Читать книгу Hebrew For Dummies - Jill Suzanne Jacobs - Страница 35

When you make a question, you don’t change the order of the words, as in English. You can ask a question in a few ways. The first way is by simply taking a statement and putting a question mark in your voice (by raising your voice at the end of the sentence). Thus, when asked with the proper intonation, this statement can be a question: ? יֵשׁ חָלָב בַּמְּקָרֵר (yesh haḥ-lahv bah-mahk-rehr?; There’s milk in the refrigerator?).

Another way to turn this statement into a question is to add the word נָכוֹן (nah-chohn; correct) to the end of the statement. In grammarspeak, this word is called a tag. For example:

 ? יֵשׁ חָלָב בַּמְּקָרֵר נָכוֹן (yehsh chah-lahv bah-mahk-rehr, nah-chohn?; There’s milk in the refrigerator, correct?)

Yet another way to turn a statement into a question is to add the question word, הַאֵים (hah-eem), in front of the sentence — for example ? הַאֵים יֵשׁ חָלָב בַּמְּקָרֵר (hah-eem yehsh chah-lahv bah-mahk-rehr; Is there milk in the refrigerator?). This last option is the most formal option, so you won’t hear it often.

Although Hebrew differs from English in that you don’t need to flip the order in a statement to turn it into a question, the word-order flexibility of Hebrew allows the speaker to stress a particular part of the sentence by putting it at the beginning.

If someone just said there are no strawberries in the fridge, for example, you might ask ? יֵשׁ בָּנָנוֹת(yesh bah-nah-noht; literally: Bananas?; But are there bananas?). Or you might ask ? אֵין בָּנָנו(ehn bah-nah-noht?; literally: Bananas there aren’t?; Aren’t there bananas?).