מָה and מִי are the first two question words anyone learns, and the syntax around them is mercifully simple: put the word in front of an otherwise untouched sentence and stop. That mechanism — no inversion, no auxiliary, nothing invented — is set out on מי, מה, איזה as pronouns. This page is about the two words themselves: how they are spelled when they fuse with something, what happens under a preposition, and the frozen phrases that carry a disproportionate share of everyday Hebrew. Noun-modifying איזה, free relatives and echo questions are separate constructions.
מה זה בעברית? אני לא מכיר את המילה.
ma ze be'ivrít? aní lo makír et hamilá
What's this in Hebrew? I don't know the word. (m. speaker)
מי אמר לך את זה?
mi amár lekhá et ze?
Who told you that? (to a man)
The fused writings: מהו, מהי, מיהו, מיהי
Hebrew lets מה and מי join a following הוא or היא into one word. The Academy of the Hebrew Language has ruled on the resulting spelling, and its answer has three parts worth memorising together.
- Both spellings are legitimate. מיהו and מי הוא are equally acceptable; so are מהו and מה הוא.
- In the one-word spelling the final alef drops. מהו, מהי, מיהו, מיהי — never מהוא. The same drop runs through the whole family: *משהו, מישהו, כלשהו, which the Academy also prefers without the alef.
- Where the join could be misread, write two words. The Academy's own example is מהם: fused it is mahém, "what are they", but the same three letters spell מֵהֶם mehém, "from them". Two words remove the ambiguity at no cost.
The alef-dropping is old. The Academy notes that this way of writing is already common in the manuscripts of rabbinic literature and commoner still in the printed editions, and reads that as evidence that the pairs had stopped being felt as pairs at all. The fused spellings themselves are of very different ages, though, and the Academy is precise about it: משהו is ordinary in rabbinic literature, כלשהו turns up sparsely in Talmud manuscripts and is at home in medieval writing, and מיהו and מישהו were probably created in the modern period.
מהו ההבדל בין שתי התוכניות?
máhu hahevdél bein shtei hatokhniyót?
What is the difference between the two plans? (formal — an exam paper or a report; conversation says מה ההבדל)
מה הם התנאים לקבלת ההלוואה?
ma hem hatna'ím lekabalát hahalva'á?
What are the conditions for getting the loan? (formal — the two-word spelling avoids confusion with מֵהֶם, 'from them')
Under a preposition: במה, ממה, and the two למה
A preposition does not sit behind מה in Hebrew — it goes in front, and the whole unit moves to the head of the sentence together. The one-letter prepositions fuse in writing, as in במה and למה; longer prepositions such as על remain separate. Prepositional questions in general are on fronting the preposition; here are the forms you need first.
| Written | Reads | Means |
|---|---|---|
| בְּמָה | bemá | in what, with what, how (classical Hebrew also points it בַּמֶּה bamé, as in כִּי־בַמֶּה נֶחְשָׁב הוּא, Isaiah 2:22) |
| מִמָּה | mimá | from what, of what |
| עַל מָה | al ma | about what, on what (written apart) |
| לְמָה | lemá | to what |
במה אפשר לעזור?
bemá efshár la'azór?
How can I help? (literally 'in what' — what you hear across a counter)
ממה את מפחדת? זה רק כלב.
mimá at mefakhédet? ze rak kélev
What are you afraid of? It's only a dog. (to a woman)
The last row of that table hides a trap that pointing solves and unpointed writing does not. לְמָה lemá is "to what"; לָמָּה láma is "why". Unpointed, both are למה, and only the sentence tells you which one you are reading.
למה אתה מתכוון? לא הבנתי.
lemá atá mitkavén? lo hevánti
What do you mean? I didn't follow. (to a man — 'to what are you referring', so lemá)
למה לא אמרת לי קודם?
láma lo amárta li kódem?
Why didn't you tell me earlier? (to a man — the ordinary 'why', láma)
The verb and the meaning decide. When ל־ has its own role — as with התכוון ל־, התייחס ל־ and other verbs that select it — למה is lemá, “to what.” When the whole word asks for a reason, it is láma, “why.”
The frozen questions
A good deal of daily Hebrew is מה plus a fixed continuation, learned whole rather than built. This is a set, not a frequency ranking — what matters is the register attached to each.
| Phrase | Reads | Use |
|---|---|---|
| מה שלומך? | ma shlomkhá / ma shlomékh | how are you (neutral, works in writing too) |
| מה נשמע? | ma nishmá | how's it going (informal) |
| מה קורה? | ma koré | what's up (informal, among friends) |
| מה קרה? | ma kará | what happened — concern, not a greeting |
| מה השעה? | ma hasha'á | what's the time (neutral) |
| מי יודע | mi yodéa | who knows — a shrug, not a question (neutral) |
מה שלומך? לא התראינו המון זמן.
ma shlomékh? lo hitra'ínu hamón zman
How are you? We haven't seen each other in ages. (to a woman)
מה נשמע? מזמן לא דיברנו.
ma nishmá? mizmán lo dibárnu
How's it going? It's been a while. (informal)
מה השעה? הטלפון שלי מת.
ma hasha'á? hatélefon shelí met
What's the time? My phone's dead.
