Hanging a clause on a noun is where English gets fussy. It picks between who, which and that depending on whether the noun is a person, and in the book I read it uses nothing at all. Hebrew makes none of those choices: one prefix, ש־, does the whole job, and it never changes for gender, number or animacy.
One prefix, and it never inflects
ש־ is written solid with the first word of the clause — שגר, שקניתי, שקנינו — and everything after it is an ordinary Hebrew sentence with exactly one noun missing. The missing noun is the head, standing in front of the clause.
השכן שגר מעלינו מזיז רהיטים כל לילה.
hashakhén shegár me'aléinu mezíz rahitím kol láyla
The neighbour who lives above us moves furniture around every night.
הספר שקניתי בשדה התעופה היה תרגום נורא.
haséfer shekaníti bisdé hate'ufá hayá targúm norá
The book I bought at the airport was a terrible translation.
יש לי חבר שעובד במשטרה, אולי הוא יוכל לעזור.
yesh li khavér she'ovéd bamishtará, ulái hu yukhál la'azór
I've got a friend who works for the police — maybe he'll be able to help.
Notice what did not have to be decided. The head is a person in the first, a thing in the second, indefinite in the third; the clause relativises a subject in one and an object in another — and ש־ is identical in all of them.
Hebrew has no bare relative clause
English can drop that: the film we saw, the book I bought. This is the single most reliable place an English speaker's Hebrew breaks, because nothing in the English sentence prompts you to supply a word that was never there.
❌ אני עדיין חושב על הסרט ראינו בשבת
Incorrect — Hebrew has no bare relative clause. Without ש the two verbs simply collide: אני עדיין חושב על הסרט שראינו בשבת.
✅ אני עדיין חושב על הסרט שראינו בשבת, הסוף פשוט לא מסתדר.
aní adáyin khoshév al haséret shera'ínu beshabát, hasóf pashút lo mistadér
I'm still thinking about the film we saw on Saturday — the ending just doesn't add up. (m. speaker)
The hole in the clause stays empty
Once the shared noun has been pulled out to the front, nothing fills the space it left. A relativised subject takes a gap and nothing else — שגר, not *שהוא גר. This is not a stylistic preference; a subject pronoun straight after ש is starred outright in the syntactic literature on Hebrew relatives (Shlonsky).
A relativised direct object is the one place where Hebrew lets you put a pronoun back in. Both of these are good Hebrew:
זה הבחור שפגשנו אתמול בתחנה המרכזית.
ze habakhúr shepagáshnu etmól batakhaná hamerkazít
That's the guy we met yesterday at the central bus station. (plain gap — the everyday form)
זאת השמלה שקניתי אותה בלונדון ואף פעם לא לבשתי.
zot hasimlá shekaníti otá belóndon ve'áf pá'am lo laváshti
That's the dress I bought in London and never once wore. (with אותה — same meaning, and common in speech)
The Academy's published usage article on phrasing (Shoshana Bahat, על ענייני ניסוח או ניסוח ענייני) is explicit about which to prefer: from ראיתי את האיש you do not build האיש שראיתי אותו, but simply האיש שראיתי — without אותו. When in doubt, leave it out; it is shorter and it is the recommended form.
Building one out of two sentences
This construction is assembled rather than recognised, so do it in four moves.
- Write the two sentences separately, with the shared noun in both.
- Decide which one is the main sentence. The other becomes the relative clause.
- Delete the shared noun from the relative clause — and delete its את with it, if it had one. את marks a definite direct object; once the object is gone, so is its marker.
- Attach ש־ to what is left, and slot the whole thing in behind the head noun. Then check the agreement chain: every verb and adjective inside the clause agrees with the head, not with anything nearer.
Take קניתי אתמול מחשב and המחשב כבר מתחמם. The shared noun is המחשב; the second sentence keeps it as its subject, the first gives it up along with its את:
המחשב שקניתי אתמול כבר מתחמם ומשמיע רעשים.
hamakhshév shekaníti etmól kvar mitkhamém umashmía re'ashím
The computer I bought yesterday is already overheating and making noises.
