Consonant Mutation - Hebrew

Hebrew

Modern Hebrew shows a limited set of mutation alternations, involving spirantization only. The consonants affected may be stem-initial, stem-medial, or stem-final.

For example, some verbs show mutation between tenses and conjugation classes:

• "he wrote", "he will write"
• "he sank" (transitive), "he sank" (intransitive)

Some nouns show mutation between masculine and feminine, between singular and plural, or after prepositions:

• "a king", "a queen", "kings", (spoken Hebrew, )
• "a bear" (masc.), "a bear" (fem.), "bears" (masc.), "bears" (fem.)
• "a house", "in a house" (in spoken Modern Hebrew:

But some words do not have alternations:

• "he hacked", "he will hack"
• "good", ~ "goods"
• "a kibbutz", "in a kibbutz"

In some limited cases, initial mutation can signal adverbial status in spoken Modern Hebrew:

• "a request", "please" (spoken or written, "בבקשה"), "please" (spoken, informal).