A correlative is a connective in two pieces. The first piece appears early and commits you: once a listener hears גם, or לא רק, or בין, they know a second half is coming and roughly what it will do. That is the whole point of the construction — it buys the hearer a parse before the sentence has finished.
Everything on this page is one grammatical rule applied six times: each half sits immediately in front of the element it pairs. The particles themselves — what גם and רק and אפילו mean on their own, and where they go in an ordinary sentence — are on focus adverbs and placing רק, גם, אפילו and דווקא. This page is only about what happens when they come in pairs.
Placement is the grammar
One sentence, one pair, three positions, three different claims.
| Sentence | What is being paired |
|---|---|
| גם היא וגם אחיה מדברים עברית | the people — she and her brother |
| היא מדברת גם עברית וגם ערבית | the languages |
| היא גם מדברת וגם כותבת עברית | the skills — speaking and writing |
Nothing but the two positions distinguishes those. English can leave both stranded in the middle and let stress sort it out; Hebrew cannot, so a misplaced גם does not sound clumsy — it makes a different statement.
גם אני וגם אשתי עובדים מהבית ביום ראשון.
gam aní vegám ishtí ovdím mehabáyit beyóm rishón
My wife and I both work from home on Sundays. (m. speaker)
היא מדברת גם עברית וגם ערבית, וזה פותח לה דלתות.
hi medabéret gam ivrít vegám aravít, vezé potéakh la dlatót
She speaks both Hebrew and Arabic, and it opens doors for her.
הוא גם בישל וגם שטף כלים, אז אני לא מתלוננת.
hu gam bishél vegám shatáf kelím, az aní lo mitlonénet
He cooked and he did the washing-up, so I'm not complaining. (f. speaker)
A גם… וגם subject takes a plural verb, whatever the two halves are on their own: גם אני וגם אשתי עובדים, גם דני וגם רותי הגיעו. Two singulars joined this way make a plural, exactly as a ו-coordination does.
The ו on the second גם is a habit, not a law
Modern Hebrew writes גם X וגם Y, with the ו on the second member only, and the focus adverbs page measures 3,982 Hebrew Wikipedia articles for that frame. Learn it in that shape.
But do not learn it as a rule you can break, because the classical pattern has no ו at all. Genesis 24:25 reads גַּם־תֶּבֶן גַּם־מִסְפּוֹא רַב עִמָּנוּ — "we have plenty of both straw and feed" — with the two גם's simply juxtaposed. The connective-less version is where the construction comes from, no source consulted for this guide prescribes the ו, and a learner who leaves it out has produced something older rather than something wrong. Write גם… וגם; do not correct anyone who does not.
או… או, and its clause-sized twin
או… או is either … or. With single elements the two halves stand bare; with whole clauses each half takes ש־, giving או ש… או ש…, which is the form Milog illustrates the construction with (או שאתה איתי או שאתה נגדי). The single או, and the or else sense that או ש־ also carries, are on או.
או היום או מחר, תחליט כבר.
o hayóm o makhár, takhlít kvar
Either today or tomorrow — just decide. (to a man)
או שאתה נוסע עכשיו או שאתה מפספס את הטיסה.
o she'atá noséa akhsháv o she'atá mefaspés et hatisá
Either you leave now or you miss the flight. (to a man)
לא רק… אלא גם
Not only … but also, and the middle word is אלא, never אבל — this is the corrective אלא doing its ordinary job, since לא רק has negated something and אלא is what swaps the fuller version in. The corpus evidence for that (536 articles with אלא in the frame, none with אבל) is on focus adverbs; the word itself is on אבל and אלא.
היא לא רק תרגמה את החוזה אלא גם מצאה בו שתי טעויות.
hi lo rak tirgemá et hakhozé éla gam mats'á bo shtei ta'uyót
She didn't just translate the contract, she found two mistakes in it.
לא… ולא: neither, nor
The negative pair. Both halves carry לא, and the verb — if there is one — is negated as well, because Hebrew uses negative concord rather than cancelling one negative against another. The general mechanism is on negative concord.
לא ענה ולא התנצל, פשוט נעלם.
lo aná veló hitnatsél, pashút ne'elám
He didn't answer and he didn't apologise — he just vanished.
