Lesson 22 Biblical Hebrew level B - eTeacher

Today was quite an exciting day. Our regular teacher Scott left for a dig and we have a substitute for the next month. Well, counting today, for the next three weeks.
 He was very prompt and at a few minutes till 8:00a.m. he entered class. Don Peterman, or should I say Rabi Peterman is a great teacher. I will have to make sure I go to his after class hour from now on.
It was a little scary to realize that I was the only student that was going to show up. Kind of like last week but with a teacher I have never met and I have no idea what his expectations were.
Lesson 22 is on the Hufal verb. The Hufal verb is causative and/or passive. And translated something like this "the ball was thrown". The Hufal verb has the qibbuts  the U vowel... unless it has the qamets qatan the O vowel. The qamets qatan is hard to recognize unless you remember that it is in a closed unaccented syllable. So....in the hufal the second root letter has a sheva which closes the syllable and since "most" of the times the accent is not in the first syllable then you can just about bet that you are going to get a qamets qatan every time there is a qamets. Even though the qibbuts is seen in the Hufal verb in Biblical Hebrew is not seen very often.

Translation is getting a bit tricky. Don said that it is about time that our English is not going to be translating what the Hebrew says, smoothly, now. That is something I can really understand.

When the Hufal is in the prefix conjugations of the Yiqtol and Wayyiqton and the Infinitive the H is lost and only the vowel pointing of the qamets qatan and the sheva is left.

Because the Hufal is passive there is no imperative.
The Hufal is the passive form of the active Hifil. So "I think" that the passive form is a way to change the verb.
Now on to homework.