Reading Israeli Signs and Notices

A sign is the first Hebrew most visitors read, and it is written in a grammar no phrasebook teaches. Israeli public notices almost never say אתה or את — they do not address you at all. They use a small set of impersonal frames that name an obligation without naming who has it, and once you know them you can read essentially any door, platform or stairwell in the country.

The signs below were written for this page in the ordinary wording of Israeli signage. None is pointed, because real signs never are; the vocalisation is supplied only for the audio.

Signs that are just a noun

A great many Israeli signs are a bare noun. No verb, no article, no instruction — the sign labels the thing and leaves you to work out what to do.

The same shape covers כניסה knisá "entrance", חנייה khanayá "parking", קופה kupá "cash desk", מדרגות נעות madregót na'ót "escalator", and שירותים sherutím "toilets". Most are שמות פעולה — nouns built from a verb, so entering becomes the label for the door you enter by. That noun class has its own page at שם פעולה.

Negate one and you get the next shape: אין plus the noun.

יש ל and אין ל: the impersonal pair

Here is the system proper. Put יש or אין in front of ל־ plus an infinitive and you have an obligation or a prohibition with no subject at all.

The reason this frame exists is worth stating, because English has no equivalent and translators reach for the wrong thing. English signs use the bare imperative — Stand behind the line, Do not lean — which in Hebrew would force you to choose a gender and a number for the reader: תעמוד to one man, תעמדי to one woman, תעמדו to a crowd. A sign cannot know. יש ל and אין ל dodge the choice entirely, because an infinitive has no person. That is the whole design. The frame is laid out in full on the infinitive as a command and יש ל + infinitive.

נא — please, and where את reappears

נא softens the same infinitive into a request. It is the politest register on a sign and appears wherever the notice is asking rather than commanding.

Note the negative: נא לא ל־, with לא between נא and the infinitive. And note את in the first one. Dropping the personal subject changes nothing about the object marker — הכניסה is definite, so את is obligatory. Compare אין להשליך פסולת above, where the object is indefinite and there is no את at all. That contrast is the whole of את in two lines.

What the sign says and what a person says

The same prohibition exists in three registers, and Israelis move between them constantly. The formal one makes the activity the subject of an adjective; the everyday one uses אסור or מותר with an infinitive.

אסור and מותר do not inflect for person either — they are impersonal predicates, and the person, if there is one, arrives on ל־: אסור לי לעשן "I'm not allowed to smoke". Their full behaviour is on מותר and אסור.

States, not actions

A second family of signs uses a passive participle — an adjective built from a verb, describing the state something is in rather than an action anyone is taking. These agree in gender and number like any adjective.

פתוח / סגור, שמור "reserved", תפוס "occupied" and פנוי "vacant" all belong here — the last two are what the little window on a toilet door says. Their formation is on the pa'ul participle.

The two words on every door in Israel

These are the exception that proves the rule: they are true imperatives, masculine singular, frozen into labels. Nobody hears them as addressing a man — they have stopped being verbs and become the names of two actions, which is why no sign anywhere writes דחפי for a woman. Beware דחוף: with different vowels the same three letters are the adjective dakhúf "urgent", which is what you will meet far more often in an office. More frozen forms are on frozen imperatives.

The marks: geresh and gershayim

Signage is where Hebrew's two in-word punctuation marks are most visible, and they are the detail printers most often get wrong.

• גרש ׳ (U+05F3) marks a single word cut short: רח׳ for רחוב, מס׳ for מספר, עמ׳ for עמוד. It goes after the last surviving letter.
• גרשיים ״ (U+05F4) marks an acronym, and it sits one letter in from the end however long the string: ת״א, בע״מ, ש״ח, ק״ג.

Printed signs very often carry the ASCII apostrophe (U+0027) and the ASCII double-quote (U+0022) instead, because those are the keys on the keyboard. They are typographic substitutes, not the correct characters — a Hebrew keyboard produces the real marks, and a sign that uses the straight quote is making the same mistake as an English sign that writes its for it's. Everything about both marks is on geresh and gershayim; how the acronyms are read aloud is on ראשי תיבות.

Common Mistakes

1. Losing את when the subject disappears. The impersonal frame removes the person, not the object marker.

2. Typing the apostrophe key instead of a geresh. This is an orthographic error, not a typographic preference, and it is the one thing on a sign a Hebrew reader notices instantly.

3. Leaving the state adjective in the masculine. סגור, פתוח, תפוס and שמור are adjectives and agree with what they describe.

4. Writing a sign the way you would speak to a friend. Both sentences below are correct Hebrew. Only one of them belongs on a wall.

Key Takeaways

• Israeli signs never address you. They use impersonal frames because an infinitive has no gender or number, and a sign cannot know who is reading it.
• The four frames: a bare noun (יציאה, שעות פתיחה), אין + noun (אין כניסה), יש/אין + ל־ + infinitive (יש לעמוד, אין להישען), and נא + ל־ + infinitive for a request. The negative of the last is נא לא ל־.
• אסור and מותר plus an infinitive are the same content in the everyday spoken register; the formal written version makes the activity the subject instead (העישון אסור).
• Removing the subject does not remove את: a definite object still takes it (לחסום את הכניסה), an indefinite one still does not (להשליך פסולת).
• Adjectival signs — סגור, פתוח, תפוס, שמור, רטוב — agree with the noun they describe.
• דחוף and משוך are frozen true imperatives, masculine singular, and nobody hears them as addressing a man. Watch דחוף: with different vowels the same three letters are the adjective dakhúf "urgent".
• גרש ׳ shortens one word (רח׳, מס׳); גרשיים ״ marks an acronym and sits one letter from the end (ת״א, בע״מ). The ASCII apostrophe and double-quote are substitutes, not the real characters.