הם and הן

English they carries no gender. Hebrew has two third-person plural subject pronouns: הם hem for a masculine or mixed group and הן hen for an all-female group in gender-distinguishing usage. The pronoun is only the first choice; present-tense verbs, adjectives, and noun predicates must follow the same agreement.

The difficulty is partly grammatical and partly sociolinguistic. The feminine form remains central in teaching and writing, while casual Israeli speech often reduces the distinction. The evidence available for this build does not support a percentage or a claim about what “most Israelis” say, so this page teaches the full agreement and labels the register variation without inventing a statistic.

The basic contrast runs through the clause

The endings are not optional decoration. Hebrew present-tense forms are participles, so they agree like adjectives: masculine plural ־ים, feminine plural ־ות. English supplies no equivalent cue because they come tired remains unchanged regardless of who they are.

The use of הם or הן between two definite noun phrases can serve a copular function, but that is a different construction. It belongs on the pronoun copula; here both forms are ordinary clause subjects.

Mixed groups take הם

Standard agreement treats every mixed group as masculine plural. The proportions do not change the rule: the presence of one male member makes the grammatical group mixed, so it takes הם and masculine plural agreement.

This default is visible not just on the pronoun but on מגיעים, גרים, and באים. Choosing הן and then switching back to masculine elsewhere does not solve the agreement problem; identify the group first and build one coherent chain.

An all-female group across three registers

The feminine plural is much more prominent in writing and teaching than in casual speech. Hebrew Wikipedia describes colloquial Israeli as not distinguishing הם from הן, and Shlonsky's pronoun table marks the feminine plural forms as marginal. Neither source supplies a corpus proportion, so the cautious conclusion is qualitative: expect more הן in careful and written Hebrew and more leveling toward הם in relaxed conversation.

The same message about an all-female team can therefore appear in three forms:

All three represent real Hebrew. The last uses the specifically feminine plural future endings ־נה, which are rare in speech and conspicuous in formal writing. The middle version is also normative: the Academy's discussion of הן יהיו versus הן תהיינה explicitly accepts both possibilities.

This matters because the masculine-looking verb with a feminine subject is not a recent collapse invented by careless speakers. The Academy traces masculine-for-feminine plural agreement to Second Temple Hebrew, citing Esther 1:20, and describes it as דרך המלך, the main path, in Mishnaic Hebrew. The present-day distribution has a long grammatical history.

Past tense does not expose gender in the verb

Plural past-tense verbs generally use one form for masculine and feminine subjects. The pronoun can therefore carry a distinction that the verb itself does not show.

The verbs סיימו and הלכו are identical in the two sentences. This is why agreement has to be checked by tense and word class, not by a blanket instruction to “make every word feminine.” A present participle and an adjective distinguish gender; these plural past forms do not.

Why English encourages accidental הם

English learners do not start with a wrong rule; they start with no relevant distinction. Because English they is invariant, הם easily becomes an unexamined default. A better habit is to identify the referent before speaking:

• men or any mixed group → הם;
• an all-female group in gender-distinguishing speech or writing → הן;
• casual all-female reference → recognize leveling toward הם, without claiming that every speaker or setting behaves alike.

The wider sociolinguistic system—including feminine plural address and deliberate restoration in educational or political contexts—belongs on agreement drift.

Common Mistakes

Using הן for a mixed group

Forgetting plural agreement after הן

Treating הן יהיו as a defective compromise

Both forms below are normative. The distinction is chiefly one of morphological explicitness and register.

Key Takeaways

• הם is the subject pronoun for men and mixed groups; הן is the feminine plural in gender-distinguishing usage.
• Present participles and adjectives carry the agreement: הם באים ועייפים versus הן באות ועייפות.
• Every mixed group takes masculine plural agreement, regardless of its proportions.
• Feminine הן is more prominent in writing and teaching than in casual speech, but the available evidence does not justify a claim about what percentage of speakers level it to הם.
• הן יהיו and הן תהיינה are both normative; the specifically feminine ־נה future is rare in speech and formal in effect.
• Masculine-for-feminine plural agreement has ancient precedents and is not merely modern sloppiness.