PART ALEPH

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Hebrew is a not a difficult language, everything is nicely sorted out with three letter roots, there are not too many tenses, what you see is what you read and rules are mostly kept. Most languages are far more complex, for example French has about 18 tenses and the rules of grammar in English have more exceptions than not.

 

The stumbling block, the Achilles' heel, of Hebrew is the gender. Nouns have gender and the number, adjective and verb associated with the noun must take on that gender. Although lots of us, including native born Israelis, constantly err on gender, if you just learn FIVE simple rules then you will at least make fewer mistakes. Here they are.

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Rule One. If in doubt, the word is masculine! This is a good, simple and useful rule. Use it liberally, but very carefully.

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Rule Two. All words ending in qamats heh are feminine. One EXCEPTION is לילָה night. I once heard that לילָה is really לֵיל (which is the older or poetic word), which is not much of an excuse but will help you remember the exception to the rule.

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Rule Three. All words ending in tav – where the ת is not part of the root, ie the ת is a suffix – are feminine. Amazingly there are no exceptions to this rule (wow): חיילת, דיסקית, התנהגות, פנטסטית etc. Note a few difficult words: צומת (crossroad) is masculine because the root is צמת; מחבת (frying pan) is feminine even though the root is חבת (as in חביתה  omelette).

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Rule Four. This is my favourite and where many Hebrew speakers really fall down. Hebrew has an unusual feature, which I think is unique: dual plurals. Lots of things come in pairs and these take a special plural יַם – מספריים, אופניים, אוזניים, רגליים. Remember these 2 easy rules with "just" 6 exceptions to them.

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If the word is an object that is not part of the body then it is masculine. One EXCEPTION only here, and it is shoes נעליים. No idea why but this word is feminine – not מכנסיים  trousers, מגפיים boots, or גרביים socks ie no object near or far from the shoes, just the shoes. Please, please stop feminizing every dual word, it is just wrong. True this is a very widespread mistake but it is a mistake and if you make this mistake I might personally take my מספריים ארוכים and come and chop off your גרביים יפים before you escape on your אופניים חדשים.

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BUT, if the word is for an object which is a body limb (legs and hands and such like) then it is feminine. Five EXCEPTIONS here: eyelids, nostrils, breasts, hips, ankles – עפעפיים יפים, נחיריים נוחים, שדיים שמימיים, מותניים אימתניים, קרסוליים קורסים (tried dismally for some alliteration there). If you are confused keep all your dual body parts feminine and your non-body parts masculine.

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Rule Five. There are about 20 or 30 words that look masculine but are feminine. Note in particular the five annoying "women" that have very masculine looking names: אם, בת, עז, אתון, פילגש mother, daughter, goat, she-ass and mistress/concubine. And there are lots more words that look masculine but are feminine אבן, גדר, גפן, כוס, מחט, נפש, פעם, תבל to name but a few but push me way over my 10 word limit per posting for this blog.

PART BET

I gave you 5 simple rules for choosing gender in Hebrew - OK sort of simple rules, well maybe actually quite complicated. Now let's do some gender studies.
 

Lots of attempts have been made to make some sense of masculine and feminine in Hebrew but the rules are fairly irrational. Why should breasts שדיים  and hips מותניים, such obviously feminine body parts, take a masculine gender whereas so many other body parts are feminine? Why do mothers and mistresses and she-asses have masculine looking words? Confused? Frustrated? Don't read any more, it just gets worse.

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People have noted the צדק versus צדקה contrast, ie that the Biblical concept is that they are masculine and feminine versions of the same thing, צדקה  meaning social justice as opposed to צדק legal justice. This is a nice idea but I have not found any more examples of this (love to hear if you do). פרש and פרשה, horseman and episode, or, מניע and מניעה, motivation and prevention, נמל and נמלה port and ant – are not masculine and feminine versions of the same thing. Even stranger there are words that have two totally different meanings depending on whether they are masculine or feminine: אות is signal and letter, עצם is bone or item, respectively feminine and masculine.

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Maybe, just maybe, we can sort things out a little?

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Countries and towns, without exception, are all feminine perhaps because they are the mothers or protectors of their citizens (think מולדת mother land). Gesenius Kautzsch Cowley (in "Hebrew Grammar")  (page 389) gives a better rule. Nouns which denote "circumscribed space" country, world, hell, (town) square, city, state, well, are all feminine ארץ, תבל, שאול, ככר, עיר, מדינה, באר. Also דרך way or trek חצר  courtyard . Is it because they are receptacles of objects or people?

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Feminine words usually take the -ות plural and masculine words the-ים  plural but there are too many exceptions to this to make it a useful guideline , חלונות windows and אבות fathers are masculine words with feminine plurals and פעמים (occurrences) and אבנים (stones) are feminine words with masculine plurals. This is a common mistake amongst Israeli children but they always work it out at a later age.

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There seems to be no connection with the meaning of the word and its gender. Masculine (= harsh, tough) things like bricks לבנים or swords חרבות are feminine; and female (= pretty, soft) things like smile  (חיוך) and beauty (יופי) are masculine! But, strong and courageous animals are usually masculine – דוב, זאב, כלב bear, wolf, dog – and weak and small animals are often feminine even when they are actually masculine – ארנבת, יונה, חסידה, דבורה, נמלה rabbit, dove, stork, bee, ant – but I wouldn't call the giraffe גירפה  a weak or small animal!