Money talk is a small, closed vocabulary attached to two prepositions that English gives you no warning about. Learn the words in an afternoon; the prepositions take longer, because pay for and pay by are one word in English and two different letters in Hebrew, and owe someone has an object in English and a ל־ in Hebrew.
Asking what it costs
Two frames do almost all the work, and they are both current. כמה זה עולה? is built on עלה, "to cost", and its verb agrees with the thing being priced. כמה זה יוצא? is built on יצא, "to come out", and it asks about a total rather than a unit price. Nothing consulted for this page shows one of them to be more formal, more written or more Israeli than the other, so treat them as two frames with slightly different jobs rather than as a textbook form and a real one.
כמה זה עולה? ואם אני לוקח שניים?
káma ze olé? ve'ím aní lokéakh shnáyim?
How much is this? And if I take two? (m. speaker)
כמה זה יוצא ביחד, עם המשלוח?
káma ze yotsé beyákhad, im hamishlóakh?
What does it come to altogether, with delivery?
כמה אני חייב לך על הכרטיסים?
káma aní khayáv lekhá al hakartisím?
How much do I owe you for the tickets? (to a man)
The third frame is the one with the trap in it. חייב is an adjective — obliged — and it agrees with the debtor: חייב, חייבת, חייבים. The creditor hangs off it on ל־, and the thing you owe for on על. There is no slot for את anywhere in the sentence. The verbless price question בכמה …? is handled at ordering at a café.
Shekels, agorot and ש״ח
The currency is the שקל, masculine, plural שקלים; a hundredth of one is an אגורה, feminine, plural אגורות. In writing you will mostly meet the abbreviation ש״ח, which stands for שקל חדש, "new shekel".
נשארו לי שתי אגורות בארנק, זה הכול.
nish'arú li shtei agorót ba'arnák, ze hakól
I've got two agorot left in my wallet, and that's the lot.
בשלט כתוב ארבעים וחמישה שקלים לקילו, אבל בקופה זה יצא יותר.
bashélet katúv arba'ím vakhamishá shkalím lekílo, avál bakupá ze yatsá yotér
The sign says forty-five shekels a kilo, but at the till it came to more.
What Israeli numerals are doing to gender
Say a price out loud in Israel and you will hear two systems at once: שלושים וחמישה שקלים, with the numeral marked masculine to match שקל, and ארבע שקל, with the bare numeral and a singular noun. It is tempting to hear the second as sloppiness. It is not — it is a documented change, and it has been measured.
Dorit Ravid, Neutralization of gender distinctions in Modern Hebrew numerals (Language Variation and Change 7(1), 1995, 79–100), tested forty schoolchildren — twenty fourth-graders and twenty seventh-graders — on numeral gender in both monitored and unmonitored conditions. Her abstract offers the term "numeral noun-classifiers" for numerals that "carry a mirror-image gender marking, resulting in rule opacity", and reports "the disappearance of gender agreement in Modern Hebrew numerals and a reanalysis of numeral suffixes by speakers".
Note the scope before you use the finding: those are children, in one study, in the mid-1990s. What it licenses is treating the bare-numeral form as a live variant with a mechanism behind it, not as an error to be corrected out of somebody's mouth. Which of the two you should produce, and why the collapse only runs one way, is worked out at bargaining at the shuk.
זה ארבע שקל, יש לך בדיוק?
ze árba shékel, yesh lekhá bediyúk?
That's four shekels — got the exact change? (to a man; everyday spoken)
דמי הכניסה הם שלושים וחמישה שקלים לאדם.
dmei haknisá hem shloshím vakhamishá shkalím le'adám
The entrance fee is thirty-five shekels a head. (the register of a sign, a form or a receipt)
Paying
| Hebrew | Reads | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| מְזוּמָן · אַשְׁרַאי | mezumán · ashrái | cash · credit |
| תַּשְׁלוּמִים | tashlumím | instalments; בכמה תשלומים? asks how many to split it into |
| עוֹדֶף | ódef | change given back |
| חֶשְׁבּוֹן | kheshbón | the bill you ask for at a table |
| חֶשְׁבּוֹנִית | kheshbonít | a tax invoice, made out to a name |
| קַבָּלָה | kabalá | the receipt you are handed after paying |
| הֶחְזֵר | hekhzér | a refund |
אפשר לשלם בכרטיס? ואם כן, בכמה תשלומים?
efshár leshalém bekhartís? ve'ím ken, bekháma tashlumím?