Five to build yourself
Join each pair into one sentence, then read your answer back and check that every verb inside the clause agrees with the head noun.
| First sentence | Second sentence | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | ראיתי סרט בשבוע שעבר | הסרט היה ארוך מדי |
| 2 | הכלב נובח כל הבוקר | הכלב שייך לשכנים מלמטה |
| 3 | פגשתי את האישה בכנס | האישה עובדת עכשיו בקומה שלי |
| 4 | הילדים משחקים בחצר | הילדים לא של השכנים |
| 5 | שכחתי את המפתחות במשרד | המפתחות של הבית |
הסרט שראיתי בשבוע שעבר היה ארוך מדי, נרדמתי באמצע.
haséret shera'íti bashavúa she'avár hayá arókh midái, nirdámti ba'emtsá
The film I saw last week was too long — I fell asleep halfway through. (the object noun goes, and its את goes with it)
הכלב שנובח כל הבוקר שייך לשכנים מלמטה.
hakélev shenovéakh kol habóker shayákh lashkhením milmáta
The dog that's been barking all morning belongs to the neighbours downstairs. (subject relative — nothing fills the gap)
האישה שפגשתי בכנס עובדת עכשיו בקומה שלי.
ha'ishá shepagáshti bakénes ovédet akhsháv bakomá shelí
The woman I met at the conference now works on my floor. (עובדת is feminine because האישה is)
הילדים שמשחקים בחצר הם לא של השכנים.
hayeladím shemesakhakím bekhatsér hem lo shel hashkhením
The kids playing in the yard aren't the neighbours'.
המפתחות ששכחתי במשרד הם של הבית, לא של האוטו.
hamaftekhót sheshakhákhti bamisrád hem shel habáyit, lo shel ha'óto
The keys I left at the office are the house keys, not the car ones.
אשר, the other relative marker
Hebrew has a second relative word, אשר, and it is a full alternative rather than a lesser one: Academy decision 4.5א names both — ש or אשר — as the relative marker a relative clause properly opens with, and says nothing further about choosing between them. What separates them in practice is register. אשר is a written-language word — legal drafting, formal reports, elevated prose — and in ordinary speech it sounds stiff. Bahat notes the opposite temptation too: writers reach for אשר over ש precisely to make a sentence sound weightier, which is a reason to be suspicious of your own impulse to use it.
המסמך אשר הוגש לשר כולל שתים עשרה המלצות.
hamismákh ashér hugásh lasár kolél shteim esré hamlatsót
The document submitted to the minister contains twelve recommendations. (formal — in speech this would be שהוגש)
Its own page is אשר as a relative marker.
Where this page stops
Everything above covers exactly two roles for the head noun: subject and direct object. Those are the two that can leave an empty gap. For every other role — after a preposition (the man I spoke to), or as a possessor (the woman whose son plays drums) — Hebrew leaves a pronoun behind inside the clause, and there is no way to build the sentence without one. That is a rule in its own right and it lives on resumptive pronouns.
Three other pages take the remaining corners: commas and non-restrictive relatives, the compressed participial relative of the type האיש היושב שם, and headless clauses like מי ש and מה ש on free relatives.
Common Mistakes
1. Using מי for "who". מי is the question word. It is not a relative pronoun, and Hebrew does not need one.
❌ הבחורה מי גרה למעלה עובדת בבית חולים
Incorrect — Hebrew relativises with the prefix ש־, never with the question word: הבחורה שגרה למעלה.
✅ הבחורה שגרה למעלה עובדת בבית חולים ויוצאת בשש בבוקר.
habakhurá shegára lemála ovédet bevéit kholím veyotsét beshésh babóker
The girl who lives upstairs works at a hospital and leaves at six in the morning.
2. Leaving את behind. Step 3 of the assembly deletes the object noun; its marker has to go with it, because there is no longer a definite object for it to mark.
