לי, לך, לו: ל־ Inflected | Hebrew Grammar

ל־ is the preposition you will suffix most often, and it is worth over-learning early, because four unrelated everyday jobs run through the same ten forms: owning something (יש לי), giving something to somebody (תן לי), the verbs that simply come with it (עזר לי), and experiencing certain states (קר לי). This page is the table and the drills; the senses of the letter itself are on ל־.

The paradigm

Person	Form	Reads	In a phrase
to me	לִי	li	יש לי — I have
to you (m. sg.)	לְךָ	lekhá	קניתי לך — I bought something for you
to you (f. sg.)	לָךְ	lakh	אחכה לך — I'll wait for you
to him	לוֹ	lo	אין לו זמן — he hasn't got time
to her	לָהּ	la	תן לה — give her
to us	לָנוּ	lánu	קר לנו — we're cold
to you (m. pl.)	לָכֶם	lakhém	הבאתי לכם — I brought you
to you (f. pl.)	לָכֶן	lakhén	same, to women — (formal)
to them (m.)	לָהֶם	lahém	סיפרתי להם — I told them
to them (f.)	לָהֶן	lahén	same, to or for women — (formal)

The two feminine plurals are marked because they are register-sensitive: careful and (formal) Hebrew keeps לכן and להן, while ordinary conversation often lets לכם and להם cover an all-female group as well. Learn the feminine forms, but do not be startled when the masculine plurals replace them in speech.

The cell that costs marks: לך

Unpointed Hebrew writes both second-person singulars as לך — lekhá to a man, lakh to a woman — and the page gives you no help at all. But this is not really a reading problem, and treating it as a spelling curiosity is what lets it survive.

It is a speaking problem. The two forms sound nothing alike, and a woman addressed as lekhá registers it instantly, the way an English speaker notices being called by the wrong name. There is no neutral singular form to retreat to, so this is a common gender slip in beginner Hebrew.

קניתי לך את החולצה שרצית, מקווה שהמידה בסדר.

kaníti lekhá et hakhultsá sheratsíta, mekavé shehamidá beséder

I got you the shirt you wanted — hope the size is right. (to a man, m. speaker)

תכתבי לי כשאת יוצאת, אני אחכה לך למטה.

tikhteví li kshe'át yotsét, aní akhaké lakh lemáta

Text me when you set off — I'll wait for you downstairs. (to a woman)

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Drill לְךָ and לָךְ as two separate words with two separate meanings, not as one word with a footnote. The reason is practical: when you are speaking you have no time to consult a rule, so the form has to arrive attached to the person in front of you. Say lekhá to men and lakh to women from the very first week and you will never have to unlearn a default.

Possession: יש לי

Hebrew has no verb "to have". Ownership is יש or אין plus ל־ on the owner, and the owner is therefore almost always one of the forms in the table above.

יש לי אח גדול והוא גר בחיפה.

yesh li akh gadól vehú gar bekhéifa

I've got an older brother and he lives in Haifa.

אין לו זמן אפילו לענות להודעות.

ein lo zman afílu la'anót lehoda'ót

He hasn't got time even to answer messages. (two ל־ in one sentence: לו is the owner, ל־ is what ענה governs)

The construction itself — its past and future, and what happens to the object — is on יש לי.

The recipient

Whoever receives the thing, the message or the favour.

תן לי דקה, אני כבר יורדת.

ten li daká, aní kvar yorédet

Give me a minute, I'm on my way down. (to a man, f. speaker)

הבאתי לכם עוגה מהמאפייה ליד הבית.

hevéti lakhém ugá mehama'afiyá leyád habáyit

I've brought you a cake from the bakery near the house. (to a group)

סיפרתי להם על ההצעה והם התלהבו.

sipárti lahém al hahatsa'á vehém hitlahavú

I told them about the offer and they were thrilled.

Verbs that come with ל־

A whole class of everyday verbs governs ל־, and their English translations take a bare object. Nothing in the English warns you, so these have to be learned as two-part units.

Hebrew	English	What English gives you
עזר ל־	help someone	a bare object
הפריע ל־	bother, disturb someone	a bare object
הקשיב ל־	listen to someone	"to" — this one matches
התקשר ל־	ring someone	a bare object
הסביר ל־	explain to someone	"to" — matches
סלח ל־	forgive someone	a bare object

הרופאה הסבירה לו בדיוק מה קורה והוא נרגע.

harof'á hisbíra lo bediyúk ma koré vehú nirgá

The doctor explained exactly what was going on and he calmed down.

היא לא הקשיבה לי אף פעם, אז הפסקתי לספר.

hi lo hikshíva li af pá'am, az hifsákti lesapér

She never listened to me, so I stopped telling her things.

התקשרתי למרפאה ולא ענו לי חצי שעה.

hitkashárti lamirpa'á veló anú li khatsí sha'á

I rang the clinic and nobody answered for half an hour.

הפריע לי שהוא לא אמר כלום כל הישיבה.

hifría li shehú lo amár klum kol hayeshivá

It bothered me that he didn't say a word the whole meeting.

How you feel

This is the block that changes how English speakers think about Hebrew, and it is worth slowing down for.

For an important group of sensations and evaluations, Hebrew marks the person experiencing the state with ל־ instead of making that person the subject. קר לי is cold to-me: it has no overt subject and no verb. Other members can have a grammatical subject: in כואב לי הראש, הראש is the subject and כואב agrees with it. The unifying fact is that the experiencer is dative — לי, לך, לו and so on.

