We're going down the alephbet to introduce a couple more letters. These are not the next in line after aleph and bet, but are useful and will enable us to learn more words.

The letter "mem" is pronounced like the English "m". As in lesson 1, combined with the appropriate nikud (vowels) we get

pronounced "mah".

Let's add another vowel sound here. . A single dot under a letter makes the sound of "ee".

- "mee", or, by the same logic,

- "ee" when used with aleph or "bee" when used with bet.

"eemah" is Hebrew for "mother". Remember, Hebrew is written from right to left.

is the Hebrew letter "hey", which sounds like the English "h", except at the end of a word, where it is silent.

So now, father doesn't have to come alone. Mom can come along with him, and remember, they both do so from right to left:

- eemah bah-ah - means "mother is coming", or "mother came".  Please note that the verb has a gender; here it is female, because "mother" is female, which is why it looks different from the same verb relating to father in lesson 1.

So father is coming is masculine.  It looks like this:

Mother is coming is feminine.  It looks like this.

The hey is often used at the end of a word to make it feminine.

Here are some other Hebrew words comprised of the letters we have already seen:

pronounced "mah", meaning "what".

- habah - means "the next".  If it is used to describe something feminine like "the next girl", we add a hey to the end.

 pronounced haba-ah.

Use the keyboard below to write the translation of "Father is coming" in Hebrew, without nikud.

Hebrew Keyboard