Notes · Hebrew (Modern)UK · A-Levels

דקדוק ותרגום: the grammar list and the two translations (AQA 7672, section 3.3)

This topic is section 3.3 of AQA 7672 in full - twenty-three headed lists, from the script and the phonetics through the noun, the construct state, the seven verb forms and the pronominal suffixes to word order and the fixed morphological patterns - together with the two translation tasks, which sit in two different papers and make two different demands: Hebrew into English for 10 marks on Paper 1, English into Hebrew for 10 marks on Paper 3. A structural fact worth knowing before you open the specification: section 3.3 contains no Hebrew characters at all. AQA prints its entire grammar list in roman transliteration. These notes print the script, because that is what you read and write in the exam, and transliterate beside it, because a word you cannot say is a word you cannot hold. They are unpointed throughout, as modern Hebrew is and as 3.3.1 asks - it prescribes the vowels and expressly not the vocalisation - with one declared exception inside this topic: where a point is itself the thing being taught, the shin and sin dots and the dagesh on the begadkefat letters are printed, because those letters cannot be described without them. Nowhere else in this subject is a single point set. Grammar is not examined in a section of its own; AO3, quality of language, is worth 30 per cent of the qualification and is collected in every written answer you give.

5 sections~41 min reading time4 competenciesLevel Foundation 1 · Standard 2 · Advanced 2

T·0111 / 13

Exam profile

AO3 · Manipulate Modern Hebrew accurately in written form, using a range of lexis and structure - 30 per cent of the qualification, collected in every written answer on all three papersAO2 · Understand and respond in writing to written Hebrew, which the Paper 1 translation into English tests at the level of the individual clauseAO1 · Understand and respond in writing to spoken Hebrew, which depends on hearing a morphology whose vowels the spelling does not recordApply knowledge of morphology and syntax, vocabulary and idiom to communicate accurately and coherently in writing using a range of expression, including the list of grammar in this specification

Operators:translatemanipulateidentifyjustifyexplaincheck

basic level

AQA publishes an A-level only for Modern Hebrew - there is no AS companion specification - so first-year work is not a smaller exam but the foundation of this one: get the script fluent in both directions, fix the seven binyanim and the three tense forms, learn the construct state properly, and start the two translation habits early, because they are the two skills that improve slowest.

higher level

In the second year the target is accuracy under time pressure and range without risk: the AO3 grids ask for complex language manipulated accurately, which means you need three or four structures beyond the sentence you would say out loud - a construct chain, a relative clause with she-, an infinitive after a modal expression, a preposition carrying a pronominal suffix - available without hesitation, and a checking routine that catches agreement, definiteness and the et before a definite direct object in the last three minutes of every written task.

Depth

Text

Contents · 5 sections

דקדוק ותרגום: the grammar list and the two translations (AQA 7672, section 3.3)

הכתב והתנועות: the script, the vowels that are not written, and what 3.3.1 actually asks for#

FoundationAQA 7672 - 3.3.1 The scripts and phoneticsAQA 7672 - 3.3.2 MorphologyAQA 7672 - 3.3.21 Phonetical

Modern Hebrew is written in the square script, right to left, in twenty-two letters, five of which take a different shape at the end of a word. Those five are not decorative variants: כ becomes ך, מ becomes ם, נ becomes ן, פ becomes ף and צ becomes ץ, and writing the wrong one is a spelling error exactly as writing the wrong letter would be. There is no upper and lower case, which removes one whole class of error from your writing and one signal from your reading - a proper noun looks like any other noun, so you identify names by context and not by shape. Five letters carry a historically doubled or hardened pronunciation, בגדכפת, of which three are still audible in modern speech: ב is b or v, כ is k or kh, פ is p or f. In print those pairs are distinguished by a dot inside the letter, the dagesh - בּ is b against ב v, כּ is k against כ kh, פּ is p against פ f - and one further letter, ש, is read sh or s according to whether the dot sits at its right or its left shoulder: שׁ shin against שׂ sin. Those four pairs are the only pointed forms printed anywhere in this subject, and they are printed here because the mark is the thing being taught. Unpointed, which is how you will meet all of them, the pairs are not distinguished at all and you resolve them from the word.

The vowels are the difficulty, and 3.3.1 is unusually precise about them. It asks for letters and consonants, then for vowel-letters, then for the vowels - and adds, in brackets, not vocalisation. In other words AQA wants you to know the vowel system of the language and expressly does not want the pointing. That matches reality: newspapers, government forms, novels, websites, exam texts and your own exam answers are all written unpointed. What carries the vowels instead is ktiv male, כתיב מלא, full spelling, which uses two ordinary consonant letters as vowel signs: ו for o and u, and י for i and e. The specification's own examples - bati, rosh, rishon, yachol, la-shir - are all ktiv male spellings in transliteration. So ספר with no vowel letter can be sefer, a book, or safar, he counted, or sapar, a barber, and the sentence decides.

