Modern Hebrew: An Essential Grammar

4 A peculiar adjustment, more commonly found in formal than incolloquial Hebrew, involves PI’EL past and PU’AL: when there is amiddle or , any preceding -i- is lowered to -e- and any preceding -u- is lowered to -o-. Thus:Roots with‘gutturals’ described , , divorced , , was, is, will be described was, is, will be divorcedd When the final letter is a ‘guttural’Examples of verbs affected: raise yell open take a shower defeat know sound surprise1 Whenever a verb, or any other word, ends in or (or root , whichis a rarity by comparison with suffixed ), the last vowel must be -a.This is an invariable rule of Hebrew. To achieve this, verb patternswhose last vowel would ordinarily be, say, -e- or -i- add a helping -a-.This happens in nearly all binyanim and tenses.Examples from selected binyanim and tenses:PA’ALPresent , Infinitive , PI’ELInfinitive , Future , HIF’ILPast , Present , NIF’ALFuture , Infinitive , 1-SYLLABLEFuture , Infinitive , 89