Hebrew	Literally	English
קר לי	cold to-me	I'm cold
חם לו	hot to-him	he's hot
כואב לי הראש	hurts to-me the-head	my head hurts
משעמם לה	boring to-her	she's bored
נוח לנו	comfortable to-us	we're comfortable
קשה להם	hard to-them	they're finding it hard
נראה לי	seems to-me	I think, I reckon
אכפת לי	matters to-me	I care

קר לי נורא, יש לך סוודר להשאיל?

kar li norá, yesh lekhá svéder lehash'íl?

I'm freezing — have you got a jumper I could borrow? (to a man)

כואב לי הגב מאז שהזזנו את הארון.

ko'év li hagáv me'áz shehezáznu et ha'arón

My back's been hurting since we moved the wardrobe.

נראה לי שהם כבר יצאו, אין אור בחלון.

nir'é li shehém kvar yats'ú, ein or bakhalón

I think they've already left — there's no light in the window.

לא אכפת לי מה יגידו, אני נשארת.

lo ikhpát li ma yagídu, aní nish'éret

I don't care what people say — I'm staying. (f. speaker)

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Notice what is missing from קר לי: a subject, a verb, and any gender marking at all. A man and a woman say the identical sentence, because קר describes the situation and ל־ names who experiences it. The same dative-experiencer logic links בא לי ("I feel like…") and נראה לי ("I reckon"): both encode the experiencer with ל־.

A note on נמאס

You will hear נמאס לי constantly — "I've had enough" — usually with the thing you are fed up with on מ־. Milog carries it as a headword of its own — נמאס לו, glossed "be fed up, be sick of", with no register label on it — and lists it as the second sense under נמאס. The dictionary also records נמאס על (a thing becomes tiresome upon someone) and, for the pa'al, מאס ב־ (someone grows sick of something). All three patterns are live.

נמאס לי מהנסיעות האלה כל בוקר.

nim'ás li mehanesi'ót ha'éle kol bóker

I've had it with this commute every morning. (everyday spoken Hebrew)

הפרסומת הזאת נמאסה עליי אחרי יומיים.

hapirsómet hazót nim'asá alái akharéi yomáyim

I got sick of that advert after two days. (נמאס with על — a pattern Milog also records)

Use נמאס לי without hesitation, in speech and in writing. נמאס עליי is not a correction of it but a separate, also attested pattern, so recognise both when a dictionary or a text prints them.

Common Mistakes

1. Leaving the pronoun as a separate word. The suffix is the only form there is.

❌ תגידי ל אני מה קרה

Incorrect — the pronoun is a suffix: תגידי לי מה קרה. ל אני exists in no register of Hebrew, spoken or written.

✅ תגידי לי מה קרה, אני לא אכעס.

tagídi li ma kará, aní lo ekh'ás

Tell me what happened — I won't be angry. (to a woman)

2. Using a subject adjective for a physical sensation. אני קר can describe a male speaker as emotionally cold; physical temperature uses the dative experiencer קר לי.

✅ אני אדם קר ולא מראה רגשות.

aní adám kar veló mar'é regashót

I'm a cold person and don't show emotion. (m. speaker — קר describes the subject's character)

✅ קר לי כל הזמן במשרד הזה, גם בקיץ.

kar li kol hazmán bamisrád hazé, gam bakáyits

I'm cold all the time in this office, even in summer.

3. Giving a ל־ verb a direct object. English it bothered me has no preposition at all, so nothing prompts you to add one.

❌ הרעש הפריע אותי מאוד

Incorrect — the person disturbed takes ל־: הרעש הפריע לי מאוד. Milog's examples run הפריע לאמו, הפריע למהלך השיעור, הפריע לי. את with הפריע is a rarer and more formal pattern that marks a state being broken in on rather than a person — להפריע את מנוחתו, להפריע את שלומו.

✅ השכנים הפריעו לנו לישון עד שתיים בלילה.

hashkhením hifrí'u lánu lishón ad shtáyim baláyla

The neighbours kept us awake till two in the morning.

4. Writing לא where you mean לו. They are pronounced identically, so this one survives every proofread that relies on reading aloud.

❌ נתתי לא את המפתח

Incorrect as 'I gave him the key' — 'to him' is לו; לא is 'not'. Both are pronounced lo, so only the spelling separates them.

✅ נתתי לו את המפתח וביקשתי שיחזיר בערב.

natáti lo et hamaftéakh uvikáshti sheyakhazír ba'érev

I gave him the key and asked him to bring it back in the evening.

Key Takeaways

The paradigm is לי, לך, לו, לה, לנו, לכם, לכן, להם, להן — ten cells, with לך doing duty for both second-person singulars. *ל אני is not a lower register of anything; it is simply not Hebrew.
לך is one spelling and two words: lekhá to a man, lakh to a woman. Treat it as a speaking problem, not a spelling curiosity.
לכן and להן are (formal); casual speech lets לכם and להם cover all-female groups too.
Three of the four jobs are grammatical roles: possession (יש לי, אין לו), recipient (תן לי, סיפרתי להם), and the verbs that govern ל־ (עזר, הפריע, הקשיב, התקשר, הסביר, סלח).
Many sensations and evaluations mark the experiencer with ל־. קר לי is subjectless and has no agreement; כואב לי הראש has הראש as its subject, while לי still marks the experiencer.
נמאס לי is everyday Hebrew and a Milog headword. נמאס על and מאס ב־ are separate patterns that dictionaries also record.
לו and לא sound identical. Read your own writing with the meaning in mind, not with your ear.

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