Because the same consonantal skeleton can be several words, reading Hebrew is a continuous act of prediction rather than decoding, and this is the single biggest change from reading a language written with its vowels. Two habits fix it. First, read for the root and the pattern together: the three consonants tell you the semantic field, the vowel pattern and any prefixes and suffixes tell you what part of speech and what form, and the two together usually leave one candidate standing. Second, read forwards through the clause before you commit: a definite article, an et, a preposition or a plural ending arriving two words later will settle a reading you could not settle at the moment you met it. Both habits are directly examinable, because every Hebrew text in Papers 1 and 3 is unpointed.

3.3.21 adds two phonetic items that only matter if you are going to hear the language, which on Paper 3 you are. The first is intonation: an affirmative statement and a question can be identical in words and differ only in the rise at the end, so אתה כותב is you are writing or are you writing depending entirely on the contour, and no question word will help you. The second is repetition for emphasis, which Hebrew uses far more than English does - לאט לאט, slowly slowly, meaning gradually; יום יום, day day, meaning every day; ככה ככה, so so, in the specification's own list. Neither of these is visible in a written text and both are ordinary in speech, which is why listening practice cannot be replaced by reading practice, however much of it you do.

Worked example

One skeleton, four words: how a reader chooses

The unpointed skeleton ספר appears four times in four different sentences. Decide what it is in each, and say what settled it.

Establish the candidates before you look at the sentences
The root ס-פ-ר covers counting, telling and cutting hair. Unpointed, the three-letter skeleton can be sefer, a book; safar, he counted, qal past third masculine singular; siper, he told or he cut hair, pi'el past; and sapar, a barber, an agent noun on the pa''al pattern that 3.3.22 lists as usually denoting a profession. Note that two of these are nouns and two are verbs, so the decisive evidence will usually be syntactic rather than semantic.
Sentence one: a definite article settles it
הספר על השולחן. The definite article ה is prefixed directly to the skeleton, and a finite past-tense verb cannot take the definite article. So this is a noun. With no other noun in the clause and a prepositional phrase following, it is the subject: the book is on the table. Reading: ha-sefer.
Sentence two: an et settles it
הוא ספר את הכסף. The particle את marks a definite direct object, and only a verb takes a direct object. So the skeleton is a verb, and with a masculine singular pronoun as subject it is third masculine singular past: he counted the money. Reading: safar. Note the whole decision was made by a two-letter word standing after the skeleton, which is why you read forward before committing.
Sentence three: a plural ending settles the pattern
הספרים נמצאים בספרייה. The plural ending -ים on a definite noun, with a plural participle agreeing with it, forces the noun reading again: the books are in the library. Reading: ha-sfarim. The agreement is the evidence: נמצאים is masculine plural, so its subject must be masculine plural.
Sentence four: a profession pattern settles it
הספר גזר לי את השיער. Here the skeleton is definite and is the subject of a past-tense verb, so it is a noun; and the clause is about cutting hair, which is the third sense of the root. The agent-noun pattern that 3.3.22 describes gives sapar, a barber: the barber cut my hair. Two nouns share one skeleton and the semantic field of the sentence separates them.
Extract the rule
In every case the deciding evidence was a small word or an ending, not the skeleton itself: the definite article, the object marker et, a plural suffix and its agreement. That is the reading strategy in one line - read the function words, not just the content words - and it is the same strategy that gets you through an unseen Paper 1 text at speed.

Result: ha-sefer, the book; safar, he counted; ha-sfarim, the books; ha-sapar, the barber. Four readings of one skeleton, each fixed by a function word or an agreement rather than by guesswork - the habit that makes unpointed reading fast.

Typical mistakes

Writing the medial form of kaf, mem, nun, pe or tsadi at the end of a word, or the final form in the middle - the commonest single spelling error in candidates who learned to read before they learned to write.
Learning Hebrew in a pointed textbook and then meeting an unpointed exam text for the first time in the exam.
Confusing the letters that are homophones in modern pronunciation - alef and ayin, het and khaf, tet and tav, kaf and kuf, samekh and sin - which are indistinguishable by ear and must be learned word by word.
Omitting the vav or yod that ktiv male requires, so that the word is spelled as it would be pointed and is simply wrong unpointed.

Active revision

קחו פסקה אחת מאתר חדשות ישראלי, העתיקו אותה בכתב יד, וסמנו בכל מילה את השורש ואת התבנית. לאחר מכן מצאו בפסקה שלוש מילים שאפשר לקרוא ביותר מדרך אחת, וכתבו לצד כל אחת מהן מה בתוך המשפט מכריע איזו קריאה נכונה

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: AQA A-level Modern Hebrew (Listening, Reading, Writing) 7672 specification (AQA)

שם עצם וסמיכות: the noun phrase, definiteness, and the construct chain#

StandardAQA 7672 - 3.3.3 The nounAQA 7672 - 3.3.5 AdjectivesAQA 7672 - 3.3.8 ParticlesAQA 7672 - 3.3.18 Numerals

The construct chain, and where the article goes

Fig. 1Smichut compared with the analytic alternative. Read the middle column as the structure you are being asked to produce and the right-hand column as the check that tells you it is right. Everything here is in transliteration: the figure engine has no right-to-left handling, so a mixed Hebrew-and-Latin cell would come out in the wrong order. The Hebrew for every row is in the prose above.

