Recent events in Hebrew: 23-28 May 2021

This article has been contributed by Lior, the founder of the Hebrew360 learning programme. Lior has been teaching Hebrew for more than 5 years, and he runs individual and group classes for all levels from beginner to advanced — regardless of your level, you will find a speaking group that matches your level. Feel free to contact Lior on WhatsApp or the program's Facebook page.

Note that the events mentioned below happened more than a week ago already, and a lot of important developments have happened since this was originally published. We also understand that two of the three topics covered in this article are highly sensitive, and we are trying to focus on the vocabulary rather than on the substance of the events. We hope that the Hebrew sentence examples you will find in this article will help you in your studies.

Hi, and welcome to another class of the most common vocabulary of this current week! Today we are going to cover some words and phrases that are relevant for the week of May 23-28th: the cable card tragedy, the arrest in Belarus and the lottery winning.

Let us start with the cable card tragedy. The first word we have is אָסוֹן ason ("tragedy" or "disaster"), as in:

Another relevant word is תְּאוּנָה te'una "accident" — תְּאוּנָה קָשָׁה te'una kasha "a severe accident":

Note that the word רכבל "cable car" is originally vowelled רַכֶּבֶל rakevel, but is usually pronounced rachbal.

נֶהֶרְגוּ nehergu means "were killed":

נֶעֶצְרוּ ne'etzru means "were arrested", and כולל kolel means "including":

חֲקִירָה chakira means "investigation" and חָשׁוּד chashud means "suspect":

Note that in the last sentence, the subject is omitted: it literally translates to "(they) started a serious investigation against the suspects". Now, תַּקָּלָה takala means "malfunction":

Read the entire passage again to practice:

Now, we have the Belarus diverted flight arrest and the events that followed it:

חברת תעופה chevrat te'ufa (in plural, חברות תעופה chevrot te'ufa) is an airline, or an airline company, and איחוד אירופי ichud eiropi, is European Union (most commonly, האיחוד האירופי ha-ichud ha-eiropi, "the European Union".

סנקציות sanktziyot means "sanctions", as in:

מתנגד המשטר mitnaged ha-mishtar means "the regime's opponent". מִשְׁטָר mishtar can mean "government", but has a more negative connotation, i. e. something like a tyrannical government, or a regime:

חֲטִיפָה chatifa can mean "kidnapping" or "hijacking".

(literally, "there are (those) who call it kidnapping"). And to sum up:

Next, there was the lottery winning this week. A lottery draw is הגרלת הלוטו hagralat ha-loto, and "a sole winner" is זוכה יחיד zoche yachid:

Note that the verb זָכָה zacha "won" goes before the subject זוכה zoche "winner". This verb is used with the preposition בְּ־ be-: "won the prize" is זכה בפרס zacha ba-pras:

Read this again:

That's it for now!

If you're interested, you can see the video of this text (and check Lior's channel for more videos like this):