❌ החולצה שקניתי את אתמול לא מתאימה
Incorrect — את marks a definite direct object, and that object has been relativised away: החולצה שקניתי אתמול.
✅ החולצה שקניתי אתמול קטנה עליי בשתי מידות.
hakhultsá shekaníti etmól ktaná alái bishtéi midót
The shirt I bought yesterday is two sizes too small on me.
3. Losing the agreement chain. The verb inside the relative clause agrees with the head noun, which by then is several words away — so it quietly defaults to masculine singular.
❌ החברה שלי שגר בתל אביב באה לבקר
Incorrect — the head is החברה, feminine, so the verb inside the clause is feminine too: החברה שלי שגרה בתל אביב.
✅ החברה שלי שגרה בתל אביב באה לבקר בסוף השבוע.
hakhaverá shelí shegára betél avív ba'á levakér besóf hashavúa
My friend who lives in Tel Aviv is coming to visit at the weekend. (f. friend)
4. Expecting the relative clause to make the head definite. It does not. English the film everyone's talking about has its the on the noun, and so must Hebrew — otherwise את has nothing to attach to.
❌ ראיתי את סרט שכולם אוהבים
Incorrect — a relative clause does not definite-ise its head; את needs a ה on the noun itself: ראיתי את הסרט שכולם אוהבים.
✅ ראיתי את הסרט שכולם אוהבים ובאמת לא הבנתי מה מיוחד בו.
ra'íti et haséret shekulám ohavím uve'emét lo hevánti ma meyukhád bo
I saw the film everyone loves and I genuinely didn't get what's special about it.
Key Takeaways
- One prefix covers everything: ש־ is who, which, that and the zero relative all at once, and it never inflects — השכן שגר מעלינו, הספר שקניתי, יש לי חבר שעובד במשטרה.
- ש is never dropped. English the film we saw has no Hebrew counterpart without it: הסרט שראינו.
- A subject relativised straight after ש takes a gap and nothing else — הכלב שנובח, not *הכלב שהוא נובח.
- A relativised definite direct object may take אותו/אותה, but does not need it, and the Academy's usage article recommends the plain form: האיש שראיתי, not האיש שראיתי אותו.
- Delete the noun, delete its את: from שכחתי את המפתחות you get המפתחות ששכחתי, with no את left inside.
- אשר is the other relative marker the Academy names alongside ש, and what separates the two is register, not grammar: המסמך אשר הוגש לשר.
- Subject and object are the only roles that leave an empty gap. Every other role keeps a pronoun in place — האיש שדיברתי איתו — which is the next page.
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Start learning Hebrew →Related Topics
- ש־: The All-Purpose RelativeA2 — The attached prefix ש־ covers English who, whom, which, that, where and when. It never agrees, never stands apart from the following word and never disappears, although the role of the missing noun determines whether Hebrew must leave a resumptive pronoun inside the clause.
- ש־: The Universal SubordinatorA2 — One attached letter does the work English splits across that, which, who and when: אמרתי שאני בא, החבר שהמליץ לי, ביום שהגענו. It is a prefix rather than a word, it is never optional, and it is the building block of אחרי ש־, לפני ש־, כדי ש־, למרות ש־ and the rest of the connective family — most of which have a bare twin that takes a noun instead of a clause.
- אשר: The Formal RelativeC1 — אשר is the free-standing relative marker familiar from legal language, ceremonial prose, the Tanakh and elevated journalism. It normally changes register rather than meaning, while compounds such as כאשר, באשר ל־, אשר על כן and מאשר have developed lives of their own.
- Resumptive Pronouns: The Rule Nobody TeachesB1 — When the head noun of a relative clause is anything other than a subject or a bare direct object, Hebrew leaves a pronoun behind inside the clause — הבחור שיצאתי איתו, השכנה שהבן שלה מנגן בתופים. This page sorts the positions into obligatory, optional and forbidden, and settles the three competing ways to say the house I lived in.