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.
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)
מה זה has a second job
Before the spelling, one thing you will hear on your first day in Israel. מה זה in front of an adjective is not a question at all — it is an intensifier, roughly English so or unbelievably, and it belongs to relaxed conversation.
מה זה חם היום, אי אפשר לצאת.
ma ze kham hayóm, i efshár latsét
It's boiling today — you can't go outside. (informal Israeli; here מה זה asks nothing)
Intonation and word order separate the two: a question ends high and the adjective is not part of it (מה זה? — what is that?), while the intensifier runs straight into the adjective without a break.
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?
mahú hahevdél bein shtei hatokhniyót?
What is the difference between the two plans? (formal — an exam paper or a report; conversation says מה ההבדל)
מהם התנאים לקבלת ההלוואה?
mahém hatna'ím lekabalát hahalva'á?
What are the conditions for getting the loan? (formal — and precisely the case where מה הם, in two words, is the safer spelling)
Under a preposition: במה, ממה, and the two למה
A preposition does not sit behind מה in Hebrew — it fuses to the front of it, and the pair moves to the head of the sentence together. Prepositional questions in general are on fronting the preposition; here are the two 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)
In practice the verb decides. התכוון, התייחס and a few others take ל־, so with them למה is lemá; everywhere else it is the everyday láma.
The frozen questions
A good deal of daily Hebrew is מה plus a fixed continuation, learned whole rather than built. No frequency data exists for Hebrew greetings, so this is a set and not a 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.
מה as an exclamation
Classical Hebrew builds an exclamation on מה plus an adjective or a verb — מַה־טֹּבוּ אֹהָלֶיךָ יַעֲקֹב, how goodly are your tents, Jacob (Numbers 24:5). The pattern survives in modern Hebrew, but it is elevated: you will meet it in a poem or a speech, not across a kitchen table.
מה יפה כאן בבוקר.
ma yafé kan babóker
How lovely it is here in the morning. (literary)
כמה נעים פה, לא בא לי לזוז.
káma na'ím po, lo ba li lazúz
It's so nice here — I don't feel like moving. (informal — כמה and איזה are what everyday speech uses instead)
איזה יום יפה, בואו נצא לפארק.
éize yom yafé, bó'u netsé lapárk
What a beautiful day — let's go to the park. (to a group — informal)
The division of labour between the three is worth noticing, because English uses what and how for all of it. מה and כמה head an adjective — מה יפה, כמה נעים. איזה is the one that heads a noun — איזה יום, איזה סרט, איזה בלגן.
מי with ש־
Attach ש־ and מי stops asking: מי ש... is whoever, a noun-sized chunk that can be the subject or object of its sentence. The same goes for מה ש..., what. These are relative constructions rather than questions, and they are handled on free relatives.
מי שרוצה קפה, שיגיד עכשיו.
mi sherotsé kafé, sheyagíd akhsháv
Whoever wants coffee should say so now.
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. Reducing the vowels. English weakens unstressed vowels to a schwa; Hebrew keeps them full, and these two words are where it shows first.
❌ מה
meh
Incorrect as a pronunciation — מָה is a full open a: ma, the vowel of בָּא. English weakens unstressed vowels to a schwa and Hebrew keeps every vowel full, which matters here because these two words are unstressed almost every time you say them. מִי is a clean mi, rhyming with English 'me', for the same reason.
✅ 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
- מה asks about things and מי about people. Neither inflects for anything, and neither ever modifies a noun.
- מה זה plus an adjective is an intensifier, not a question: מה זה חם היום.
- 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 fuses in front: בְּמָה, מִמָּה, and לְמָה. Written apart: על מה.
- Unpointed למה is two words — lemá "to what" and láma "why". The governing verb tells 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.
- The מה exclamation (מה יפה) is elevated; everyday Hebrew uses איזה and כמה.
- With ש־ attached, מי and מה stop asking and become whoever and what.
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- 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 builds a question by putting the question word in front of an otherwise untouched sentence — no inversion, no auxiliary, nothing added.