Every Hebrew noun is masculine or feminine, and 3.3.3 gives the rules and then most of the exceptions. Nouns ending in ־ה are usually feminine: ילדה, yalda, a girl; אישה, isha, a woman. Nouns ending in ־ת are usually feminine: מכונית, mechonit, a car; but not when the tav belongs to the root, so שירות, sherut, service, and זית, zayit, an olive, are masculine. Some feminines are feminine by sense with no ending at all: אם, em, a mother. Countries and cities are feminine. Single body parts that come in pairs are feminine: יד, yad, a hand; עין, ayin, an eye. And the specification prints a list of what it calls extraordinary nouns which are feminine against every rule of shape - אבן, even, a stone; דרך, derech, a way; עיר, ir, a city; פעם, pa'am, a time. Gender is not decoration: the adjective, the verb and the numeral all agree with it.

Number has three values, not two. The plural is ־ים for most masculines and ־ות for most feminines, with a well-populated set of crossovers the specification lists as extraordinary: שולחנות and חלונות and שמות and אבות are masculine nouns with a feminine-looking plural, and נשים and ערים and אבנים are feminine nouns with a masculine-looking plural. The third value is the dual, ־יים, and it is productive in exactly four places: time - שעתיים, two hours; שבועיים, two weeks; number - פעמיים, twice; paired body parts - עיניים, ידיים, רגליים; and things worn or used in pairs - נעליים, shoes; מכנסיים, trousers; משקפיים, glasses; מספריים, scissors. Learn also the false duals the specification warns about: מים, water, and שמיים, sky, and ירושלים end in ־יים and are not dual at all.

Definiteness in Hebrew is a single prefixed ה attached to the word, and it behaves in three ways worth memorising as a set. First, an adjective agrees with its noun in definiteness as well as in gender and number, so הבית הגדול, ha-bayit ha-gadol, the big house, carries the article twice, while בית גדול, bayit gadol, is a big house and הבית גדול, ha-bayit gadol, is a whole sentence meaning the house is big. Second, a definite direct object takes את before it: ראיתי את הילד, ra'iti et ha-yeled, I saw the child, against ראיתי ילד, ra'iti yeled, I saw a child, with no et. Third, the inseparable prepositions ב, כ and ל absorb the article: ב plus הבית gives בבית, ba-bayit, in the house. All three are AO3 marks, and all three are lost routinely.

The construct state, סמיכות, smichut, is the structure that most distinguishes written Hebrew from what a beginner produces, and 3.3.3 gives it a section of its own with five change patterns. Two nouns are placed together, the first bound to the second: בית ספר, beit sefer, a school, literally a house of book. The first noun is the נסמך, the bound form, and it may change - בית becomes בית in the singular but בתי in the plural, שנה becomes שנת, ילדים becomes ילדי, ארצות becomes ארצות. Definiteness is the trap: the article goes on the LAST noun only and makes the whole chain definite, so בית הספר is the school, never הבית הספר. The alternative, always available and often better, is the analytic phrase with של: הבית של המורה, ha-bayit shel ha-mora, the teacher's house.

Worked example

Building four noun phrases that would earn an AO3 range mark

Take the bare English phrases the school library, a family meal, the country's young people and the state's institutions, and produce each in Hebrew twice - once as a construct chain and once analytically - then decide which you would write in an exam.

The school library
Two chains are possible, one nested inside the other. ספריית בית הספר, sifriyat beit ha-sefer, is a three-term chain: library of house of the book. The article is on the very last noun and makes the whole thing definite. The analytic alternative is הספרייה של בית הספר. Both are correct; the nested chain is more idiomatic and shows more range, and it is also the one most likely to go wrong under pressure, because ספרייה must become ספריית in the bound form.
A family meal
ארוחה משפחתית, arucha mishpachtit, uses an adjective rather than a chain, and the adjective must agree: ארוחה is feminine singular, so the adjective takes the feminine singular ־ית. The construct alternative ארוחת משפחה, aruchat mishpacha, is a meal of family and is equally good. Note that ארוחה becomes ארוחת in the bound form - the ה of the feminine ending turns into ת, which is the specification's own rule in 3.3.3.
The country's young people
צעירי הארץ, tse'irei ha-arets, the young of the land. The bound plural of צעירים is צעירי: the ־ים ending drops its mem and the vowel changes, which is the specification's rule about changes in the masculine plural. The analytic form הצעירים של הארץ is grammatical but reads like a translation from English; a marker will notice the difference.
The state's institutions
מוסדות המדינה, mosdot ha-medina. Here the bound plural is a feminine-looking ־ות plural of a masculine noun, מוסד, which is one of the extraordinary forms 3.3.3 lists, so the adjective and the verb still agree masculine plural even though the ending looks feminine. This is the trap: מוסדות המדינה חשובים, with a masculine plural adjective, and not חשובות.
Choose what to write
In a timed essay use one or two chains deliberately and the analytic form for everything else. A chain that is right is evidence of range; a chain that misplaces the article is evidence of the opposite, and there is no partial credit for nearly. Decide in advance which chains you can produce reliably and treat them as fixed vocabulary.

