how to say “mirror” in Hebrew
[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/מראה-1.m4a” /]מַרְאָה, רְאִי
Non-human and non-animal things in English have no grammatical gender. You wouldn’t say “she’s a nice shirt” or “he’s a big house.”
Most other Western and Middle-Eastern languages do have such gender assignments, and Hebrew is no exception.
For example:
[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/מראה-2.m4a” /]היא חולצה יפה.
It’s a nice shirt.
and
[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/מראה-3.m4a” /]הבית הזה, הוא גדול.
That house, it’s big.
Now, even though a word assigned to an object is masculine or feminine, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the object itself is masculine or feminine. Thus one could point to a single car and call it any one of several words in Hebrew: מכונית[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/מראה-4.m4a” /] (car), רכב[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/מראה-5.m4a” /] (vehicle) or אוטו[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/מראה-6.m4a” /] (car/auto).
For example: איזה רכב יפה[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/מראה-7.m4a” /] and איזו מכונית יפה[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/מראה-8.m4a” /] mean what a nice car!
A mirror experiences the same gender confusion – it has a masculine word ראי[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/מראה-9.m4a” /] and a feminine word מראה[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/מראה-10.m4a” /], both of the root ר.א.ה[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/מראה-11.m4a” /] meaning see.
For example, הסתכלי במראה[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/מראה-12.m4a” /] and הסתכלתי בראי[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/מראה-13.m4a” /] mean exactly the same thing – I looked in the mirror.
