Nif'al Statives: נמצא, נשאר, נדמה | Hebrew Grammar

Nif'al is not simply the passive of pa'al. Beyond the true passives and the middle voice there is a third group, and it is the one a beginner meets first without ever being told what it is: verbs that name a state — where something is, whether it is still there, how it is regarded. נִמְצָא, נִשְׁאַר, נִדְמֶה, נֶחְשַׁב, נִזְקָק, נֶעֱדַר. None of them has a passive reading, and there is no suppressed agent to hunt for.

נמצא means "is located", not "is found"

This is the mis-gloss to kill on sight. A dictionary will list both senses — Pealim gives "to be found, discovered; to be present, to be located" — and in everyday Hebrew the second is what you meet.

איפה נמצאת התחנה המרכזית?

éifo nimtsét hatakhaná hamerkazít?

Where's the central bus station? (not 'where is the station found')

הוא נמצא במשרד עד ארבע, אחר כך הוא בפגישות.

hu nimtsá bamisrád ad árba, akhár kakh hu bifgishót

He's in the office until four, after that he's in meetings.

Translate those with "is found" and you get English nobody speaks. The place to see the two senses cleanly separated is the past, where "was found" is genuinely what נמצא means — see the second pair in Common Mistakes below.

Why נמצא does so much work

Hebrew has no present-tense copula. There is no word for is, and so no verb to carry a location. The language solves this three ways, and they are not interchangeable.

Device	Job	Example
יֵשׁ	asserts that something exists — introduces it as new	יֵשׁ בֵּית מִרְקַחַת בַּפִּינָּה
bare nominal sentence	locates a subject already in play, with no verb at all	אֲנִי בָּעֲבוֹדָה
נִמְצָא	states explicitly where a known thing is situated	הַמִּשְׂרָד נִמְצָא בַּקּוֹמָה הַשְּׁלִישִׁית

יש בית מרקחת ליד קופת החולים.

yesh beit mirkákhat leyád kupát hakholím

There's a pharmacy next to the clinic. (יש introduces something the listener didn't know about)

אני בעבודה, אתקשר אליך אחר כך.

aní ba'avodá, etkashér elékha akhár kakh

I'm at work — I'll call you later. (to a man; a complete sentence with no verb in it)

Both אני בעבודה and אני נמצא בעבודה are correct. The bare version is lighter and commoner in speech; נמצא makes the locating explicit and is the default in written directions, addresses and descriptions. What you must not do is reach for היה to fill the gap, because היה has no present tense — that is on Hebrew has no 'am', 'is' or 'are'.

The two present paradigms learners cross

נמצא and נשאר sit side by side in a beginner's vocabulary and their feminine singulars are built differently, because מצא is a ל״א root and שאר is not.

	נמצא — be located, be present	נשאר — stay, be left
m. sg.	נִמְצָא nimtsá	נִשְׁאָר nish'ár
f. sg.	נִמְצֵאת nimtsét	נִשְׁאֶרֶת nish'éret
m. pl.	נִמְצָאִים nimtsa'ím	נִשְׁאָרִים nish'arím
f. pl.	נִמְצָאוֹת nimtsa'ót	נִשְׁאָרוֹת nish'arót

The ל״א root keeps the plain ת of the strong verb — נִמְצֵאת, one syllable ending — while נשאר takes the full ־ֶרֶת ending with its own vowel, נִשְׁאֶרֶת, stressed one syllable back. There is no shortcut: this is a property of the root, and it has to be learned per verb.

את נשארת לארוחת ערב או שאת ממהרת?

at nish'éret la'arukhát érev o she'át memahéret?

Are you staying for dinner or are you in a hurry? (to a woman)

נשארתי בבית כל היום, פשוט לא היה לי כוח.

nish'árti babáyit kol hayóm, pashút lo hayá li kóakh

I stayed home all day — I just had no energy.

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Both verbs are homophonous between past 3ms and present ms: נִשְׁאַר and נִשְׁאָר are both nish'ár, נִמְצָא and נִמְצָא are both nimtsá. That is systematic across the whole binyan, not a quirk of these two — and it means an unpointed נשאר carries no tense until the sentence supplies one. On top of that, נמצא is also the pa'al 1pl future "we will find", spelled and pronounced identically; the collision is worked out on pa'al ל״א.

נחשב ל־ — "is considered"

נֶחְשַׁב is the ordinary way to say that something counts as, or is reckoned to be, something else. It takes ל־ before the thing it is reckoned as. Milog files it as נפעל on the root חש״ב and illustrates it in exactly this frame.

המסעדה הזאת נחשבת לאחת הטובות בעיר.

hamis'adá hazót nekhshévet le'akhát hatovót ba'ír

This restaurant is considered one of the best in town.

The pointing is the trap here, and it is worth naming because learners regularise it. נֶחְשַׁב takes a plain shva under the ח — Pealim prints נֶחְשַׁב, נֶחְשָׁב, נֶחְשֶׁבֶת, יֵחָשֵׁב with a shva throughout — while a first-radical א or ה takes a chataf instead: נֶאֱכַל, נֶאֱמַר, נֶהֱנָה. A first-radical ע goes both ways, which is why the group looks arbitrary: נֶעֱצַר and נֶעֱדַר have the chataf, נֶעְלַם has a plain shva. There is no rule to derive this from; check the verb.