Can I pay by card? And if so, in how many instalments?
שילמתי במזומן, אז לא נשאר לי עודף לחנייה.
shilámti bimzumán, az lo nish'ár li ódef lakhaniyá
I paid cash, so I had no change left for parking.
אפשר חשבונית על שם החברה, בבקשה.
efshár kheshbonít al shem hakhevrá, bevakashá
Could I have an invoice made out to the company, please.
Expensive, cheap, worth it
זה יקר, אבל שווה את זה, הנעליים האלה מחזיקות שנים.
ze yakár, avál shavé et ze, hana'aláyim ha'éle makhzikót shaním
It's expensive, but it's worth it — these shoes last for years.
יש הנחה של עשרים אחוז לסטודנטים עד סוף החודש.
yesh hanakhá shel esrím akhúz listudéntim ad sof hakhódesh
There's a twenty percent discount for students until the end of the month.
שווה is the workhorse here. On its own it is worth it — שווה את זה, לא שווה — and it also builds the comparison שווה יותר, "worth more". Like every Hebrew adjective it agrees: הדירה שווה, הרהיטים שווים.
The moves in a price conversation
These are the phrases. This page makes no claim about when, where or with whom a price in Israel is open to discussion — that varies by trade and by setting, and no source consulted for this build supports a general statement. What follows is the language, which is the same language whether the number moves or not.
| Move | Hebrew | Reads |
|---|---|---|
| Open | תַּעֲשֶׂה לִי מְחִיר | ta'asé li mekhír |
| Push | כַּמָּה הֲכִי זוֹל? | káma hakhí zol? |
| Offer volume | אֲנִי לוֹקֵחַ שְׁנַיִים | aní lokéakh shnáyim |
| Resist | זֶה הַרְבֵּה מִדַּי · זֶה מֵעֵבֶר לַתַּקְצִיב | ze harbé midái · ze me'éver lataktsív |
| Close | נִסְגּוֹר עַל … | nisgór al … |
תעשה לי מחיר על שניים ואני לוקח עכשיו.
ta'asé li mekhír al shnáyim va'aní lokéakh akhsháv
Do me a price for two and I'll take them now. (to a man)
כמה הכי זול שאתה יכול? זה קצת מעבר לתקציב שלי.
káma hakhí zol she'atá yakhól? ze ktsat me'éver lataktsív shelí
What's the cheapest you can do? That's a bit beyond my budget. (to a man)
Four money idioms
חבל על X is a pattern, not a single phrase: X is wasted. It applies literally to money — חבל על הכסף — and neither Milog nor Hebrew Wiktionary carries that combination as an entry, which is what you would expect of a phrase whose meaning is the sum of its parts.
Its famous sibling is worth putting beside it precisely because it has stopped being literal. Hebrew Wiktionary gives חבל על הזמן two senses and labels both: sense 1 is [סלנג] טוב במיוחד, "especially good", and sense 2 is [מיושן] גרוע, בזבוז זמן, "bad, a waste of time". The literal reading is the one tagged obsolete. So the pattern is live, one member of it has flipped its polarity, and you cannot extrapolate from that member to the others.
קניתי מדפסת בזול ונשברה אחרי חודש, חבל על הכסף.
kaníti madpéset bezól venishberá akharéi khódesh, khavál al hakésef
I bought a cheap printer and it broke after a month — a waste of money.
הטיול הזה עלה לי הון, אבל לא הייתי מוותרת עליו.
hatiyúl hazé alá li hon, avál lo hayíti mevatéret aláv
That trip cost me a fortune, but I wouldn't have given it up. (f. speaker)
מאה שקל זה כסף קטן לעומת מה ששילמנו שם.
me'á shékel ze késef katán le'umát ma sheshilámnu sham
A hundred shekels is small change next to what we paid there.
כסף קטן is a genuine two-sense item and Milog lists both: מטבעות בעלי ערך כספי נמוך, low-value coins, and עניין לא חשוב וקל לטיפול, a trivial matter easily dealt with. Only context separates them. The fourth, זרק כסף לפח, "threw money in the bin", is transparent and needs no gloss.
Common Mistakes
1. Giving חייב a direct object. English I owe you fifty puts the creditor straight after the verb. Hebrew hangs the creditor on ל־, and there is no reading of the string below in any register.
