HEY YOU!

The following is perhaps a bit dweeby. Stay with me.



I used to find the concept of different types of "you"s in Hebrew to be extremely confusing. As you're probably well aware (unless you're a foreigner who happened to stumble across my site yet doesn't read English, in which case:

asdghj;alkdsha;wkengoiawe asdg asdkgakdg adsgaowigoawing

....That was an example of English for you to enjoy, dear foreigner), anyway, like I said, as you're probably well aware, English has only one word for "you," in most dialects. The exception, of course, being the Southern "y'all." But for most folks, you can be speaking to a girl, a guy, or a whole stadium full of people and just use "you."

Hebrew, on the other hand, requires the use of three different words that you can call "you man," "you woman," or "you folks." Eventually I got the hang of things, but when I was starting out in Hebrew and during my early days in Israel, I used to just use whatever form of the Hebrew "you" that first came to mind, simply because when I was trying to communicate quickly it did not occur to my English-speaking mind that my first thought of "you" was the wrong one.

So finally I'm getting the hang of things in Hebrew, but now I'm upset with English cos now I want more info from English "you"s. When you say "you" to me, are you talking about me and someone else or just me? Are you addressing me or the member of the opposite gender next to me? GAAAAAAA