An important phrase for today’s world. In these photos I’m presenting phrases known as lexical chunks. These are words that often go together and will give your Hebrew a much more fluent touch. So instead of learning the word for “go into, enter” which is להיכנס on its own and the word for quarantine “בידוד” on its own, I want to teach you them together. This is how language works. Words come together in small phrases and certain phrases are repeated time and again, like this one.
Of course you can conjugate להיכנס and get a range of phrases like נכנסנו לבידוד “we went into quarantine”.
I want speaking Hebrew to be enjoyable for you. These chunks are a wonderful way to help us. If you like these chunks/images then let me know in the comments.
This is a fun saying, in my opinion. It’s used if someone has “lost the plot” or become very confused, a little crazy, a little nutty. Here’s an example sentence – מֵאָז שֶׁהִתְאַהֵב בְּרוּתִי, הוּא אִבֵּד אֶת הָרֹאשׁ לְגַמְרֵי. Meaning, since he’s fallen in love with Ruti he’s completely lost his head.
As with all of these chunks that I’m posting here, this is another great example of how remembering words as part of chunks (small sentences) helps us not only remember the words (think how much easier remembering the word “lost” איבד will be now that you have this context of someone “losing their head”) but also deepens our grammar understanding. Here we have a good use of the word “אֶת”.
You can of course conjugate the verb for “I’m losing my head” – אני מאבד/ת את הראש and any other person and tense works as well.
I want speaking Hebrew to be enjoyable for you. These chunks are a wonderful way to help us. If you like these chunks/images then let me know in the comments.
A great conversational chunk for saying things like “Whether you come or not, I’m going” or “whether you like it or not…”.
For the purists out there the correct way of saying this is בין ש…. ובין ש however note that in my experience NO ONE speaks like this. Yet, this is how you’ll see this phrase written and spoken in the media.
Here’s an example sentence
בין אם תבואו ובין אם לא, אנחנו יוצאים בזמן
Whether you will come or not, we’re leaving on time.
בין really means between and אם means if or whether.
So to use it you really need to add one condition followed by an opposite one. E.g. whether you like it or you’re not interested in it….I’m doing it!
If you liked this phrase, have any requests for more phrases or have some examples for this phrase please write this in the comments!
אני אוהבת את הרעיון להשתמש ביטויים. אפשר לך לכלול משפט בעברית שמתאים להוסיף לכרטיס פלאש של כל ביטוי?
Hi Dianne, yes I can add sentences that can be used with each phrase for flashcard use. תודה על הרעיון!
Tried to click on audio, two different phrases, it asked for my gmail account then said accessing document then…. Nothing. It didn’t work.
Hmmmm, interesting. Are you still unable to access the audio? Is anyone else having trouble accessing the audio?
I had the same when using Safari, with Chrome it worked 🙂
This is awesome, please keep sending phrases! Thank you so much
Thanks for the feedback Robin, It’s very helpful for me to know what resources are helpful to you, my students.
Thank you so much for these Hebrew chunks/phrases. They are great! I read this first one, spoke it, wrote it out on a sticky note (which I lost), and thought about it and said a few times yesterday, and woke this morning and remembered it! Crazy, and yet so simple! Then with the second one, I joined them together בסופו של דבר, אנחנו הלכנו להכנס לבדוד. Being limited in my understanding, I know joining phrases may not be totally correct some of the time, but it is fun to try using the phrases in contextual ways…Anyhow, thanks again, these are wonderful =)
Wow Cheryl, what an exciting experience. I really like how you played around with the phrase (e.g wrote it down, said it aloud). This is so important – to make the learning your own, to have fun with it. Joining phrases together is a wonderful idea too. Key is to just experiment with whatever you are learning. Like a child plays with words, we need to do play with these phrases. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you for the Hebrew chunks and phrases!!! It all helps!
Chunks רעיון טוב
תאונת הדרכים הייתה קשה מאוד אבל הנשים היו בסדר
The car accident was very severe/difficult but the women were fine.
Still having fun with phrases within sentences. I have been afraid of putting things together wrong in the past, but with help from phrase dictionaries, it’s good to try anyways and learn extra words along the way.
Wonderful sentence, keep up the good work – תמשיכי לשחק עם זה – keep playing with it
כל כך התרגשתי שאיבדתי את הראש! I love these lighter/funny phrases, too. So many ways to learn to use them. Thanks so much.
My pleasure Cheryl. Glad that you’re enjoying them and playing around with them!