Result: Four phrases, each available in two structures, with the article placed on the final noun of every chain, feminine ־ה becoming ־ת in the bound form and masculine ־ים becoming ־י - and a clear rule for which structure to risk in a timed answer.

Typical mistakes

Writing הבית הספר for the school - putting the article on the bound noun as well as, or instead of, the free one.
Omitting et before a definite direct object, or inserting it before an indefinite one.
Treating a noun as masculine because it looks masculine: עיר, דרך and אבן are all feminine and all take feminine adjectives and verbs.
Using the dual ending for any two of a thing - the dual is fixed lexically, and two books is שני ספרים, never a dual form.
Forgetting that the adjective follows the noun in Hebrew, so a big house is בית גדול and not the English order.

Active revision

כתבו עשרה צירופי סמיכות שקשורים לאחד הנושאים של התוכנית - למשל המשפחה הישראלית או העולם הדיגיטלי - וכתבו כל אחד מהם פעמיים: פעם ביידוע ופעם בלי יידוע. לאחר מכן כתבו את אותם עשרה צירופים מחדש בעזרת המילה של, והחליטו לגבי כל אחד באיזה מהניסוחים תשתמשו במבחן ומדוע

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: AQA A-level Modern Hebrew (Listening, Reading, Writing) 7672 specification (AQA)

הפועל והבניינים: root, pattern and the seven verb forms#

AdvancedAQA 7672 - 3.3.4 The VerbAQA 7672 - 3.3.22 Morphological

The seven binyanim at a glance

Fig. 2The seven verb forms of 3.3.4 with their usual job, the third-person-masculine-singular past template, and the specification's own demonstration root run through all seven. Read the last column as the warning rather than the rule: the specification itself says its examples are indicative, not exclusive. Transliteration only, because the figure engine has no right-to-left handling; the Hebrew is in the prose.

A Hebrew verb is a root poured into a pattern. The root, שורש, is usually three consonants and carries the semantic field; the pattern, בניין, binyan, is a fixed frame of vowels and affixes and carries the voice and the valency. 3.3.4 names all seven and groups them exactly as a grammar would: active qal, pi'el and hif'il; passive nif'al, pu'al and huf'al; reflexive hitpa'el. The specification's own demonstration uses the root ס-ג-ר, to shut, and runs it through the whole set. Once you can do that with one root you can do it with any root you meet, which is the entire point of the system and the reason Hebrew vocabulary grows in families rather than one word at a time.

Each binyan has a usual job, and 3.3.22 lists them: nif'al is usually the passive of qal and sometimes reflexive; pi'el is intensive or causative; pu'al is the passive of pi'el; hif'il is causative; huf'al is the passive of hif'il; hitpa'el is reflexive or reciprocal. Usually is the operative word, and the specification is careful to say the examples are indicative and not exclusive. Plenty of common verbs sit in a binyan whose meaning does not follow the rule - the pattern narrows the possibilities rather than determining the sense - so the productive habit is to use the pattern to guess and the dictionary or context to confirm, never the other way round.

The tense system has three finite forms and several non-finite ones, and it is smaller than an English speaker expects. The past inflects for person, gender and number with suffixes: כתבתי, katavti, I wrote; כתבת, katavta, you wrote. The future inflects with prefixes and some suffixes: אכתוב, ekhtov, I shall write; יכתוב, yikhtov, he will write. The present is not a tense at all but the participle, בינוני, beinoni, which behaves like an adjective and agrees for gender and number only: כותב, כותבת, כותבים, כותבות. Because it has no person, אני כותב and אתה כותב differ only in the pronoun, and the pronoun therefore cannot be dropped in the present the way it can in the past and future.

Around the finite forms sit four derived words your writing needs. The infinitive is ל plus the future stem: לכתוב, lichtov, to write, and 3.3.23 gives five constructions that require it - after a verb of trying, after a verb of purpose, after verbs of wishing and deciding, after words of ability and interest such as יכול and אפשר and מעניין, and after words of need such as צריך and יש ל. The imperative exists but modern speech mostly uses the future instead. The verbal noun, שם פעולה, gives you an abstract noun from the same root: כתיבה, ktiva, writing. And the passive participle gives an adjective: כתוב, katuv, written. Four words from one root, and each of them buys you a sentence shape you would otherwise have to build the long way.

One root, three patterns

Fig. 3The root g-d-l through three active binyanim, with two derived words hanging off each. This is how Hebrew vocabulary actually grows: learn the root and the pattern, and each new binyan hands you a cluster of words rather than one. Labels are transliterated for the same rendering reason as the tables.

Worked example

Choosing a binyan under exam conditions

You are translating into Hebrew and you need four verbs: it changed, they changed it, it was changed and they corresponded with each other. You know the roots. Decide the binyan for each and justify it.

