
The sentence "אני לא באה לארוחת ערב היום" is translated as I am not coming to dinner tonight. (female speaker). The hebrew ends with היום. Should the translation be I am not coming to dinner today?
Hi Song,
Thanks for posting your questions.
We use "pa'al" to show how to construct the participles only as this is the most simple verb form, which contains only the 3 letters of the root. The participles themselves aren't in the form of "pa'al".
Participles, adverbs and adjectives in Hebrew are not easily distinguished. In this lesson, we refer to "participles" as adverbs/adjectives that describe a certain state (for example "high", "low", "open" "close"). Adjectives can be active, for example, the verb "hypnotize" in the phrase "his eyes are hypnotizing" (העיניים שלו מהפנטות).
A few "Pa'al" verbs that can't be used as participles: "הלך", חזר", "אמר"...
I hope that helps! Enjoy learning Hebrew :)
Best,
Roi
Team HebrewPod101.com
Is it only pa'al verbs that can be used as participles? Or, are the lesson notes simply discussing PASSIVE participles?
Are there ACTIVE participles?
What are examples of pa'al verbs that can be used as passive participles and are there pa'al verbs that cannot be used as passive participles?
Hello Dan and Shelley,
Thank you for your comment.
I reported the issue to our team.
I'll be back to you as soon as I receive a reply.
We're sorry for the inconvenience.
Sincerely,
Lena
Team HebrewPod101.com
yes, Dan, I have the same problem and I'm on a windows seven.
I'd like to subscribe, but your audio player only works about half the time in any browser in my Windows 10 PC. Very frustrating.
Hi Ollie,
Thanks for commenting!
I'll correct your translation -
חבל! הכיסא שלי נשבר בגללכם. לכו לראות אם יש להם עוד בכלבו. שעתיים אחר כך, “אבא! הכלבו היה סגור כי היום שבת”
Notes -
because of you = בגללכם - biglalkhem
2 hours = שעתיים SHA"ATAYM, or Shtey Shaot
היום שבת - no need for הוא here. we can also say - היום יום שבת (today is Saturday).
Yes,adjectives always match number and gender in Hebrew, i.e - a beautiful chair - כסא יפה, beautiful chairs - כסאות יפים.
Examples for infinitive form with לכם etc:
מתחשק לכם לרוץ? do you feel like running?
בא לך ללכת - do you want to walk?
Yours,
Roi
Team Hebrewpod101.com
Can you provide more examples of using לך, לכם, לכן with verbs in the infinitive form please, thanks :)
Question: Do passive participles, like adjectives, need to match their nouns in definiteness, number and gender?