The frozen לא זה ולא זה — "neither one" — turns up in 15 Hebrew Wikipedia articles (insource:/…/, 16 August 2026) and constantly in speech.
The whether-correlative: two forms, and a measuring trap
For whether … or … — the frame that concedes both branches — Hebrew has two shapes, and the one dictionaries lexicalise is not the one most writers reach for.
בֵּין שֶׁ… וּבֵין שֶׁ… is the older and more literary form. Milog carries בֵּין כַּךְ וּבֵין כַּךְ, "either way", as a headword in the בין entry, and the Hebrew text of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as it stands on Hebrew Wikisource, uses the full frame four times in one sentence: בין שהארץ היא עצמאית, ובין שהיא נתונה לנאמנות, בין שהיא נטולת שלטון עצמי ובין שריבונותה מוגבלת. Note that the third member there carries no ו — the connective is not obligatory on every half.
בין אם… ובין אם… is what modern writing overwhelmingly uses. Hebrew Wikipedia returns 1,461 articles for ובין אם against 43 for ובין שלא (insource:/…/, 16 August 2026). Neither form is an error; they differ in register, with בין ש־ sitting where a contract or a translation of a treaty sits.
insource:/בין שהוא/, returns a healthy 463–485 and is useless, because הבין and מבין "understood, understands" end in the same three letters. Put the spaces inside the pattern — insource:/ בין שהוא / — and it collapses to 13 — some 97% of the naive figure was a form of הבין, "realised that he…". The next probe you would reach for, ובין ש, is the same trap wearing a different hat: its hits are ובין followed by an ordinary ש-noun (ובין שאר, ובין שתי, ובין שנת), not the correlative.התקנון חל על כל אדם, בין שהוא עובד קבוע ובין שהוא עובד זמני.
hatakanón khal al kol adám, bein shehú ovéd kavúa uvéin shehú ovéd zmaní
The regulations apply to everybody, whether a permanent employee or a temporary one. (formal written)
בין אם תסכים ובין אם לא, ההחלטה כבר התקבלה.
bein im taskím uvéin im lo, hahakhlatá kvar hitkablá
Whether you agree or not, the decision has already been made. (to a man)
מצד אחד… מצד שני
The one correlative that is not a conjunction at all — two prepositional phrases doing the job of on the one hand … on the other. Milog lists both halves as headwords: מִצַּד אֶחָד glossed from one point of view, on the one hand, and מִצַּד שֵׁנִי glossed מנקודת מבט אחרת, מאידך.
There is a small register split inside it. Milog's own illustrations under מצד אחד pair it with מצד אחר, while the corpus prefers מצד שני by a wide margin: 4,688 articles against 235, and for the adjacent frame, 26 for מצד אחד ומצד שני against 0 for מצד אחד ומצד אחר. The dictionary's example sentences are written in a more careful register than the encyclopedia is. Both are correct; מצד שני is what you will hear. Its wider family — לעומת זאת, יחד עם זאת — is on contrast markers.
מצד אחד המשכורת טובה, מצד שני אני לא רואה את הילדים.
mitsád ekhád hamaskóret tová, mitsád shení aní lo ro'é et hayeladím
On the one hand the pay is good; on the other, I never see the kids. (m. speaker)
Common Mistakes
1. Putting the first half in the English position. English tolerates she both speaks Hebrew and Arabic; Hebrew reads the particle strictly, so the same shift changes what is paired.
❌ גם היא מדברת עברית וגם ערבית
Incorrect as 'she speaks both Hebrew and Arabic' — the first גם is sitting in front of היא, so it pairs her with somebody else, and the second one is left pairing a language with a person. Put each half in front of what it pairs: היא מדברת גם עברית וגם ערבית.
היא מדברת גם עברית וגם ערבית, אבל קוראת רק בעברית.
hi medabéret gam ivrít vegám aravít, avál korét rak be'ivrít
She speaks both Hebrew and Arabic, but she only reads Hebrew.
2. A singular verb after a גם… וגם subject. Two singular names look like two singulars, and the verb ends up agreeing with whichever one it is nearest.
