When part of a Hebrew conversation goes missing, you can either ask for the whole turn again or identify the exact piece that failed: a word, a spelling, a number, or a destination. Hebrew also has a grammatical echo question in which the questioned expression remains where it stood in the sentence: שילמת כמה? “You paid how much?”
These are repair moves, not challenges. Indignant מה זאת אומרת? belongs on rhetorical questions, and the contours that help listeners interpret spoken questions belong on Israeli Hebrew intonation. No single contour is treated here as either compulsory or wrong.
Asking for the whole turn again
The following forms all reopen the previous turn, but they package the request differently. The labels describe usable settings; they are not a frequency ranking.
| Repair | Literal shape | Register and use |
|---|---|---|
| סליחה? | excuse me? / sorry? | neutral; a compact request to repeat |
| מה אמרת? | what did you say? | neutral; addressed form is hidden in unpointed writing |
| איך אמרת? | how did you say [that]? | neutral; checks wording or a detail just supplied |
| אפשר לחזור על זה? | is it possible to repeat that? | neutral and explicit; works with strangers |
| אפשר שוב? | possible again? | neutral spoken ellipsis |
| מה? | what? | (informal); direct, with force supplied by the whole interaction |
| אה? | huh? | (informal); a hearing or uptake check |
סליחה? לא שמעתי את המשפט האחרון.
slikhá? lo shamáti et hamishpát ha'akharón
Sorry? I didn't hear the last sentence. (neutral)
מה אמרת? הקו נקטע לשנייה.
ma amárta? hakáv niktá lishniyá
What did you say? The line cut out for a second. (to a man)
אפשר לחזור על זה? לא הבנתי את הסוף.
efshár lakhazór al ze? lo hevánti et hasóf
Could you repeat that? I didn't understand the end. (neutral)
אפשר שוב? בדיוק עברה פה משאית.
efshár shuv? bediyúk avrá po masa'ít
Could you say that again? A lorry just went past. (spoken)
מה? and אה? are grammatical turns, not defective sentences. They are also very bare. Among friends that may fit perfectly; in a service call, סליחה? or אפשר לחזור על זה? makes the task explicit. That is a register choice, not a universal scale on which one word is always “politer” than another.
Target the piece that failed
Once you know what went wrong, Hebrew lets you name the problem directly.
| Question | What it repairs | Register |
|---|---|---|
| מה זה אומר? | meaning of a word or expression | neutral |
| איך כותבים את זה? | spelling or written form | neutral |
| אפשר יותר לאט? | speech rate | neutral spoken request |
| אפשר לאיית? | letter-by-letter spelling | neutral |
| אתה יכול לאיית? / את יכולה לאיית? | direct request to one person | neutral; agrees with the addressee |
מה זה אומר? אני לא מכירה את הביטוי הזה.
ma ze omér? aní lo makirá et habitúi hazé
What does that mean? I don't know that expression. (f. speaker)
איך כותבים את זה, עם טי״ת או עם תי״ו?
eikh kotvím et ze, im tet o im tav?
How do you spell that—with tet or tav?
אפשר יותר לאט? אני עדיין לומד עברית.
efshár yotér le'át? aní adáyin loméd ivrít
Could you speak more slowly? I'm still learning Hebrew. (m. speaker)
את יכולה לאיית את שם הרחוב?
at yekholá le'ayét et shem harekhóv?
Can you spell the street name? (to a woman)
The last pair exposes agreement that English hides. A man is יכול, a woman יכולה; with a plural group use אתם יכולים or אתן יכולות. The impersonal אפשר לאיית? avoids direct agreement because אפשר itself does not inflect.
The in-situ echo
Neutral Hebrew wh-questions normally place the question phrase first: לאן הוא נסע?, כמה שילמת?, מה אתה עשית? The typological WALS entry for Modern Hebrew classifies interrogative phrases as initial, following Glinert's reference grammar. Echo questions reveal a special option: copy the clause frame you have just heard and replace the doubtful item in its original slot.
הוא נסע לאן?
hu nasá le'án?
He went where? (in-situ echo: checking an already supplied destination)
שילמת כמה?
shilámta káma?
You paid how much? (to a man; in-situ echo)
אתה עשית מה?
atá asíta ma?
You did what? (to a man; surprise or a check of the missing object)
Omer Preminger's work on multiple wh-movement in Hebrew makes the distribution precise: once echo readings are excluded, a single wh-expression cannot simply remain in place. The echo is therefore not a free colloquial alternative to ordinary fronting. It is licensed by a discourse in which a value has already been mentioned, misheard, or presented as hard to accept.
Fronting can still occur in a repair question. כמה שילמת? may be a neutral first request for the price, or a follow-up when context already makes it a check. Word order creates a strong echo cue; it does not single-handedly determine the speaker's attitude.
כמה שילמת בסוף?
káma shilámta basóf?
