The Huf'al Forms You Really Do Meet

Huf'al gets taught late and you have been using it since A2, because its participles arrive as ordinary vocabulary long before anyone says the word binyan. This page is the short list of what you genuinely meet, plus the one reading cue worth installing; the structure behind it all is on the huf'al overview.

Seven participles you already own

Seven rows. The right-hand column counts Hebrew Wikipedia articles containing the exact string (August 2026) — a written corpus, and for מוכר an unusable one, since those same four letters also spell מוֹכֵר mokhér "a seller". More on that in a moment.

Three homographs on that list

מוכר is the sharpest. Written bare it is either מוֹכֵר mokhér, the pa'al participle "seller", or מוּכָּר mukár, the huf'al "known, familiar". Different binyanim, different roots — מ־כ־ר against נ־כ־ר — and one spelling.

מובן is subtler, because the two readings sound identical too: the participle "understood" and the noun מוּבָן "meaning, sense" are both muván. Only the syntax tells them apart.

מותר is the one nobody warns you about, because both readings are huf'al. Pealim heads מוּתָּר mutár "permitted" on נ־ת־ר, and a second מוּתָר mutár "is left over" on י־ת־ר, the passive of הותיר. Same letters, same sound, two roots — so the 3,499 in the table is not a clean count either, merely one dominated by "permitted".

Eight finite forms that run the news

You will produce almost none of these in speech, and you will meet all of them in print — this is the vocabulary of news headlines. Learn each one in three parts — the huf'al you read, the hif'il behind it, and the impersonal plural you would actually say.

Eight rows. Two of them deserve a warning label. הוצא and הוצע differ by one letter and by nothing at all in speech — Pealim reads both as hutsá, because א and ע are equally silent here. They are unrelated verbs from unrelated roots: הוצא is the passive of הוציא (י־צ־א, take out, issue, publish), הוצע the passive of הציע (י־צ־ע, offer, propose). And the 4,950 for הוצא is inflated, because those four letters also spell the hif'il imperative הוֹצֵא! "take it out!"

הוחלט takes an infinitive, not a ש־ clause

This is the frame to get right, because English it was decided that… pushes you the other way. A regex search of Hebrew Wikipedia returns 7,515 articles containing הוחלט followed by ל־ against 1,975 for הוחלט ש־ and 3,155 for הוחלט על. Sampling the first frame shows what you would expect: הוחלט לאחד, הוחלט להכין, הוחלט לשנות, הוחלט להקים, הוחלט להעביר — an infinitive almost every time.

So הוחלט ל־ + infinitive is the pattern to learn first. הוחלט ש־ is perfectly good Hebrew and turns up especially with a negative (הוחלט שלא לתפוס), but it is the minority frame.

אתם מוזמנים, in a real invitation

מוזמן is the participle of הוזמן, and in the plural it is how Israelis issue an open invitation — on a poster, in a WhatsApp group, at the end of an email. It is not a frozen idiom: it is an ordinary predicative participle that agrees like any other, so a single woman is מוזמנת and a mixed group is מוזמנים.

The reading cue, and where it breaks

Here is the payoff. A word that opens מו־ or הו־ and has an a in the stem is almost always huf'al: מוזמן, מודפס, מוגבל, הוחלט, הוגש. That one observation makes a surprising amount of headline Hebrew parse on first reading.

Now the limit, in the same breath. מו־ followed by an i in the stem is a hif'il present, from a verb whose first root letter is י. The root י־ר־ד gives the first two rows below — and a second, unrelated root lands a third word on the same four letters:

מודיע modía works the same way as מוריד. And the cue says nothing at all about the many מו־ words that are simply nouns or loans — מוזיאון, מוזיקה, מושב. Use it as a first guess on a verb, not as a parser.

Common Mistakes

1. Building an infinitive to hang off צריך or רוצה. huf'al has none, and English hands you to be moved as freely as to move.

2. Giving הוחלט a subject. It is impersonal — nobody at all does the deciding — so it cannot be inflected for a person.

3. Writing הוצא for הוצע. They are homophones, so the ear gives you no help and the wrong letter goes down.

4. Making yourself the subject of מותר. English I'm allowed to has a personal subject; Hebrew's מותר has none, and the person arrives with ל־.

Key Takeaways

• Seven huf'al participles arrive as A2 vocabulary: מוכר, מוגבל, מוכן, מותר, מובן, מודאג, מוגזם. Pealim gives several of them their own מוּקְטָל-pattern dictionary entries.
• Three of the seven are homographs. מוכר is מוֹכֵר mokhér "seller" (pa'al) beside מוּכָּר mukár "familiar" (huf'al); מובן is the participle "understood" beside the noun מוּבָן "meaning", which also sounds the same; and מותר is two huf'al participles at once — מוּתָּר "permitted" (נ־ת־ר) and מוּתָר "is left over" (י־ת־ר).
• Eight finite forms carry the reading load: הוחלט, הועבר, הוצא, הוזמן, הוצע, הוגש, הודפס, הוכן.
• הוצא and הוצע are homophones, both hutsá, from the unrelated roots י־צ־א and י־צ־ע.
• הוחלט ל־ + infinitive is the main frame — 7,515 Hebrew Wikipedia articles against 1,975 for הוחלט ש־. The ש־ version is correct, just rarer.
• אתם מוזמנים / את מוזמנת is an ordinary predicative participle and agrees like one; it is not a fixed phrase.
• Reading cue: מו־ or הו־ with an a in the stem is huf'al. Its limit: מו־ with an i is a hif'il פ״י present — מוֹרִיד, מוֹדִיעַ — and plenty of מו־ words (מוזיאון, מוזיקה) are not verbs at all.
• There is no infinitive and no imperative. Anything English builds with to be …ed has to be restructured, usually as an impersonal plural.