Learners are taught early that verbs carry a preposition with them — you learn לחכות ל, not just לחכות. Almost nobody is taught that a large group of adjectives does exactly the same thing. גאה on its own is not a usable word; the word is גאה ב. Your vocabulary list gives you the bare adjective, and that is precisely what sets you up to guess wrong, because the preposition Hebrew picks is very often not the one English picks.
The four groups
| Preposition | Adjectives | English equivalent |
|---|---|---|
| ב־ | מלא · גאה · בטוח · מעוניין · מרוכז | full of, proud of, sure of, interested in, focused on |
| ל־ | דומה · שייך · מודע · קשור · נשוי · חשוב | similar to, belonging to, aware of, related to, married to, important to |
| מ־ | שונה · מרוצה · מאוכזב · עייף | different from, pleased with, disappointed by, tired of |
| על | מצטער · (and אחראי, see below) | sorry about |
Read the English column and the point makes itself. Four of the five ב־ adjectives translate an English of or in; מודע ל and עייף מ both translate an English of; מרוצה מ translates with. There is no mapping to learn. The pair is the lexical item — store גאה ב, דומה ל, שונה מ as three-syllable chunks the way you store a verb with its preposition.
אנחנו ממש גאים בך, זה לא היה קל.
anákhnu mamásh ge'ím bekhá, ze lo hayá kal
We're really proud of you — that wasn't easy. (to a man)
הבן שלה דומה לאבא שלו בכל דבר.
habén shelá domé le'ába sheló bekhól davár
Her son is just like his father in every way.
הטעם שלה שונה משלי לגמרי, וזה בסדר.
hatá'am shelá shoné mishelí legamréi, vezé beséder
Her taste is completely different from mine, and that's fine.
המנהלת לא הייתה מרוצה מהתשובה שקיבלה.
hamenahélet lo haytá merutsá mehatshuvá shekiblá
The manager wasn't happy with the answer she got.
אני מצטער על הבלגן, לא הספקתי לסדר.
aní mitsta'ér al habalagán, lo hispákti lesadér
Sorry about the mess — I didn't get round to tidying up. (m. speaker, informal)
לא הייתי מודעת לזה שהיא עזבה.
lo hayíti mudá'at lazé shehí azvá
I wasn't aware that she'd left. (f. speaker)
מלא takes two constructions
מלא is the one adjective in the ב־ group that also has a prepositionless frame, and both are alive. The bare-noun construction is the biblical one — כַּף אַחַת עֲשָׂרָה זָהָב מְלֵאָה קְטֹרֶת — and it survives intact in modern Hebrew wherever the noun is a concrete substance filling a container. With ב it is broader and covers abstract and figurative filling.
תביא לי כוס מלאה מים, בבקשה.
taví li kos mele'á máyim, bevakashá
Bring me a glass full of water, please. (to a man — bare noun, no preposition)
הכיתה הייתה מלאה בהורים ואי אפשר היה לזוז.
hakitá haytá mele'á behorím ve'í efshár hayá lazúz
The classroom was full of parents and there was no room to move.
אחראי: careful writing versus current usage
This one has a real answer and it is not the one most courses give. In its published answer אַחְרַאי (16 October 2018; retrieved from a Wayback snapshot of 26 November 2025), the Academy of the Hebrew Language sets out the history: in rabbinic Hebrew the word requires ל־ — אֵין אָנוּ אַחֲרָאִין לָרַמָּאִין (Mishnah Demai 3:5), כל נכסיו אחראין לכתובה (Mishnah Ketubot 8:8) — and, in the Academy's words, "this is the phrasing recommended in careful writing".
אחראי על, it goes on, is now "very common" — the Academy suggests speakers built it by analogy with ממונה על and מופקד על, and that European responsible for may have helped. Hebrew Wikipedia bears the shift out: insource:/אחראי על/ returns roughly 9,500 articles against roughly 6,500 for insource:/אחראי ל/ (regex form, 15 August 2026 — four-figure insource counts are floors, so read the ratio, about 1.5 : 1, not the digits).
So the split is register, not meaning — and in particular it is not the rule you may have been taught, that ל is for a task and על for a person. The Academy reports no such thing. What it does report is a different and older boundary, drawn by the broadcasting language adviser Abba Bendavid: אחראי ל meant accountable for, standing surety, while a post you held made you ממונה על. Modern אחראי על is exactly the collapse of that boundary, not a division of labour inside it.
המנהל אחראי לכל מה שקורה במשמרת שלו.
hamenahél akhrái lekhól ma shekoré bamishméret sheló
The manager is responsible for everything that happens on his shift. (careful writing)
מי אחראי על המקרר במשרד?
mi akhrái al hamekarér bamisrád?
Who's in charge of the fridge in the office? (everyday usage — the commoner of the two today)
The preposition must inflect
This is where the whole topic earns its keep. A Hebrew preposition cannot stand in front of a free pronoun. The moment the thing you are proud of, or different from, is you or them, the preposition takes a suffix — and if you leave it bare, the sentence simply falls apart.
| Adjective |
|
|
|---|---|---|
| גאה ב | גאה בבת שלו | גאה בך · גאה בו · גאה בהם |
| דומה ל | דומה לאחותה | דומה לו · דומה לה · דומה להם |
| שונה מ | שונה מהאחרים | שונה ממני · שונה ממך · שונה מהם |
| אחראי על | אחראי על המחסן | אחראי עליהם · אחראי עליי · אחראי עלינו |
Two of those rows are worth staring at. מ־ does not simply take an ending — it doubles itself first, giving ממני, ממך, ממנו. And על inflects on a stem that looks nothing like it, עלי־, so "responsible for them" is עליהם and not anything built on על plus הם. The full paradigms are on inflecting the prepositions.
