The Verbless Sentence: אני ישראלי | Hebrew Grammar

The first complete sentence you can build in Hebrew has two parts and nothing between them. אני ישראלי — I'm Israeli. הבית גדול — the house is big. הם כאן — they're here. Put a subject down, put a predicate after it, and stop: the sentence is finished. This page is about what can occupy that second slot and what it has to agree with. The reflex to fill the gap in the middle has its own page, Hebrew has no 'am', 'is' or 'are'.

The four things a predicate can be

Predicate is a…	Example	English
noun	הוא רופא · אני סטודנטית	he's a doctor · I'm a student
adjective	הבית גדול · האוכל טעים	the house is big · the food is tasty
prepositional phrase	היא בבית · אנחנו מתל אביב	she's at home · we're from Tel Aviv
adverb	הם כאן · זה מספיק	they're here · that's enough

A noun as predicate states what someone is — a job, a nationality, a role. Note that the predicate noun is bare: Hebrew has no a, so there is nothing to leave out.

אחי רופא, אבל הוא לא אוהב לדבר על עבודה בבית.

akhí rofé, avál hu lo ohév ledabér al avodá babáyit

My brother's a doctor, but he doesn't like talking about work at home.

אני סטודנטית בשנה ראשונה ועדיין לא מכירה אף אחד.

aní studéntit beshaná rishoná va'adáyin lo makirá af ekhád

I'm a first-year student and I still don't know a soul. (f. speaker)

An adjective as predicate describes the subject:

הבית גדול מדי בשבילנו מאז שהילדים עזבו.

habáyit gadól midáy bishvilénu me'áz shehayeladím azvú

The house is too big for us now the kids have moved out.

האוכל טעים, אבל המנות ממש קטנות.

ha'ókhel ta'ím, avál hamanót mamásh ktanót

The food's good, but the portions are tiny.

A prepositional phrase as predicate says where someone is, or where they are from:

היא בבית, ראיתי אור בסלון.

hi babáyit, ra'íti or basalón

She's home — I saw a light on in the living room.

אנחנו מתל אביב, אבל אנחנו גרים בחיפה כבר עשר שנים.

anákhnu mi-Tel Avív, avál anákhnu garím bekhéifa kvar éser shaním

We're from Tel Aviv, but we've been living in Haifa for ten years.

An adverb as predicate places the subject in time or space, or measures it:

הם כאן כבר חצי שעה, תגידי להם שאני יורדת.

hem kan kvar khatsí sha'á, tagídi lahém she'aní yorédet

They've been here half an hour — tell them I'm on my way down. (f. speaker, to a woman)

זה מספיק לשלושה אנשים? נראה לי שכן.

ze maspík lishloshá anashím? nir'é li shekén

Is that enough for three people? I think so.

💡

Four predicate types, one sentence shape. Whatever you put in the second slot, the assembly instruction never changes: subject, then predicate, then nothing. That is worth more than four separate patterns, because it means you can build a sentence out of any two things you know how to say. One qualification for later: with a bare indefinite plural subject the pattern needs help — ילדים חמודים reads as the noun phrase cute children, and children are cute is ילדים הם חמודים, on the pronoun copula.

The predicate agrees with its subject

An adjective in the predicate is still an adjective, so it takes the subject's gender and number. Four cells, and they are the same four endings you already know from adjectives inside a noun phrase:

	Sentence	Reads
m. sg	הבית גדול	habáyit gadól
f. sg	הדירה גדולה	hadirá gdolá
m. pl	הבתים גדולים	habatím gdolím
f. pl	הדירות גדולות	hadirót gdolót

החדרים קטנים אבל הם נקיים, וזה מה שחשוב.

hakhadarím ktaním avál hem nekiyím, vezé ma shekhashúv

The rooms are small but they're clean, and that's what matters.

Now the part that catches people out. The four cells above are easy because the subjects announce their gender — דירה ends in ־ָה, בתים ends in ־ִים. A great many everyday nouns announce nothing at all, and the agreement in a verbless sentence is where the mistake becomes audible:

Sentence	Reads	Why the feminine
הדרך ארוכה	hadérekh aruká	דֶּרֶךְ is feminine
העיר יפה	ha'ír yafá	עִיר is feminine
הכוס מלאה	hakós mele'á	כּוֹס is feminine
האבן כבדה	ha'éven kvedá	אֶבֶן is feminine

Every one of those nouns ends in a consonant, which is the shape the working default calls masculine. The default is a guess, and these four are among the commonest words it gets wrong; the full list lives with grammatical gender. What matters here is that a verbless sentence gives you nowhere to hide — there is no verb to carry the agreement instead, so the adjective is the only word in the sentence that can be wrong, and it is the word everyone hears.

הדרך הביתה ארוכה בשעה הזאת, עדיף לחכות קצת.

hadérekh habáyta aruká basha'á hazót, adíf lekhakót ktsat

The drive home is long at this hour — better to wait a bit.

