Hebrew 51 - Lesson 41
By David Fischer
Lesson 41. 2. Exercise # 4 3. First, find main verb. Second, identify subject of sentence and write it. If there is a name
replace it with a pronoun. Have in mind that some of those sentences are dialogues and the
subject at the second person is the person that is addressed at the first sentence. 4. Read the paragraph and answer questions
Today Hebrew is a living language. People in Israel speak Hebrew at home, at the street and
every where. Each baby in Israel hears Hebrew at home, and the new immigrants learn the
language at the Hebrew language schools. But not always it was like this. About 2000 years the
Jews did not speak Hebrew. They knew how to read Hebrew and to pray in Hebrew but did not
know the language of the "every day". They did not teach in Hebrew, they did not speak in
Hebrew, not on the street and not at home and did not write letters in Hebrew. Eliezer Ben
Yehudah came to the land of Israel from Russia in 1880. He said to the Jews:" we have country
and we have a language. We have to live in the country of ours and to speak in our language".
Eliezer Ben Yehudah asked the Jews to speak Hebrew, but they said that the Hebrew is a sacred
tongue and in Hebrew they want only to pray. Many people said that Ben Yehudah is nuts. The
Hebrew is a dead language. There isn't in Hebrew enough words and there isn't a Hebrew of
"every day".
But Eliezer Ben Yehuda spoke always Hebrew, also in the street, also with friends and also at
home with the wife and the kids. He searched teachers for Hebrew all over the country and
found a number of 'nuts'. They taught 'Hebrew in Hebrew' in the schools in the country/land
and spoke in the classes only in Hebrew. Ben Yehuda also wrote a big and important historical
dictionary to Hebrew. There are in his dictionary words from the Hebrew of the Bible an up to
the Hebrew of the Ben Yehuda days. In the dictionary there are many new words of Ben
Yehuda. For example: Ice cream, soldier, dictionary, newspaper. He wrote also a number of
zionist newspapers in Hebrew.
Exercise 6 page 123:
Please mark the right sentence according to the text.