❌ גם דני וגם רותי הגיע באיחור
Incorrect — a גם… וגם subject is plural, like any coordinated subject: גם דני וגם רותי הגיעו באיחור.
גם דני וגם רותי הגיעו באיחור, אז בכלל לא התחלנו בזמן.
gam dáni vegám rúti higí'u be'ikhúr, az bikhlál lo hitkhálnu bazmán
Dani and Ruti both turned up late, so we never started on time anyway.
3. Treating בין אם as a single word. Every wordlist glosses it whether, which makes it look like something you can drop into an English sentence shape. It is not a word; it is the first half of a frame, and the second half is not optional.
❌ בין אם תסכים, ההחלטה כבר התקבלה
Incorrect — בין אם is half a construction and cannot stand alone; it needs its ובין אם. Either complete it — בין אם תסכים ובין אם לא — or use אם: גם אם תסכים, ההחלטה כבר התקבלה.
4. Closing לא רק with אבל. The one place where English's but is never Hebrew's אבל.
❌ לא רק שהוא מאחר אבל גם לא מתנצל
Incorrect — the frame is לא רק … אלא גם: לא רק שהוא מאחר, אלא גם לא מתנצל. אלא is required because לא רק has negated something, and אלא is the conjunction that replaces what was negated — which is exactly the job אבל cannot do.
Key Takeaways
- A correlative's grammar is placement: each half sits immediately in front of what it pairs. Three positions for גם in one sentence give three different claims.
- A גם… וגם subject takes a plural verb — גם דני וגם רותי הגיעו.
- The ו on the second גם is modern habit, not law. Genesis 24:25 has גם תבן גם מספוא with no connective at all, and no source prescribes one. Write it; do not police it.
- או… או for single elements, או ש… או ש… for whole clauses.
- לא רק… אלא גם takes אלא, because לא רק has negated something and אלא is the corrective word.
- לא… ולא is negative concord: both halves negative, and the verb negative too.
- For whether … or, Hebrew has בין ש… ובין ש… (lexicalised — Milog's בין כך ובין כך; the Hebrew UDHR) and בין אם… ובין אם… (what modern writing uses, 1,461 : 43). Neither is wrong.
- Do not measure בין ש with a naive search: הבין and מבין end in the same letters and swamp the count — 463 unspaced against 13 with the spaces put inside the pattern.
- מצד אחד… מצד שני is the discourse pair. Milog's own examples use מצד אחר; the corpus prefers מצד שני at 4,688 : 235.
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Start learning Hebrew →Related Topics
- אבל and אלא: Two Kinds of 'But'A2 — English has one but and Hebrew has two, and the split is not a matter of style: אבל adds a contrasting clause, אלא swaps a correct item in for one you have just rejected. English speakers do not notice the second slot exists, which is why the calque with אבל is the most reliable tell there is.
- או: OrA2 — או is Hebrew's or, and the first thing to know about it is what it is not: unlike ו it is a free-standing word with a space. The construction worth the price of the page is או ש־, which is how Hebrew joins two whole clauses and which most courses never mention.
- רק, גם, אפילו, דווקא: Focus AdverbsA2 — Four small words that colour whatever stands next to them — and because they colour the neighbour rather than the sentence, moving one changes what you have claimed. English can leave only in the middle and let intonation sort it out; Hebrew cannot.
- גם or אפילו?A2 — גם adds an item to a list; אפילו adds one and tells you it is the last item you would have expected. Both are grammatical wherever the other is, so nothing warns you — and the two directions of the mistake have opposite costs: גם for אפילו loses your point, while אפילו for גם insults the person you are talking to.
- Negative Concord: אף אחד לא, שום דבר לאA2 — אף אחד לא בא is not a double negative — the Academy's position is that neither כלום nor שום דבר carries any negation of its own, so nothing is being doubled. Hebrew marks one negation on more than one word, which is why the לא is compulsory and dropping it leaves a string with no reading at all.
- לעומת זאת, מצד שני, יחד עם זאתB2 — English says on the other hand for three different logical relations; Hebrew keeps them apart. לעומת זאת compares, מצד שני weighs (and needs its partner מצד אחד), יחד עם זאת concedes — and Milog's gloss for that last one is simply wrong, which this page shows from the construction rather than asserting.