The Neighborhood of the Binyanim
בִּנְיָן binyan – a noun from the root ב.נ.ה – a structure; a building
The Hebrew word "binyan" refers to physical buildings, and also to the structures of Hebrew verb conjugations. The plural is binyanim.
You can think of the Hebrew verb patterns as organized into a neighborhood of apartment buildings. All the buildings have the same floor plan but with different theme décor.
In each building, there is a floor for each verb form: perfect, imperfect, narrative, commands, infinitives, and participles. On each floor, there are a number of suites – for roots with three strong letters, for roots that end in ה, for roots that begin with ע, with י, with נ, etc. Each suite is divided into rooms by gender, number, and person.
The binyanim are named after the word that is found in one particular room of the building: the masculine, singular, third-person perfect form. Binyan פָּעַל pa’al is the base, the model from which the other binyanim are “derived.” Each room in the other buildings starts from the base and applies a transformation that is characteristic of the binyan to produce words with related meanings.
There are six major derived binyanim, plus a few shacks on the outskirts of town for variations that don’t quite fit the norm. The six major derived binyanim are nif’al נִפְעַל, hif’il הִפְעִיל, pi’el פִּעֵל, hitpa’el הִתְפַּעֵל, hof’al הָפְעַל, and pu’al פֻּעַל.
Let’s get started!
The Hebrew word "binyan" refers to physical buildings, and also to the structures of Hebrew verb conjugations. The plural is binyanim.
You can think of the Hebrew verb patterns as organized into a neighborhood of apartment buildings. All the buildings have the same floor plan but with different theme décor.
In each building, there is a floor for each verb form: perfect, imperfect, narrative, commands, infinitives, and participles. On each floor, there are a number of suites – for roots with three strong letters, for roots that end in ה, for roots that begin with ע, with י, with נ, etc. Each suite is divided into rooms by gender, number, and person.
The binyanim are named after the word that is found in one particular room of the building: the masculine, singular, third-person perfect form. Binyan פָּעַל pa’al is the base, the model from which the other binyanim are “derived.” Each room in the other buildings starts from the base and applies a transformation that is characteristic of the binyan to produce words with related meanings.
There are six major derived binyanim, plus a few shacks on the outskirts of town for variations that don’t quite fit the norm. The six major derived binyanim are nif’al נִפְעַל, hif’il הִפְעִיל, pi’el פִּעֵל, hitpa’el הִתְפַּעֵל, hof’al הָפְעַל, and pu’al פֻּעַל.
Let’s get started!