how to say “it seems to me” in Hebrew

[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/נדמה-לי-#.m4a” /]נִדְמֶה לִי

Hebrew has several ways of saying I think.

There’s אני חושב[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/נדמה-לי-#.m4a” /] (for a male) and אני חושבת[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/נדמה-לי-#.m4a” /] (for a female). These mean literally I think.

There’s נראה לי[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/נדמה-לי-#.m4a” /] – it appears to me.

And there’s נדמה לי[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/נדמה-לי-#.m4a” /] – very close to נראה לי, but with a dreamy connotation: it seems to me.

נדמה לי sometimes also implies that this seeming is not accurate, as in:

[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/נדמה-לי-#.m4a” /]השמש כבר שוקעת, או שנדמה לי? זאת אשליה?

Has the sun already set, or does it (just) seem (that way) to me? Is it an illusion?

נדמה[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/נדמה-לי-#.m4a” /] comes from the root ד.מ.ה[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/נדמה-לי-#.m4a” /] meaning image, which itself is the root of imagination.