Welcome to an episode of Blackboard Hebrew, a visual guide to ancient and modern Hebrew! This time we're covering
just one little two letter word that can be kind of confusing to beginning Hebrew
students. If you're starting to learn Hebrew, either ancient or modern, you're
bound to come across this little word, "את." Note that this is not "אַתְּ"—that's the
feminine pronoun, "you." And we're not talking about the preposition "את," which
means "with" (just like "עם")... No, the little particle we're talking about, sometimes
spelled with a segol and sometimes with a tsere, doesn't actually translate to
anything in English, but it does have meaning. Now, that sounds confusing—I know—but don't freak out about it! It's actually a
pretty simple concept once you've seen it in action a few times. And here's what
I want you to get most about "את" : "את" is your friend! Now maybe you're watching
this video because you couldn't figure "את" out from your Hebrew textbook, but two minutes from now you are going to love "את," I promise!
So, what is "את" ? "את" has one job: it's a big, flashing grammar sign to point out a
definite direct object in a sentence. That's it! Let me show you what I mean.
Here's a simple sentence: Moshe threw a stone. In this sentence, "threw" is of
course the verb, "Moshe" is the subject (the one doing the action of the verb) and "a
stone" is the direct object (upon which the action of the verb is done). In Hebrew
it looks like this: משה זרק אבן. Now, "אבן" in this case is indefinite. That
is, it's not a specific stone that you've met before, just any old stone, "a"
stone. Of course, if אבן was definite—not just "a" stone but "the" stone—in Hebrew you
add the definite article: Moshe zaraq ha- even. Moshe zaraq haeven. But remember, word order is flexible in Hebrew, so this could mean
that "The stone threw Moshe," which would be kind of weird, but is just as possible
syntactically. In fact, you can put the words in this sentence in just about any
order you want and therefore there's only one surefire way to know which
definite noun is the direct object: It's whichever one comes immediately
after "את". Again, why is the את there? It's there to tell you that the very
next word is a definite direct object. So no matter how we shuffle the sentence
around, this is going to still mean that "Moshe threw the stone" because the את tells us that "the stone" is still the direct object. So really that's the main
idea but let me summarize a few features of את. First of all, את only appears
before definite direct objects—not indefinite ones. Also, את does not appear
before indirect objects like לי "to me." את only appears before the direct object. Next, remember that names are also
definite. So if a name is the direct object like מרים, then even though it
doesn't have the definite article הַ, it still takes את if it's the direct object.
And finally, את always comes directly before it's definite direct object—never
spaced out from it by other words. Okay, let's do one more example, this time with
Biblical Hebrew. You might recognize this sentence: "Bereshit bara Elohim et hashamayim ve'et ha'arets." That's the first sentence in the Bible, Genesis
chapter one, verse one. And here's the verb: ברא "created."
And then following the verb we have three nouns: השמים, אלהים, and
הארץ—God, the skies, and the land. But how do we know which of these nouns did
the creating and which ones got created? Did God and the skies create the land? Did
the skies create God and the land? Did the land create God or the skies or both?
The word order, remember, doesn't tell us for sure. But hallelujah! Our friend
את is on the job! These two "ets" tell us that the skies and the land are
both objects of the verb ברא while Elohim, which is a definite noun but
without an את is the subject. Therefore we know for sure that this is saying
that God is the one who created the skies and the land. Even if we were to
switch around the word order here and put את השמים ואת הארץ at the
beginning, it still means the same thing because the את tells us which is the
direct object. And there you have it! That's all you need to know about את as a
beginning student of modern or biblical Hebrew. Remember, את is your friend! Give
את some love when you're reading Hebrew. Your face should light up every time you
see it! After all, את's only there to help you out! Thanks for watching.
Subscribe to my channel for more lessons like this, and other videos that are not
like this at all! And always remember, Love your Hebrew!