It changed - intransitive, so not an active transitive pattern
The root is ש-נ-ה. Something changing by itself, with no agent, is the reflexive-middle sense, which is hitpa'el: השתנה, hishtana. Notice the metathesis the pattern requires - the tav of hitpa'el swaps with the shin of the root, giving השת and not התש. That swap happens with every sibilant first radical and is one of the few genuinely mechanical rules in the system.
They changed it - transitive with an agent
The same root taking a direct object is pi'el: הם שינו את המדיניות, hem shinu et ha-mediniyut, they changed the policy. Pi'el is the standard intensive-transitive pattern, and note the et, which is compulsory before a definite direct object. The pair hishtana and shina is worth memorising as a pair, because it is the clearest single demonstration of what a binyan does.
It was changed - passive of the pattern you just used
The passive of pi'el is pu'al, so שונה, shuna. But before you write it, ask whether you need it. Pu'al is a formal register; in a 300-word essay a Hebrew writer would very often prefer the active with an unspecified subject, or hitpa'el again. Choose pu'al when the agent genuinely does not matter and you want the register of a news report - and then be sure you have the vowel pattern right, because an inaccurate rare form scores worse than an accurate common one.
They corresponded with each other - reciprocal
Reciprocity is the second job of hitpa'el, and the root is כ-ת-ב: התכתבו, hitkatvu, they corresponded. This is the sense in which hitpa'el is not reflexive - nobody is writing to himself - and it is exactly the kind of form the AO3 grids mean by complex language manipulated accurately.
Apply the check that catches most errors
For each verb, ask three questions in order. Is there an agent, and is it expressed? Is there a direct object, and is it definite? Is the action done to oneself or between parties? Those three answers select the binyan almost every time, and they take about four seconds each once the habit is formed.

Result: hishtana for the intransitive change, shina plus et for the transitive, shuna for the true passive with a register warning attached, and hitkatvu for the reciprocal - four binyanim chosen by a three-question test rather than by memory of individual words.

Typical mistakes

Trying to conjugate for person in the present tense, on the English model - the participle has no first, second or third person.
Dropping the subject pronoun in the present because it can be dropped in the past and future, which leaves the sentence without a subject.
Assuming a binyan's usual meaning is its only meaning, and mistranslating a common verb that sits outside the pattern.
Building a passive with a separate auxiliary on the English model instead of moving the root into nif'al, pu'al or huf'al.
Writing the infinitive as ל plus the past stem rather than the future stem.

Active revision

בחרו שורש אחד שמופיע לעיתים קרובות בטקסטים על אחד הנושאים שאתם לומדים, וכתבו טבלה של כל הצורות שאתם מכירים ממנו: שלושה זמנים, שם הפועל, שם הפעולה, הבינוני הפעול, וכל שם עצם שנגזר מאותו שורש. אחר כך כתבו חמישה משפטים שמשתמשים בחמש צורות שונות של אותו שורש

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: AQA A-level Modern Hebrew (Listening, Reading, Writing) 7672 specification (AQA)

מילות יחס ותחביר: the small words, the pronominal suffixes and word order#

StandardAQA 7672 - 3.3.7 PronounsAQA 7672 - 3.3.9 PrepositionsAQA 7672 - 3.3.10 to 3.3.17AQA 7672 - 3.3.19 SyntaxAQA 7672 - 3.3.20 Word orderAQA 7672 - 3.3.23 Syntactical

Prepositions with pronominal suffixes: three patterns

Fig. 4Learn the pattern, not the fifty forms. Almost every preposition in 3.3.9 declines on one of these three models, and knowing which one a preposition follows lets you produce a form you have never seen. Transliterated throughout for the rendering reason given elsewhere in this topic; the Hebrew is in the prose.

Hebrew prepositions inflect. Instead of to me, English's two words, Hebrew fuses the preposition and the pronoun into one: לי, li; לך, lecha; לו, lo; לנו, lanu. 3.3.7 calls these pronominal suffixes and 3.3.9 lists the prepositions that take them, in five groups: the inseparable ב, כ, ל and מ, which attach directly to a word; the free-standing אל, על, עם, מן and את; the local בין, מול, תחת and אצל; the temporal לפני and אחרי; and a long list of compounds - לפי, על פי, בתוך, על יד, על ידי, בגלל, בשביל, לקראת, מפני, מאחורי, מסביב. There are three declension patterns, and knowing which pattern a preposition follows is more useful than memorising each form separately.

Two of those small words do more work than the rest. את is not a preposition at all when it marks a direct object, and it appears only before a DEFINITE one - a proper noun, a noun with the article, a noun with a possessive suffix, or a demonstrative. Confusingly, את with pronominal suffixes gives אותי, אותך, אותו, which are the accusative pronouns, and את on its own can also be the feminine you and the noun a spade. Unpointed, all of them look identical. The other is ש, which fronts a relative clause: האיש שראיתי, ha-ish she-ra'iti, the man I saw. 3.3.7 also lists the older אשר, which you will meet in formal and literary registers and should be able to read, and כי, which introduces a reason clause.

