The Hif'il Verbs You Meet First

Hif'il's front-of-word alternation is one rule and you can have it in an afternoon — it is worked out on where did the ה go?. What actually takes a year is the government: which preposition each verb drags along behind it. That is lexical information, it is invisible in the conjugation table, and English is no guide at all. So this page pairs each verb with what it takes.

The list

The government column comes from the dictionaries. Pealim annotates several of these in its own headwords — להכיר "(את)", להציע "(את, ל־)", להודיע "to announce to someone (ל־)" — and for the rest the preposition is read off the example sentences Milog prints under each sense, which is where a dictionary actually keeps this information.

One row is not sourced the same way. Milog's entry for הסביר gives two senses and no example sentence at all, so it does not fix a preposition. הסביר ל־ is the standard pattern and it is what every other verb of telling in the table does — הודיע ל־, הראה ל־ — but treat it as the pattern rather than as something a dictionary has demonstrated for you.

Which of them are weak

Look down the root-class column and something useful falls out: the highest-frequency hif'il verbs are disproportionately weak roots. Four of the list are hollow — הבין, הכין, הביא, הקים — and they behave identically to one another whether the middle radical is a ו or a י — a merger hif'il makes and pa'al does not, where יָקוּם and יָשִׁיר stay apart; the paradigm is on hollow roots in hif'il. Two are פ״נ, with the נ assimilated into a dagesh (הִגִּיעַ, הִכִּיר). Three are פ״י with a cholam-vav at the front (הודיע, הוריד, הוציא) — and הציע is the odd one out, a י־צ־ע root whose yod assimilates like a נ instead: הִצִּיעַ, מַצִּיעַ, not *הוֹצִיעַ.

That is not an accident of this list. Old, frequent verbs are exactly the ones whose weak roots never got regularised.

Distinctions English hands you wrong

Common Mistakes

1. Giving הסביר a direct object for the person. English explain me the rules is already wrong in English, and explain the rules to me has the person in a prepositional phrase — but the reflex from other verbs takes over anyway.

2. Saying הגעתי לבית for "I got home". Both sentences below are correct Hebrew — that is the point. הביתה is a directional form that already contains "to", so putting ל־ in front of בית gives you a different, more specific statement: some particular house, not home.

3. Reading התחיל עם as "started with". This one is a trap rather than a slip, and Milog is explicit about it.

4. Giving הסכים a direct object. British English agree the terms takes a bare object, and it transfers straight across.

Key Takeaways

• The conjugation is one rule; the preposition is the work. Learn each verb with its government, as a unit.
• הגיע takes ל־ and never an object — no הגיע something, no הגיע a place.
• הכיר splits by preposition: את for a person or a field you are acquainted with, ב־ for formal recognition (formal).
• הסביר, הראה and הודיע all put the person in ל־ and the content in את, על or ש־.
• הצליח takes an infinitive or stands alone; הפסיק takes an infinitive when something stops and את when you stop it.
• הזמין is both invite and order — a guest, a table, a taxi, a delivery.
• The list is weak-root heavy: hollow הבין · הכין · הביא · הקים, פ״נ הגיע · הכיר, פ״י הודיע · הוריד · הוציא, and הציע, whose yod assimilates like a נ (הִצִּיעַ, not *הוֹצִיעַ).
• Milog's הסביר entry has no example sentence, so the ל־ there is the pattern of its neighbours rather than a documented citation.
• התחיל עם is not "started with" — Milog gives it as flirting, and התחיל איתו also as starting a fight. "Start with" is התחיל ב־.