❌ אני חייב אותך חמישים שקל
Incorrect — the person you owe takes ל־: אני חייב לך חמישים שקל. את marks a definite direct object, and חייב has no direct object to mark.
✅ כמה אני חייבת לך על הקפה?
káma aní khayévet lekhá al hakafé?
How much do I owe you for the coffee? (f. speaker, to a man)
2. Asking for the wrong piece of paper. Three words, three moments. חשבון is what you want before paying, קבלה is what you are handed after, and חשבונית is a tax invoice made out to a name. Ask a waiter for a קבלה when you wanted the bill and you have asked for the wrong document; ask a shop for a חשבון and you have asked for one that does not exist there.
✅ אפשר את החשבון? אנחנו קצת ממהרים.
efshár et hakheshbón? anákhnu ktsat memaharím
Could we have the bill? We're in a bit of a hurry.
✅ תשמור את הקבלה, אולי נחזיר את זה.
tishmór et hakabalá, ulái nakhazír et ze
Keep the receipt — we might take it back. (to a man)
3. Using one preposition for both halves of "pay". על marks what you paid for; ב marks what you paid with. English uses for and by, which look like a pair; Hebrew's two letters do not look like a pair at all, so the wrong one comes out by default.
✅ שילמנו על הארוחה, והם שילמו על היין.
shilámnu al ha'arukhá, vehém shilmú al hayáyin
We paid for the meal and they paid for the wine.
✅ שילמתי בכרטיס, לא היה לי מזומן.
shilámti bekhartís, lo hayá li mezumán
I paid by card — I had no cash on me.
4. Treating מבצע and הנחה as one word. A מבצע is the promotion — the thing the shop is running. A הנחה is the reduction — the thing you receive. You are בְּמבצע on the shop's side and you מקבל הנחה on yours, and swapping them produces sentences that parse and mean the wrong thing.
✅ החולצה הזאת במבצע, שתיים במחיר אחת.
hakhultsá hazót bemivtsá, shtáyim bimkhír akhát
This shirt is on offer — two for the price of one.
✅ קיבלתי עשרה אחוז הנחה כי שילמתי מראש.
kibálti asará akhúz hanakhá ki shilámti merósh
I got ten percent off because I paid in advance.
Key Takeaways
- כמה זה עולה? and כמה זה יוצא? are both current. The first prices a thing, the second totals a bill; nothing marks either as the textbook one.
- חייב is an adjective. It agrees with the debtor (חייב, חייבת, חייבים), takes the creditor on ל־ and the reason on על, and never takes את.
- The currency is שקל / שקלים, its hundredth the אגורה / אגורות, and the written abbreviation ש״ח takes gershayim ״, never an ASCII quote.
- Ravid 1995 (Language Variation and Change 7(1): 79–100) measured numeral gender in forty schoolchildren and reported "the disappearance of gender agreement in Modern Hebrew numerals and a reanalysis of numeral suffixes". The bare-numeral price form is a documented variant, not sloppiness — with the scope of that study stated.
- חשבון before you pay, קבלה after, חשבונית for a company. Three words, three moments.
- על is what you paid for; ב is what you paid with. מבצע is the shop's promotion; הנחה is your reduction.
- Bargaining openers are second-person futures — תעשה לי מחיר, not עשה.
- חבל על X is a live pattern meaning X is wasted, but חבל על הזמן has flipped: Hebrew Wiktionary tags "especially good" as its slang sense and "a waste of time" as מיושן, obsolete.
- כסף קטן carries two Milog senses — low-value coins, and a trivial matter.
Now practice Hebrew
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Start learning Hebrew →Related Topics
- Age, Money and MeasurementsB1 — The everyday structures for age, prices, currency, and measurement—and why omitted nouns and foreign units change the agreement and plural patterns.
- Shops, Taxis and Falafel StandsA2 — Handle Israeli counter transactions through complete falafel, taxi and café exchanges built around אפשר, future requests and compact service vocabulary.
- Dialogue: Bargaining at the ShukB1 — A fifteen-turn produce-stall exchange, annotated line by line: measure phrases that take no preposition, the counted noun that decides the numeral's shape, the price ב־, the two-futures conditional a price offer is built from, and the live register split between עשרה שקלים and עשר שקל.
- Set Phrases for Every DayA1 — The twenty-odd phrases you use before you can build a sentence, learned whole — with בסדר as the centrepiece, because one word covers fine, OK, agreed and merely acceptable, and Hebrew Wiktionary derives it from German in Ordnung.