modern hebrew on memrise

1. Verb Simularities
In this lesson, we are going to discover a few verbs that
have similar meanings in English but are used in different
situations in Hebrew. It will be a somewhat short lesson.

2. Differences between מדבר/אומר
The two verbs that convey communication in Hebrew are
מדבר and אומר . These words have basically the same
meaning, but there are subtle differences.
The verb מדבר means “talk” or “speak”. מדבר may be
followed by a preposition such as עם (with) or על (on/about).
דוד מדבר עם שרה David speaks with Sarah.
הם מדברים על עוף They are talking about Chicken.
היא מדברת אל דוד She speaks to David.
The verb אומר means “say”. Only אומר can be used for
introducing a quoted phrase:
דוד אומר "אני הולך לגן החיות". David says “I go to the zoo”.

3. Differences between מדבר/אומר
We have discussed the infinitive form of מדבר already since
it is a פיעל verb. The infinitive is regular hashlamim and is
written like this: לדבר (ledaber).
However, the infinitive of אומר is irregular and it is one of the
few verbs that don’t follow the gizra it belongs to. (In this
case, it would fall into the 1st א gizra).
The infinitive of אומר is לומר (lomar). It follows more closely
to a pi’el verb than the pa’al verb that it is, but the vowel
changes are not consistent with pi’el 3rd א verbs either, which
we will cover later. Memorize this infinitive form because it is
used very often.

4. Differences between מכיר/יודע
Another couple words that have a similar meaning are יודע
(know) and מכיר (know). As you can see, they both mean
“know” in English, but have very different uses in Hebrew.
The word יודע (yode’a) is used when you are using either a
question word or a name of a language.
אני יודע אנגלית I know english.
אני יודע מה ללבוש I know what to wear.
The word מכיר (makir) is used with people, places, and
things.
אני מכיר את דוד I know David.
אתה מכיר את הכלב הזה? You know this dog?