Prepositions Take Pronoun Endings | Hebrew Grammar

One fact reorganises this entire group. A Hebrew preposition does not take a pronoun after it — it absorbs the pronoun as a suffix. "To me" is one word, לי. "From me" is one word, ממני. "On me", "with me" and "me" as a plain object are עליי, איתי and אותי — all single words, each with its own stress. There is no spaced alternative hiding in a formal register: *ל אני and *עם אני are not Hebrew at all, in the way that English has no to I.

הוא לא ענה לי ולא ענה לה, אז ויתרנו.

hu lo aná li veló aná la, az vitárnu

He didn't get back to me and he didn't get back to her, so we gave up.

תשאל אותה, היא יודעת עליהם יותר ממני.

tish'ál otá, hi yodá'at aleihém yotér miméni

Ask her — she knows more about them than I do. (to a man; three different prepositions, three suffixed forms)

One suffix set, seen on ל־

Start with the plainest paradigm in the language. The middle column is the part worth memorising, because it recurs almost unchanged on ב, של, אצל, בשביל and את.

Person	Suffix	ל־ form	Reads
me	־ִי	לִי	li
you (m. sg.)	־ְךָ	לְךָ	lekhá
you (f. sg.)	־ָךְ	לָךְ	lakh
him	־וֹ	לוֹ	lo
her	־ָהּ	לָהּ	la
us	־ָנוּ	לָנוּ	lánu
you (m. pl.)	־ָכֶם	לָכֶם	lakhém
you (f. pl.)	־ָכֶן	לָכֶן	lakhén
them (m.)	־ָהֶם	לָהֶם	lahém
them (f.)	־ָהֶן	לָהֶן	lahén

כתבתי להם שלוש פעמים ואף אחד לא חזר אליי.

katávti lahém shalósh pe'amím ve'áf ekhád lo khazár elái

I wrote to them three times and nobody got back to me.

One "…me" ending, ten prepositions

Line up the first person singular and the repetition becomes obvious. Learn the suffix set once and most of the group comes free; the two rows in bold are the ones that hide it.

Preposition	"…me"	Reads
ל־ to, for	לי	li
ב־ in	בי	bi
של of	שלי	shelí
את (object marker)	אותי	otí
אצל at someone's	אצלי	etslí
בשביל for	בשבילי	bishvilí
על on, about	עליי	alái
אל to, towards	אליי	elái
עם with	איתי	ití — a different stem altogether
מ־ from	ממני	miméni — an extra nun

כולם הסתכלו עליי כאילו אמרתי משהו נורא.

kulám histaklú alái ke'ílu amárti máshehu norá

Everyone looked at me as if I'd said something terrible.

יש לי בשבילך משהו במכונית.

yesh li bishvilkhá máshehu bamekhonít

I've got something for you in the car. (to a man)

Two families, and how to tell them apart in one glance

The suffixes above are not the only set. A second family attaches a different one, and the standard way learners are taught to handle this — memorise which prepositions belong to which list — is the slow way. There is a diagnostic instead.

Look at "him".

Family	"him" ends in	"me" ends in	Members
singular-base	־וֹ — לו, בו, שלו, אצלו, איתו, אותו	־י — לי, בי, שלי, אצלי	ל, ב, של, את, עם, אצל, בשביל, בגלל, מול
plural-base	־יו — עליו, אליו, לפניו, אחריו	־יי — עליי, אליי, לפניי, אחריי	על, אל, לפני, אחרי, תחת, לגבי, כלפי

One check on the third-person masculine singular identifies the suffix family. If "him" is -o, "me" normally has a bare yod; if "him" is -av, "me" doubles the yod. You still need to check the full paradigm for stem vowels and irregular stems such as אית־ and אות־.

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When you meet a new preposition, look up the "him" form first: it tells you which suffix family to expect. Then check the remaining cells rather than constructing every form by analogy. This diagnostic scales to less common plural-base prepositions such as לגבי, כלפי, מתחת and בפני.

The name plural-base describes morphology, not meaning: these prepositions take the same possessive suffix shapes as plural nouns. Hebrew has one possessive suffix set for singular nouns and another for plural nouns, and they differ in exactly this way:

	my	his
ספר "book" (singular)	סִפְרִי sifrí	סִפְרוֹ sifró
ספרים "books" (plural)	סְפָרַיי sfarái	סְפָרָיו sfaráv

עליו and אחריו therefore pattern morphologically with plural possessives. That does not mean עַל or אַחַר are plural nouns in modern Hebrew, or that עליו literally means "his ons"; it means only that these prepositions select the plural-style suffix set. The historical explanation is on the plural-base prepositions.

היא עמדה לפניי בתור וכל הזמן דיברה בטלפון.

hi amdá lefanái batór vekhól hazmán dibrá batélefon

She was in front of me in the queue, on the phone the whole time.

סגרו את השער אחריו והוא נשאר בגשם.

sagrú et hashá'ar akharáv vehú nish'ár bagéshem

They shut the gate behind him and he was left out in the rain.

The odd pair: כמו and מן

Two prepositions belong to neither family, and it is worth naming them so you do not try to force them into one. Pealim gives כָּמוֹהוּ kamóhu for "like him" — a ־הוּ suffix that appears nowhere else in the group — and כָּמוֹנִי kamóni for "like me", built on the same old energic nun that surfaces in מִמֶּנִּי miméni — doubled there, single here.

Preposition	me	him
כמו like	כָּמוֹנִי kamóni	כָּמוֹהוּ kamóhu
מן / מ־ from	מִמֶּנִּי miméni	מִמֶּנּוּ miménu

So כמוני is not a plural-base form, despite looking a little like one. It is a pattern of its own, shared with מן and with nothing else.

