how to say “we’re out of…” in Hebrew

[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/נגמרו-1.m4a” /]נִגְמְרוּ, אָזְלוּ

It’s late at night and you’ve got a craving for cookies. You go to the local 24-hour store to buy a box of your favorite kind, but you look on the shelf and your cookies are nowhere to be found. Looking you apologetically in the eye, the guy at the checkout counter says:

[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/נגמרו-2.m4a” /]נגמרו לנו העוגיות האלה.

We’re out of those cookies.

The phrase נגמרו לנו[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/נגמרו-3.m4a” /] means literally, they finished for us, where נגמרו[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/נגמרו-4.m4a” /] is the nifal form of the root ג.מ.ר[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/נגמרו-5.m4a” /] meaning finish.

If the guy at the counter wished to speak more formally, he’d say אזלו העוגיות[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/נגמרו-6.m4a” /] – something to the effect of the cookies are gone. אזלו[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/נגמרו-7.m4a” /] is a form of the active-simple verb לאזול[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/לאפות-11.m4a” /].