Possession has no verb. 3.3.23 sets it out: יש לי ספר, yesh li sefer, I have a book, literally there is to me a book; אין לי ספר, ein li sefer, I do not have a book. The subject of that sentence is the thing possessed, so the negation is אין and not לא, and the past and future are formed on היה and יהיה agreeing with the possessed thing: היה לי ספר. The specification adds a prescriptive note worth reporting exactly as it stands: it says that many Hebrew speakers wrongly say יש לי את הספר, with et before a definite possessed noun, and that this is nevertheless tolerated. The Academy of the Hebrew Language prescribes יש לי הספר; ordinary speech overwhelmingly uses the form with et. Write the form the mark scheme can reward, which is the one without et, and recognise the other when you hear it.

Word order is freer than English but not free. The default is subject-verb-object, and 3.3.20 lists the deviations you should be able to produce: an adverb may open the clause and invert the subject and verb, so היום קניתי ספר, today I bought a book; a direct object may be fronted for emphasis, את העוגה אני אכלתי, the cake, I ate; and the position of גם changes the meaning, which the specification demonstrates with three sentences in a row - אני כתבתי גם ספר, גם אני כתבתי ספר and אני גם כתבתי ספר mean three different things. Negation is לא before a verb and אין before a nominal predicate; conditions take אם with the indicative and אילו or לו with the counterfactual.

Worked example

Rebuilding an English sentence with the small words Hebrew actually uses

Translate into Hebrew: I do not have the article you sent me, but I remember what was written in it, and I want to talk to you about it before the lesson.

Possession first, because the whole clause hangs on it
There is no verb to have. The frame is אין לי, ein li, with the possessed thing as the grammatical subject. The article is definite, so the specification's own note applies: the prescribed form is אין לי המאמר and ordinary speech says אין לי את המאמר. Write the prescribed one. So far: אין לי המאמר.
The relative clause, and the suffix inside it
You sent me is a relative clause on the article: ששלחת לי, she-shalachta li. Note two things - the relative particle is ש attached directly to the verb, and me is not a separate word but the inflected preposition לי. That gives אין לי המאמר ששלחת לי.
But, and a headless relative
The contrastive is אבל, listed in 3.3.15 alongside the more formal אולם and אף על פי כן. What was written is a headless relative: מה שהיה כתוב, ma she-haya katuv - literally what that was written, using the passive participle כתוב rather than a finite passive verb, which is more natural here. In it becomes the inflected בו. So: אבל אני זוכר מה שהיה כתוב בו.
The infinitive after a verb of wishing, and two more suffixes
3.3.23 lists the infinitive after verbs of wish and intention: אני רוצה לדבר, ani rotse ledaber. To you is inflected - איתך, itcha, from עם - and about it is עליו, alav, from על, which declines on the plural-noun pattern. So: ואני רוצה לדבר איתך עליו.
The time clause and the final check
Before the lesson is לפני השיעור, with לפני as a free preposition governing a definite noun. Full sentence: אין לי המאמר ששלחת לי, אבל אני זוכר מה שהיה כתוב בו, ואני רוצה לדבר איתך עליו לפני השיעור. Now run the checks: three inflected prepositions used instead of pronouns; the relative ש twice; one infinitive after a verb of wishing; no et anywhere, because the only definite noun in an object position is the possessed noun in a yesh-ein clause, where the prescribed form has none.

Result: A single sentence carrying four inflected prepositions, two relative clauses and an infinitive construction - all of them items on the 3.3 list, and all of them the kind of thing an AO3 grid means by manipulating complex language accurately.

Typical mistakes

Writing a preposition and a separate pronoun as two words on the English model instead of using the inflected form.
Using et before an indefinite object, or before the subject of a sentence.
Negating a possession sentence with lo instead of ein.
Placing gam before the wrong constituent and changing the meaning without noticing.
Using asher throughout an essay because it looks more formal, when modern written Hebrew overwhelmingly uses she-.

Active revision

כתבו עשרה משפטים על נושא אחד מן התוכנית, ובכל משפט השתמשו במילת יחס אחרת עם כינוי חבור. ודאו שבכל משפט יש גם פסוקית זיקה שמתחילה ב־ש. אחר כך כתבו את אותם עשרה משפטים מחדש כך שבחמישה מהם המשלים מוקדם לתחילת המשפט לשם הדגשה

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: AQA A-level Modern Hebrew (Listening, Reading, Writing) 7672 specification (AQA)

שני התרגומים: two translations, two papers, two different jobs#

AdvancedAQA 7672 - 4.4.3 Translation from the target languageAQA 7672 - 4.6.3 Translation into Modern HebrewAQA 7672 - 4.2 Assessment objectives

The two translations are worth 10 marks each and they are not the same exercise reversed. Paper 1 asks for a passage of at least 100 words from Hebrew into English, with content based on the themes and sub-themes, no dictionary. Paper 3 asks for at least 100 words from English into Hebrew, again on the themes - and for this direction only, 7672 promises something the sister community-language specifications do not: students will be provided with a supporting text in Modern Hebrew giving them some of the vocabulary and structures which they will need for the translation. That promise is specific to this specification. Read the supporting text before you read the English, because it is telling you which words the examiner expects, and using them is not cheating - it is the task working as designed.