המשפחות שנפגעו נזקקות לסיוע מיידי.

hamishpakhót shenifge'ú nizkakót lesiyúa miyadí

The families that were affected need immediate assistance. (formal / journalistic)

שלושה תלמידים נעדרו מהמבחן בלי הודעה מראש.

shloshá talmidím ne'edrú mehamivkhán bli hoda'á merósh

Three pupils were absent from the exam with no advance notice. (formal — school and army register)

נדמה לי — a frame, not an entry

נִדְמֶה לִי שֶׁ… "it seems to me that…" is a frame you will meet early and often, and it is worth being exact about what it is.

The verb itself is real and has a dictionary sense: Pealim heads it לְהִידָּמוֹת, nif'al, "to resemble, to be similar to", and Milog's נפעל entry for the root ד־מ־ה illustrates it with a resemblance. But Milog lists no adverbial "it seems" sense and has no entry for the string נדמה לי. So treat the frame as a live construction — the verb plus a dative experiencer plus a ש־clause — rather than as a lexicalised idiom you have to memorise whole. It behaves compositionally: נדמה לי, נדמה לה, נדמה לנו.

נדמה לי שהם דיברו על זה בישיבה.

nidmé li shehém dibrú al ze bayeshivá

I think they talked about that in the meeting. (literally 'it seems to me that…')

For the plain "look like, resemble" job, everyday Hebrew reaches for the pa'al participle דּוֹמֶה לְ־, not for נדמה.

אתה דומה לאבא שלך בצורה מטורפת.

atá domé le'ába shelkhá betsurá metoréfet

You look unbelievably like your dad. (to a man, informal)

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A lookalike worth knowing about: Milog also files an unpointed נדמה under the root ד־מ־ם, נפעל, glossed השתתק, נאלם "fell silent" — a different root landing on the same written string, here as the feminine נְדָמָה of נָדַם. (Pealim heads that verb לְהִידּוֹם, root ד־מ־ם, and prints its past 3ms as נָדַם ~ נִדְמַם, the two shapes a geminate root allows.) It belongs to the same family as דְּמָמָה "silence", and it is literary; you will meet it in a poem, not in a text message.

Common Mistakes

1. Not agreeing נמצא with its subject. The subject of a stative is a thing, not a person, and learners stop checking gender the moment the subject is furniture.

❌ הספרייה נמצא בקומה השנייה

Incorrect — ספרייה is feminine, so the verb must be נמצאת. נמצא is a participle and agrees like an adjective.

✅ הספרייה נמצאת בקומה השנייה, מול חדר המורים.

hasifriyá nimtsét bakomá hashniyá, mul khadár hamorím

The library is on the second floor, opposite the staff room.

2. Carrying "is found" into the present. The passive sense is real — but it lives in the past, where an actual finding happened. In the present the same verb states a location.

✅ המפתחות נמצאו בסוף מתחת לספה.

hamaftekhót nimtse'ú basóf mitákhat lasapá

The keys were found in the end, under the sofa. (past — a genuine passive: somebody found them)

המפתחות נמצאים על השולחן בכניסה.

hamaftekhót nimtsa'ím al hashulkhán baknisá

The keys are on the table by the door. (present — pure location, and nobody found anything)

3. Making נשאר transitive. English leave covers both "stay" and "leave something behind"; Hebrew splits them across two binyanim, and נשאר takes no object.

❌ נשארתי את התיק באוטובוס

Incorrect — נשארתי means 'I stayed'. Leaving something behind is the hif'il השארתי: השארתי את התיק באוטובוס.

✅ השארתי את התיק באוטובוס ורק בבית שמתי לב.

hish'árti et hatík ba'otóbus verák babáyit sámti lev

I left my bag on the bus and only noticed when I got home.

4. Giving נזקק a bare object, on the model of צריך. Both sentences below are correct, and they differ in two ways at once — the preposition and the register.

✅ הוא נזקק לניתוח דחוף אחרי התאונה.

hu nizkák lenitúakh dakhúf akharéi hate'uná

He required emergency surgery after the accident. (Pealim gives the government in the gloss itself: 'to need, to require (ל-)')

✅ הוא היה צריך ניתוח דחוף אחרי התאונה.

hu hayá tsaríkh nitúakh dakhúf akharéi hate'uná

He needed emergency surgery after the accident. (צריך takes its object bare — no preposition)

The two are not interchangeable in tone: נזקק reads as written, administrative or journalistic Hebrew — it is the verb behind נִזְקָקִים "people in need" — while צריך is the neutral everyday word. That is a register description, not a rule; what is a rule is the ל־.

Key Takeaways

A group of nif'al verbs names a state, not an event, and has no passive reading: נמצא, נשאר, נדמה, נחשב, נזקק, נעדר. Do not look for a hidden agent.
נמצא means "is located, is present." "Is found" is the past-tense passive sense and does not carry into the present.
Hebrew has no present copula, which is why three devices share the work: יש for existence, a bare nominal sentence for the lightest location, and נמצא for explicit locating.
נִמְצֵאת and נִשְׁאֶרֶת are built differently — ל״א takes the plain ת, שאר takes the full ־ֶרֶת ending. Learners cross them.
Past 3ms and present ms are homophones in both verbs (nish'ár, nimtsá), and נמצא is additionally the pa'al 1pl future "we will find".
נחשב ל־ = "is considered". Its ח takes a plain shva (נֶחְשַׁב), while א and ה take a chataf (נֶאֱכַל, נֶהֱנָה) and ע goes both ways (נֶעֱצַר but נֶעְלַם).
נדמה לי ש… is a live construction, not a dictionary idiom — Milog heads no such phrase. For plain "resemble", speech uses דומה ל־.
נזקק governs ל־ where צריך takes its object bare. They differ in register too — נזקק is written and administrative, צריך neutral — but the preposition is the part that is a rule.

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