הכוס מלאה מדי, אתה הולך לשפוך את זה.

hakós mele'á midáy, atá holékh lishpókh et ze

That glass is too full — you're going to spill it. (to a man)

One ה is the difference between a sentence and a phrase

This is the single most productive contrast on the page, and it costs one letter:

Hebrew	Reads	Is
הבית גדול	habáyit gadól	the house is big — a finished sentence
הבית הגדול	habáyit hagadól	the big house — a noun phrase, still waiting for a predicate

Put the article on the adjective and you have not made the sentence more definite — you have stopped it being a sentence. Definiteness is copied onto an attributive adjective and withheld from a predicative one, so the presence or absence of that ה is the only thing telling a reader whether they have been handed a statement or a label.

הבית הגדול בקצה הרחוב נמכר אתמול.

habáyit hagadól biktsé harekhóv nimkár etmól

The big house at the end of the street sold yesterday. (הבית הגדול names something; the sentence needs נמכר to say anything about it)

The two positions are worked out in full on predicative vs attributive; the demonstrative behaves the same way, and that pair — זה ספר against הספר הזה — is on this and these.

Nothing is being dropped

Courses routinely phrase this backwards: Hebrew drops the verb "to be" in the present. Nothing is being dropped. Open the paradigm of לִהְיוֹת and you find a past, a future, an infinitive and an imperative — and then the table stops. There are no everyday present-tense forms to omit, so there is nothing missing from אני ישראלי. The predicate carries the present by itself.

The framing matters practically, not just philosophically. A learner who believes a word has been deleted goes looking for the deleted word, finds the infinitive in a dictionary, and puts it in. A learner who knows the slot never existed simply stops after the predicate. Past and future are a different matter — there the language does need a verb, and it uses היה and יהיה — and negation puts a single לא in front of the predicate, on negating a verbless sentence.

💡

Test any Hebrew sentence you have built by counting the words you would need in English and the words you actually wrote. If the Hebrew is exactly one word shorter and that missing word is am, is or are, you have almost certainly got it right.

Common Mistakes

1. Leaving the predicate adjective in the masculine. English adjectives agree with nothing, so agreement is a step to be added rather than translated — and in a verbless sentence there is no verb to absorb the error.

❌ אני עייף

Incorrect as said by a woman — the predicate adjective takes the subject's gender, so a female speaker says אני עייפה. Hebrew has no gender-neutral form to fall back on.

✅ אני עייפה, אני קמה מחר בחמש.

aní ayefá, aní kamá makhár bekhamésh

I'm tired — I'm up at five tomorrow. (f. speaker)

2. Trusting the ending on a consonant-final noun. The ending is a default, and these are the words it fails on.

❌ האבן כבד

Incorrect — אבן is feminine, although nothing about the word says so, and the predicate adjective has to follow it: האבן כבדה.

✅ האבן הזאת כבדה מדי בשבילי, תעזור לי רגע?

ha'éven hazót kvedá midáy bishvilí, ta'azór li réga?

This stone's too heavy for me — give me a hand a second? (to a man)

3. Making the predicate definite. Nothing warns you: the result is grammatical, so no listener stops you — they just wait for the rest of the sentence.

❌ הבית הגדול

Incorrect as 'the house is big' — with the article on both words this is a noun phrase, 'the big house', and the sentence has not started. The sentence is הבית גדול, with no ה on the adjective.

✅ הבית גדול, אבל הגינה קטנה מאוד.

habáyit gadól, avál haginá ktaná me'ód

The house is big, but the garden is tiny.

4. Agreeing with the nearest noun instead of the subject. When a possessive phrase sits between the subject and the adjective, the wrong noun is the loudest one.

❌ הבית של אחותי גדולה

Incorrect — the adjective agrees with the subject בית, not with the closest word. אחותי is buried inside the possessive phrase and controls nothing: הבית של אחותי גדול.

✅ הבית של אחותי גדול פי שניים משלנו.

habáyit shel akhotí gadól pi shnáyim mishelánu

My sister's house is twice the size of ours.

Key Takeaways

A Hebrew present-tense sentence is subject + predicate, with nothing in between: אני ישראלי, הבית גדול, הם כאן.
The predicate can be a noun, an adjective, a prepositional phrase or an adverb. The sentence shape is identical in all four cases.
A predicate adjective agrees in gender and number: הבית גדול, הדירה גדולה, הבתים גדולים, הדירות גדולות.
The agreement is decided by the noun's real gender, not its ending — הדרך ארוכה, העיר יפה, הכוס מלאה, האבן כבדה are all feminine behind a consonant-final spelling.
הבית גדול is a sentence; הבית הגדול is a noun phrase. One ה separates a statement from a label.
Nothing is being dropped. לִהְיוֹת has no everyday present-tense forms, so there is no missing word to hunt for — only the past (היה) and the future (יהיה) need a verb at all.

Now practice Hebrew

Reading grammar gets you part of the way. The exercises are where it sticks — free, no signup needed.

Start learning Hebrew →