Into English, the marker is testing comprehension, not English style, but the English still has to be English. The failure mode is calquing: reproducing Hebrew word order and Hebrew idiom in English words, so that the sentence is technically decodable and reads like nothing anyone would write. A construct chain has to become a possessive or an of-phrase; the participle-as-present has to become the English tense the context requires, which is very often the progressive; a yesh li clause has to become have; an impersonal plural has to become a passive or one or people. Translate the clause, not the word, and then read your English aloud in your head with the Hebrew covered.

Into Hebrew, the marker is testing production, and the errors that cost marks are almost always the same six. Gender and number agreement across the noun phrase and the verb. Definiteness, including the article inside a construct chain. The et before a definite direct object. The correct binyan for the valency the English demands. The inflected preposition instead of a preposition plus a free pronoun. And the tense of the participle, which is not a tense and therefore cannot carry a past or future meaning. Six checks, run in that order, in the last two minutes: it is a mechanical routine and it recovers marks that no amount of vocabulary will.

Both directions reward the same underlying habit, which is deciding what a clause is doing before you decide what its words are. That means reading the whole sentence first, identifying the main verb and its subject, marking the subordinate clauses, and only then working left to right or right to left. It also means being willing to restructure: a good translation of a Hebrew sentence with three coordinated participles may be two English sentences, and a good Hebrew rendering of a long English sentence with a relative clause and a participial phrase may split into a main clause plus a she- clause. Restructuring is not licence to leave something out - every element has to land somewhere - but it is the difference between a translation and a gloss.

Worked example

Hebrew into English, clause by clause, with the decisions shown

Translate into English: בשנים האחרונות השתנתה הדרך שבה משפחות ישראליות מדברות זו עם זו. פעם היו כולם מתאספים סביב שולחן אחד בערב שבת, והיום רבים מהם שולחים הודעות מחדרים שונים באותו בית. יש הטוענים שהטלפון החכם קירב בין קרובים שגרים רחוק, ויש הטוענים שהוא הרחיק את מי שיושב קרוב.

Sentence one: find the verb before you find the words
השתנתה is hitpa'el past third feminine singular of ש-נ-ה, so something changed by itself. Its subject must be feminine singular, and the only candidate is הדרך, which is one of the extraordinary feminine nouns 3.3.3 lists. So: the way has changed. שבה is she- plus the inflected בה, in which - a relative clause, giving in recent years the way in which Israeli families talk to one another has changed. Note that מדברות is the participle, so English needs a present, and note זו עם זו, one with the other, is the reciprocal expression and becomes to one another.
Sentence two: an aspectual construction English has to name
היו מתאספים is the past of היה plus the participle, which expresses a habitual or repeated past - English used to gather, or would gather. This is a construction with no single-word equivalent, and rendering it as gathered loses the habitual sense the whole contrast depends on. In the past everyone used to gather round a single table on Friday evening. Note בערב שבת is Friday evening in Israeli usage; rendering it as on the eve of the Sabbath is not wrong but is a register shift.
Sentence two, second half: a contrast the punctuation marks
והיום, and today, sets the contrast against פעם. רבים מהם, many of them, is a partitive. שולחים הודעות is again the participle and takes the English present. מחדרים שונים באותו בית is from different rooms in the same house - note באותו is be- plus אותו in its adjectival use meaning the same, which is a different word from the accusative אותו, him, and is distinguished only by position.
Sentence three: the impersonal that English cannot copy
יש הטוענים is literally there are those who argue and is the standard Hebrew way of attributing a view to unnamed people. Some argue is the natural English. The repetition, יש הטוענים twice, is the rhetorical shape of the sentence and must survive: some argue that ... others argue that. קירב is pi'el, transitive, brought closer; הרחיק is hif'il, causative, pushed away or drove apart. את מי שיושב קרוב is et plus a headless relative, the person who is sitting close by - note et is present because the headless relative is definite.
Assemble and then read it as English
In recent years the way in which Israeli families talk to one another has changed. In the past everyone used to gather round a single table on Friday evening; today many of them send messages from different rooms in the same house. Some argue that the smartphone has brought distant relatives closer; others argue that it has pushed away the person sitting beside them. Now cover the Hebrew and read: no calque survives, every clause is a clause, and the habitual past and the two contrasting verbs of motion have both landed.

Result: A translation in which four specific decisions did the work: the extraordinary feminine noun that fixed the subject, the haya-plus-participle habitual past, the yesh ha-to'anim impersonal, and the pi'el against hif'il contrast at the end.

Worked example

English into Hebrew, with every grammatical decision justified

Translate into Hebrew: Every year several thousand young Israelis leave the country for a long period, and every year several thousand return. Government offices publish the figures, but they do not agree on how a person who has lived abroad for two years should be counted. The argument about the numbers is really an argument about the word: whoever calls the departure going down has already passed judgement on it.

