how to say “I would” in Hebrew

[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/הייתי-1.m4a” /]הָיִיתִי

While Hebrew has a lot of different forms for verbs but not so many tenses, English doesn’t really have verb forms but has lots of tenses, such as the progressive, the simple, the conditional, etc, in addition to the regular past, present and future.

So how does someone say “I would…” in Hebrew, if there’s no word for would? They would say הייתי[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/הייתי-1.m4a” /] – literally, I was.

For example:

[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/הייתי-2.m4a” /]הייתי הולכת איתכם, אבל…

I (a female) would go with you guys, but…

הייתי is a past-tense form of the simple verb להיות[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/הייתי-3.m4a” /]. To say we would, they would, you would, etc, take להיות in the past tense and change it up to match the speaker or the one spoken to, or about.

In the following example, הייתי becomes היינו[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/הייתי-4.m4a” /] – literally, we were:

[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/הייתי-5.m4a” /]כשהיינו קטנים, היינו שולחים מכתבים בדואר.

When we were small, we would send letters by mail.