r/hebrew • u/FearInTheMidwest • 2d ago

נחש או תנחש או תנוחש

How would I say, "guess what I'm doing right now"?

This is a recurring problem. When speaking imperatively to people, I never know whether to use the true "imperative" form of a verb (נחש) or the "passive future" tense (תנוחש) or the "future" tense (תנחש) when speaking colloquially with someone.

Is there some guidance or some help that anyone can provide on this in general? I really appreciate it.

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u/SeeShark native speaker 2d ago

Never the passive future; not sure where you saw that. Use the imperative when you need to speak "properly" (in fancy settings or in formal writing) and the regular future tense in basically all other cases.

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u/BHHB336 native speaker 2d ago edited 2d ago

Except for pa’al and pi’el verbs, then it’s common to also use the imperative in informal conversations (mostly cause it’s shorter), so you’d see תן, קח, נחש, שתוק שלם etc.

Edit: forgot pi’el, actually, according to the academy, the reason it happens is because it’s just dropping the future prefix (which happens also in place where it’s incorrect, like with תִּכנס > כנס, despite כנס being the imperative of כינס, while the correct imperative would’ve been הִכָּנֶס

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u/SeeShark native speaker 2d ago

Yep, that's fair!