Sentence one: word order and the object marker
Fronting the time expression is idiomatic and 3.3.20 lists it: בכל שנה, be-chol shana. The verb follows, then the subject - עוזבים את הארץ אלפי צעירים ישראלים. Two decisions there. First, עוזבים is the participle, because the statement is a general present. Second, הארץ is definite, so et is compulsory: עוזבים את הארץ and never עוזבים הארץ. אלפי is the bound plural of אלפים, a construct chain with צעירים. For a long period: לתקופה ארוכה, with the adjective following its noun and agreeing feminine singular.
Sentence one, second half: ellipsis
ובכל שנה חוזרים אלפים. Hebrew is comfortable dropping the repeated noun, so thousands alone carries several thousand young Israelis. The verb is again a participle. The conjunction is the prefixed ו, which is the ordinary and of 3.3.10.
Sentence two: a formal negation and an infinitive of obligation
משרדי הממשלה is a construct chain, offices-of the-government, with the article on the second noun. מפרסמים את הנתונים - participle, and et again because הנתונים is definite. But they do not agree: the formal negation with אין plus a pronoun, אך אין הם מסכימים, is a register step up from אבל הם לא מסכימים and both are correct. How a person should be counted uses the impersonal obligation frame from 3.3.23: כיצד יש לספור אדם - yesh plus the infinitive, with no subject at all.
Sentence two, the relative and the dual
Who has lived abroad for two years is a relative clause: שחי בחוץ לארץ שנתיים. Note שנתיים, the dual of שנה, which is one of the four productive dual environments 3.3.3 lists - time expressions. Writing שתי שנים instead would be understood and would be marked as an error.
Sentence three: the naming point, carried by the grammar
הוויכוח על המספרים הוא למעשה ויכוח על המילה. Note the resumptive הוא, which Hebrew uses to link a definite subject to a definite or indefinite predicate; without it the sentence reads as a noun phrase rather than a clause. Then מי שקורא ליציאה ירידה - whoever calls the departure yerida - where קורא ל is call something by a name, and the name is unmarked. כבר חרץ עליה את דינו, has already passed judgement on it, carries the inflected עליה and the fixed expression חרץ את דינו with the possessive suffix on דין.
Run the six checks
Agreement: אלפי צעירים ישראלים, all masculine plural; תקופה ארוכה, feminine singular. Definiteness: הארץ, הנתונים, הממשלה, המספרים, המילה - each carries its article, and the two construct chains carry theirs on the second noun. Et: three of them, all before definite objects, none before an indefinite one. Binyan: all participles are qal except מפרסמים, which is pi'el, and חרץ, which is qal. Prepositions: על becomes עליה. Tense: every general statement is a participle and the two past events are past.

Result: בכל שנה עוזבים את הארץ אלפי צעירים ישראלים לתקופה ארוכה, ובכל שנה חוזרים אלפים. משרדי הממשלה מפרסמים את הנתונים, אך אין הם מסכימים כיצד יש לספור אדם שחי בחוץ לארץ שנתיים. הוויכוח על המספרים הוא למעשה ויכוח על המילה: מי שקורא ליציאה ירידה כבר חרץ עליה את דינו

Typical mistakes

Translating word by word rather than clause by clause, and producing English that reproduces Hebrew syntax.
Leaving a gap where a word would not come, instead of writing the nearest thing you can construct - an approximate rendering can score, a blank cannot.
Ignoring the supporting Hebrew text on Paper 3 and inventing vocabulary the examiner did not intend.
Rendering the Hebrew participle as an English simple present in every case, when the context often demands a progressive.
Spending disproportionate time on the 10-mark translation and running short on the 40-mark research essay in the same paper.

Active revision

קחו קטע בן מאה מילים בעברית מאתר חדשות, תרגמו אותו לאנגלית, ואז הניחו לו יומיים. לאחר מכן תרגמו את התרגום שלכם בחזרה לעברית בלי להסתכל במקור, והשוו בין שתי הגרסאות העבריות. כל הבדל מצביע על מקום שבו התרגום הראשון איבד מידע או שינה מבנה

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: AQA A-level Modern Hebrew (Listening, Reading, Writing) 7672 specification (AQA)

References & sources

Sources

AQA

AQA A-level Modern Hebrew (Listening, Reading, Writing) 7672 specification

דקדוק ותרגום: the grammar list and the two translations (AQA 7672, section 3.3)

5 sections~41 min reading time4 competenciesLevel Foundation 1 · Standard 2 · Advanced 2

דקדוק ותרגום: the grammar list and the two translations (AQA 7672, section 3.3)

Key points

One skeleton, four words: how a reader chooses

Key points

Building four noun phrases that would earn an AO3 range mark

Key points

Choosing a binyan under exam conditions

Key points

Rebuilding an English sentence with the small words Hebrew actually uses

Key points

Hebrew into English, clause by clause, with the decisions shown

English into Hebrew, with every grammatical decision justified

Sources

דקדוק ותרגום: the grammar list and the two translations (AQA 7672, section 3.3)

Key points

One skeleton, four words: how a reader chooses

Key points

Building four noun phrases that would earn an AO3 range mark

Key points

Choosing a binyan under exam conditions

Key points

Rebuilding an English sentence with the small words Hebrew actually uses

Key points

Hebrew into English, clause by clause, with the decisions shown

English into Hebrew, with every grammatical decision justified

Sources