אף אחד לא מכיר את העיר הזאת כמוהו.

af ekhád lo makír et ha'ír hazót kamóhu

Nobody knows this city the way he does.

Not every preposition inflects

Textbooks rarely mention this, and it saves you inventing forms. The Hebrew Wikipedia article on מילת יחס names כדי, למרות and לרגל as prepositions that take no pronominal suffix at all, and Pealim's entry for עד prints only the bare form, with no suffixed paradigm under it.

When a preposition cannot take a suffix, Hebrew simply keeps a noun or a demonstrative in the slot — למרות זאת "despite that", עד אז "until then" — or leans on a neighbouring preposition, which is what עד does when it needs to reach a person: עד אליי.

למרות הגשם יצאנו לרוץ בבוקר.

lamrót hagéshem yatsánu larúts babóker

We went out for a run in the morning despite the rain.

תבוא עד אליי, אני לא יכול לצאת עכשיו.

tavó ad elái, aní lo yakhól latsét akhsháv

Come all the way over to mine — I can't get out right now. (to a man, m. speaker)

One preposition changes its stem completely rather than refusing: בלי "without" becomes בלעדיי, בלעדיו bil'adái, bil'adáv, a plural-base paradigm built on a word you would not have guessed.

Turning a phrase into a suffix

The exercise that builds the reflex is mechanical. Take a sentence with a full noun phrase, and replace the noun with its pronoun — which means the preposition has to change shape.

With the noun	With the suffix
נתתי לדנה את הכתובת	נתתי לה את הכתובת
חיכיתי לאוטובוס חצי שעה	חיכיתי לו חצי שעה
דיברתי עם המנהל	דיברתי איתו
שמעתי מהשכנים	שמעתי מהם
חשבתי על ההצעה	חשבתי עליה

דיברתי איתו אתמול והוא הבטיח לבדוק.

dibárti itó etmól vehú hivtíakh livdók

I spoke to him yesterday and he promised to look into it.

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An uninflected preposition marks you as a beginner faster than an accent does. Israelis will understand *אני חושב על אתה perfectly well and will still hear it as a first-week sentence, because no native speaker has ever produced that shape. Learn each preposition with its suffix set, the way you would learn a verb with its conjugation. The errors this prevents are collected on uninflected prepositions.

Common Mistakes

1. Leaving the pronoun standing free. The habit comes straight from English, where the pronoun after a preposition is an ordinary separate word.

❌ הוא כעס על אני

Incorrect — the pronoun is a suffix: הוא כעס עליי. There is no spaced version in any register of Hebrew.

✅ הוא כעס עליי כל השבוע ולא אמר למה.

hu ka'ás alái kol hashavúa veló amár láma

He was annoyed with me all week and wouldn't say why.

2. Giving a plural-base preposition the singular-base ending. Entirely logical, since לו, בו and שלו all work that way — and על does not.

❌ השארתי לו פתק ושמתי עלו כוס

Incorrect — על belongs to the plural-base family, so 'on it' is עליו: השארתי לו פתק ושמתי עליו כוס.

✅ השארתי לו פתק ושמתי עליו כוס.

hish'árti lo pétek vesámti aláv kos

I left him a note and put a glass on top of it.

3. Writing the first-person form with a single yod. A spelling error, and a costly one, because the single-yod form is already another word.

❌ אחרי

Incorrect as modern ktiv male for 'after me' — write אחריי. Unpointed אחרי is the bare preposition 'after', so the two readings collide. The same goes for עליי, אליי and לפניי.

✅ הוא נכנס אחריי בלי לדפוק.

hu nikhnás akharái bli lidfók

He walked in after me without knocking.

4. Inflecting a preposition that does not inflect. The mirror error, and it shows up as soon as the system clicks.

❌ למרותו, המשכנו בתוכנית

Incorrect as 'despite him, we continued with the plan' — למרות takes no pronominal suffix. Rephrase, e.g. למרות מה שהוא אמר, המשכנו בתוכנית. The isolated word למרותו can be grammatical with a different analysis: ל + מָרוּת 'authority', as in סר למרותו, 'submits to his authority'.

✅ היא לא הסכימה איתי, ולמרות זאת עשתה מה שביקשתי.

hi lo hiskíma ití, velamrót zot astá ma shebikáshti

She didn't agree with me, and did what I'd asked anyway.

Key Takeaways

Hebrew prepositions absorb their pronoun. לי, ממני, עליי, איתי, אותי — one word each. *ל אני and *עם אני exist in no register.
One suffix set does most of the work — ־י, ־ךָ, ־ךְ, ־ו, ־ה, ־נו, ־כם, ־כן, ־הם, ־הן — and ל, ב, של, את, אצל and בשביל all use it.
The diagnostic is "him". ־וֹ (לו, בו, שלו) means the singular-base set; ־יו (עליו, אליו, לפניו, אחריו) means the plural-base set, whose first person doubles the yod: עליי, אליי, לפניי, אחריי.
The plural-base family exists because those prepositions take the plural-noun suffixes — עליו is built like ספריו, not like ספרו.
כמו and מן are a pattern of their own: כָּמוֹנִי / כָּמוֹהוּ beside מִמֶּנִּי / מִמֶּנּוּ. כמוני is not a plural-base form.
Some prepositions take no suffix — he.wikipedia names כדי, למרות and לרגל, and Pealim prints no suffixed paradigm for עד — so Hebrew keeps a noun or demonstrative in the slot: למרות זאת, עד אז, עד אליי.
בלי is suppletive: "without me" is בלעדיי, not *בליי.
Individual paradigms are drilled on their own pages; the complete grid is the full inflection tables.

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