Who is Doing the Action?
Theory
When it comes to verbs, the first thing you want to ask yourself is: Who is doing the action? Is it one person or many people? Is it a boy, a girl, many boys, many girls or a combination of boys and girls?
There are two main categories of people doing the verbs:
1. Proper and Commons Nouns
2. Pronouns
Below is a table of the Hebrew pronouns along with their english translations (Marcuson).
| English | Hebrew |
|---|---|
| I | אני |
| You (M, S) | אתה |
| You (F, S) | את |
| He | הוא |
| She | היא |
| We | אנחנו |
| You (M, P) | אתם |
| You (F, P) | אתן |
| They (M, P) | הם |
| They (F, P) | הן |
Examples/Pictures
If Avi Somech is doing an action, then you would either use the proper noun Avi Somech or the pronoun הוא.
If many policemen are doing an action, then you would either use the common noun policemen or the pronoun הם.
Questions and Answers
Q: What pronoun would be used for a group of boys and girls? Would it be Masculine or Feminine?
A: In Hebrew, any plural group that contains a male is considered to be male in terms of grammar. However, if a group only containes females, then it would be Female. Therefore, a group of 10 girls and 1 by would be masculine, whereas a group of 10 girls would be feminine.
Interesting Points
As seen in the above table, in English we use "you" for M.S, M.P, F.S and F.P. This can sometimes be confusing since the gender and number is not clear from the pronoun. In Hebrew, however, there are different pronouns for the 4 different cases.