how to say “correspondence” in Hebrew

[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/התכתבות-1.m4a” /]הִתְכַּתְּבוּת, תִּכְתּוֹבֶת

My first serious exposure to the French language was at Yeshiva University, where I took a class on the poets Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Mallarme and encountered the poem, Correspondances. French at the time was quite elusive to me – one of the only concrete things I learned was that in English we end the word with -dence and not -dance.

Correspondence – an exchange of written communication – gets two words in Hebrew. They’re both based on the reflexive verb להתכתב[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/התכתבות-2.m4a” /] – to write to one another, for example:

[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/התכתבות-3.m4a” /]התכתבנו איתם כל השבוע ובסוף סגרנו איתם עסקה!

We corresponded with them all week and at the end we closed a deal with them!

The act of correspondence follows directly from the verb. It’s התכתבות[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/התכתבות-4.m4a” /], as in:

[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/התכתבות-5.m4a” /]ההתכתבות שלנו נמשכה עשר שנים.

Our correspondence went on for ten years.

And then there’s the product of this act of correspondence, the writings themselves or the chain of letters – the correspondence. This is called תכתובת[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/התכתבות-6.m4a” /].

For example:

[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/התכתבות-7.m4a” /]דן, שלח לי את התכתובת שלכם – אני רוצה להבין את כל הסיפור.

Dan, send me your correspondence – I want to understand the whole story.

The root of all these words is כ.ת.ב[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/התכתבות-8.m4a” /], meaning writing.