מי יודע מתי הם יגיעו, הכביש פקוק.
mi yodéa matáy hem yagí'u, hakvísh pakúk
Who knows when they'll get here — the road's jammed.
Note מה קורה beside מה קרה: one letter apart in writing, two vowels apart in speech, and completely different social moves. מה קורה is what's up; מה קרה means something has gone wrong and you have noticed.
Two good ways to ask a name
Hebrew has two ordinary questions for someone's name. מה השם שלך? asks “what is your name?” directly; איך קוראים לך? is the everyday idiom, literally “how do they call you?” The second is often taught as a replacement for the first, but both are grammatical and useful.
מה השם שלך?
ma hashém shelkhá?
What's your name? (to a man — a direct question, also natural on a form or at a counter)
איך קוראים לך?
eikh kor'ím lekhá?
What's your name? (to a man — literally 'how do they call you?', the everyday idiom)
Common Mistakes
1. Keeping the alef in the fused spellings. The pronunciation gives no clue, so the alef of הוא gets written out of habit — and Israelis do it too.
❌ מהוא הפתרון הנכון?
Incorrect as a spelling — the alef drops when the words fuse: מהו הפתרון הנכון? Written apart it is מה הוא הפתרון הנכון?, which the Academy accepts equally.
❌ מישהוא התקשר בזמן שהייתי בחוץ
Incorrect as a spelling — the same alef drops across the whole family: מישהו, משהו, כלשהו. Write מישהו התקשר בזמן שהייתי בחוץ.
✅ מישהו השאיר פה מטרייה, זאת שלך?
míshehu hish'ír po mitriyá, zot shelákh?
Somebody's left an umbrella here — is it yours? (to a woman)
2. Giving מה the English hesitation vowel. The spelling may remind an English speaker of meh, but the Hebrew question word is ma.
❌ מה
meh
Incorrect as a pronunciation — here מָה has a full open a: ma, the vowel of בָּא. Do not reduce it to the English hesitation sound 'meh'. מִי is a clean mi, rhyming with English 'me'.
✅ מה אתם מזמינים? אני עוד לא החלטתי.
ma atém mazminím? aní od lo hekhláti
What are you ordering? I haven't decided yet. (to a group)
✅ מי רוצה עוד קפה לפני שאני מכבה את המכונה?
mi rotsé od kafé lifnéi she'aní mekhabé et hamekhoná?
Who wants more coffee before I turn the machine off?
3. Dropping the article after מה. A run of everyday questions is built as מה plus a definite noun — מה השעה, מה הבעיה, מה העניין — and because they are learned by ear, the ה־ buried in the middle is the first thing to go missing.
❌ מה שעה?
Incorrect — מה השעה is an equation, ‘what [is] the time’, and its second term has to be definite: מה השעה? Same with מה הבעיה? and מה העניין?
✅ מה הבעיה? נראה לי שהכול בסדר.
ma habe'ayá? nir'é li shehakól beséder
What's the problem? Looks fine to me.
Key Takeaways
- As interrogative pronouns, מה asks about things and מי about people. Neither inflects, and neither modifies a noun.
- Fused with הוא or היא, the final alef drops: מהו, מהי, מיהו, מיהי — and likewise משהו, מישהו, כלשהו.
- The Academy holds both spellings valid (מיהו and מי הוא alike), and prefers two words wherever the fusion could be misread — its own example is מהם, which also spells מֵהֶם "from them".
- A preposition goes in front of מה. One-letter prepositions fuse — בְּמָה, מִמָּה, לְמָה — while a longer one remains separate: על מה.
- Unpointed למה represents two different forms — lemá "to what" and láma "why". The verb's construction and the intended meaning tell you which.
- The frozen questions each carry a register: מה שלומך (neutral), מה נשמע and מה קורה (informal), and מה קרה, which is not a greeting at all.
- מה שלומך has two readings on one spelling: shlomkhá to a man, shlomékh to a woman, shlomkhém to a group.
- מה השם שלך? and איך קוראים לך? are both valid ways to ask someone's name; the second is the everyday idiom, not a correction of the first.
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Start learning Hebrew →Related Topics
- מי, מה, איזה as PronounsA1 — מי asks about people, מה about things, and איזה / איזו / אילו pick one item out of a set. The structural point matters more than the words: Hebrew fronts the question word without English-style inversion or do-support; only the word being questioned, and sometimes its agreement, changes.
- עם מי, על מה: Prepositions Lead the QuestionA2 — When מי or מה is the complement of a preposition, Hebrew fronts the whole unit—עם מי, על מה, למי—not the question word alone.
- מה ש… and מי ש…: Free RelativesB2 — Hebrew turns question words into noun-like clauses with ש־: מי שרוצה ‘whoever wants,’ מה שקרה ‘what happened,’ and the wider family איפה ש, מתי ש and איך ש.