המפתחות האלה שייכים לשכנה שלנו.
hamaftekhót ha'éle shayakhím lashkhená shelánu
These keys belong to our neighbour. (f. neighbour)
אני עייף מהנסיעות האלה, זה כל יום.
aní ayéf mehanesi'ót ha'éle, ze kol yom
I'm tired of these journeys — it's every single day. (m. speaker)
Common Mistakes
1. Dropping the preposition, because the English verb has none. Resembles his father, belongs to nobody, interests me — English varies, Hebrew does not.
❌ היא דומה אימא שלה
Incorrect — דומה governs ל: היא דומה לאימא שלה.
היא דומה לאימא שלה, במיוחד כשהיא צוחקת.
hi domá le'íma shelá, bimyukhád kshehí tsokhéket
She looks just like her mother, especially when she laughs.
2. Translating the English preposition instead of learning the Hebrew one. Satisfied with is the classic: with is עם, so עם is what comes out. מרוצה governs מ.
❌ אני מרוצה עם השירות
Incorrect — מרוצה governs מ־: אני מרוצה מהשירות.
אנחנו מרוצים מהשירות, נחזור לכאן.
anákhnu merutsím mehasherút, nakhazór lekhán
We're happy with the service — we'll come back.
3. Leaving the preposition uninflected in front of a pronoun. The single most persistent failure in the language, and it shows up here as soon as the comparison is with a person.
❌ הוא שונה מאני בכל דבר
Incorrect — מ־ is a prefix and cannot stand before a free pronoun; it takes a suffix: הוא שונה ממני.
הוא שונה ממני בכל דבר, ובכל זאת אנחנו חברים.
hu shoné miméni bekhól davár, uvekhól zot anákhnu khaverím
He's different from me in every way, and we're still friends.
4. Keeping the ה visible after ל. ל, ב and כ swallow the definite article; מ does not. Learners apply one habit to all four.
❌ הספר הזה שייך להמורה
Incorrect — ל absorbs the article: שייך למורה. (מ does not, which is why שונה מהאחרים keeps its ה.)
הספר הזה שייך למורה, תחזירי לו אותו.
haséfer hazé shayákh lamoré, takhzíri lo otó
This book belongs to the teacher — give it back to him. (to a woman)
Key Takeaways
- Many Hebrew adjectives are lexically incomplete without a preposition. Learn the pair, not the adjective: גאה ב, מלא ב, בטוח ב, מעוניין ב, מרוכז ב; דומה ל, שייך ל, מודע ל, קשור ל, נשוי ל, חשוב ל; שונה מ, מרוצה מ, מאוכזב מ, עייף מ; מצטער על.
- English is no guide: of comes out as ב (גאה ב), as ל (מודע ל) and as מ (עייף מ) in three different pairs.
- מלא has two live frames — a bare noun (כוס מלאה מים) and ב (מלאה בהורים) — plus an unrelated (informal) quantifier מלא meaning "loads of".
- אחראי splits by register, not by meaning: אחראי ל is what the Academy recommends in careful writing, on Mishnaic precedent; אחראי על is the commoner form today, about 1.5 : 1 on Hebrew Wikipedia.
- In אחראי ל / אחראי על the word is akhrái; the character adjective אַחְרָאִי akhra'í is a different word.
- Before a pronoun the preposition must take a suffix: גאה בך, דומה לו, שונה ממני, אחראי עליהם. מ־ doubles first (ממני), and על inflects on the stem עלי־ (עליהם).
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Start learning Hebrew →Related Topics
- Picking the Wrong Governed PrepositionB1 — Almost every one of these errors comes from one of two English structures, and once you can name which one you are in, the error becomes predictable rather than random. Plus the verbs whose preposition sorts their senses, the one verb that switches preposition according to whether its object is a noun or a pronoun, and a textbook pair the evidence does not support.
- Prepositions Take Pronoun EndingsA1 — Hebrew prepositions do not stand in front of a pronoun — they swallow it. 'To me' is לי, 'from me' is ממני, 'on me' is עליי. One suffix set does most of the work, a second set marks a small family you can identify by looking at 'him', and a few prepositions refuse to inflect at all.
- Verbs Governed by ב־: השתמש ב, טיפל ב, נגע בB1 — Learn common Hebrew verbs of contact, engagement, participation, and trust that govern ב־ instead of a direct object.
- Adjectives Used as Nouns: הקטן, החדשיםB2 — Put the article on a Hebrew adjective and leave the noun out, and the adjective becomes the whole noun phrase — הקטן is 'the small one', העשירים is 'the rich'. This is Hebrew's answer to English one-support, and because nothing else is left standing, the adjective's gender is the only clue to what it stands for.
- מאוד, ממש, לגמרי, דיA2 — Hebrew's dial for turning an adjective up or down. מאוד is the neutral default, ממש and כל כך and לגמרי carry the everyday weight, קצת and די take it back down — and נורא, which every dictionary glosses as terrible, is one of the commonest ways to say very.