How much did you pay in the end? (to a man; ordinary fronted information question)
A broken address over the phone
Here a bad connection triggers three different repairs: a general reopening, a request to repeat, and a request to spell one word.
שלום, הכתובת היא רחוב המעיין חמישים ושבע, דירה שתים עשרה.
shalóm, haktóvet hi rekhóv hama'ayán khamishím vashéva, dirá shteim esré
Caller A: Hello, the address is 57 Hamaayan Street, apartment 12.
סליחה? הקו נקטע. אפשר שוב?
slikhá? hakáv niktá. efshár shuv?
Caller B: Sorry? The line cut out. Could you say that again?
רחוב המעיין חמישים ושבע, דירה שתים עשרה.
rekhóv hama'ayán khamishím vashéva, dirá shteim esré
Caller A: 57 Hamaayan Street, apartment 12.
אפשר לאיית את שם הרחוב?
efshár le'ayét et shem harekhóv?
Caller B: Could you spell the street name?
המעיין: ה״א, מ״ם, עי״ן, יו״ד, יו״ד, נו״ן סופית.
hama'ayán: he, mem, áyin, yod, yod, nun sofít
Caller A: Hamaayan: he, mem, ayin, yod, yod, final nun.
The repeated יו״ד, יו״ד matters: unpointed מעיין has doubled consonantal yod under ktiv male spelling. A useful repair exchange can therefore teach both interaction and orthography.
Common Mistakes
The errors on this page are pragmatic choices between grammatical forms. In keeping with the fact that all the forms below are live Hebrew, the contrasts use two valid examples rather than condemning one with a cross.
1. Replaying the whole turn when one detail failed. A narrow question is faster and less ambiguous.
אפשר לחזור על כל ההודעה?
efshár lakhazór al kol hahoda'á?
Could you repeat the whole message? (appropriate only when the whole message was lost)
אפשר לחזור על מספר ההזמנה?
efshár lakhazór al mispár hahazmaná?
Could you repeat the order number? (targeted repair)
2. Treating echo order as the neutral question pattern. Both orders exist, but they answer different discourse needs.
כמה הוא שילם?
káma hu shilém?
How much did he pay? (ordinary information question)
הוא שילם כמה?
hu shilém káma?
He paid how much? (echoing a price just mentioned)
3. Forgetting agreement in a direct request. The impersonal form is invariant; the personal form is not.
אתה יכול לאיית את זה?
atá yakhól le'ayét et ze?
Can you spell that? (to a man)
את יכולה לאיית את זה?
at yekholá le'ayét et ze?
Can you spell that? (to a woman)
4. Crossing meaning repair with a challenge. The two questions are different constructions.
מה זה אומר בעברית פשוטה?
ma ze omér be'ivrít pshutá?
What does that mean in plain Hebrew? (asking for meaning)
מה זאת אומרת, ביטלתם בלי להודיע?
ma zot oméret, bitáltem bli lehodía?
What do you mean, you cancelled without notifying us? (challenge, not a vocabulary question)
Key Takeaways
- General repetition requests include סליחה?, מה אמרת?, איך אמרת?, אפשר לחזור על זה?, אפשר שוב?, מה?, and אה?, each with its own register and amount of explicitness.
- Target the actual failure with מה זה אומר?, איך כותבים את זה?, אפשר יותר לאט?, or אפשר לאיית?
- Direct אתה יכול / את יכולה requests agree with the addressee; impersonal אפשר does not.
- A single in-situ wh-expression normally signals an echo: הוא נסע לאן?, שילמת כמה?, אתה עשית מה?
- Ordinary information questions normally front the wh-expression. Echo order is discourse-licensed, not a free replacement.
- Hebrew wh-question function is not reducible to one rising or falling contour; context, word order, wh-word accentuation, and final intonation work together.
Now practice Hebrew
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Start learning Hebrew →Related Topics
- Interrupting and Holding the FloorC1 — Hebrew floor-management tokens for entering, holding, and reclaiming a turn, with casual overlap and formal-meeting transcripts.
- Rhetorical Questions and מה פתאוםB2 — Use מה פתאום, מה זאת אומרת, and the rhetorical ש + future frame to reject assumptions, deny obligations, or make a point rather than request information.
- On the Phone: הלו, מי זה, רגעA2 — Follow a Hebrew phone call from הלו through identification, holding, connection trouble, voicemail and a natural closing.
- מה and מיA1 — מה asks about things and מי about people, and neither one ever changes shape. What is worth knowing beyond that is the spelling — when they fuse with הוא and היא the alef drops (מהו, מיהי) — how they behave under a preposition (במה, ממה, and the two readings of למה), and the handful of frozen questions built on מה that you will use every day.
- Israeli Hebrew IntonationB1 — In spoken Hebrew the melody is not decoration — a rise is the only thing that turns אתה בא into a question, and the contour on בטח decides whether it means 'sure' or 'yeah, right'. Here are the contours that carry meaning, and the English habits that break them.