Nif'al of Weak Roots: נולד, נבנה, נמצא, נהנה

There is a temptation to treat weak roots as the small print of a binyan — learn the שלמים paradigm first, deal with the exceptions later. In nif'al that ordering does not survive contact with the language. נוֹלַד to be born, נִבְנָה to be built, נִמְצָא to be located, נֶהֱנָה to enjoy and נֶחְשַׁב to be considered are all weak, and between them they cover a birthday, a building site, a street address, a compliment and a job reference.

Take them one class at a time. The nif'al overview has the general shape; this page is what happens to it when a root letter refuses to behave.

פ״י — נולד, and one letter with two sounds

The dictionary root is י־ל־ד, but no yod appears anywhere in the table. What you see instead is a ו, and it is doing two completely different jobs. In נוֹלַד and נוֹלֶדֶת it is a vowel letter holding the o, silent as a consonant. In יִוָּלֵד and לְהִוָּלֵד it is a consonant, and a doubled one at that — yi-va-léd, with the swallowed נ of the binyan sitting inside that doubling exactly as it does in יִכָּנֵס.

One letter, two sounds, and only the vowel pattern tells you which. That is also why the ktiv male grows a second ו: ייוולד, להיוולד. The first yod is the prefix consonant, the second is the mater for its chirik, and the two vavs are the single doubled v.

ל״ה and ל״א — נבנה and נמצא

These two classes look similar on the page and behave differently in the ear. In ל״ה the third root letter is written ה and heard as nothing; in ל״א it is written א and also heard as nothing — but the א keeps a tsere in front of it where the ה takes a yod.

Read the bottom two rows first, because that is where the classes part company. ל״ה ends its infinitive in ־וֹת — לְהִבָּנוֹת, and likewise לְהֵרָאוֹת, לְהִשָּׁנוֹת, לְהִקָּנוֹת. ל״א keeps the ordinary tsere ending — לְהִמָּצֵא, לְהֵאָמֵר, לְהִקָּרֵא. The ־וֹת infinitive is the single most reliable signal that a nif'al verb is ל״ה, and it is the form learners most often build wrong.

A guttural first radical — and where the sources disagree

If the first root letter is א, ה, ח or ע, it cannot take a dagesh, so two things change at once: the past-tense prefix vowel becomes a segol, and the future's missing dagesh is paid for with a tsere (תשלום דגש). The futures are uniform. The pasts are not.

א and ה take an obligatory chataf: נֶאֱמַר, נֶאֱכַל, נֶהֱרַג, three syllables each. ח takes a plain shva in the standard form — נֶחְשַׁב, two syllables, nekh-sháv — with נֶחֱשַׁב circulating as a secondary variant. ע is genuinely unsettled: Pealim prints נֶעְלַם, Milog prints נֶעֱלַם, and Hebrew Wiktionary carries both. Present the variation rather than picking a winner; in speech you will hear ne'elám far more often than ne'lám.

Notice the third column. The chataf is a reduced vowel, and when the stress moves off it in the feminine it flattens to a plain segol: נֶאֱמַר but נֶאֶמְרָה, נֶהֱרַג but נֶהֶרְגָה. This is regular and it is invisible in ktiv male, where all of them are just נאמרה, נהרגה.

נהנה — weak at both ends, and misspelled twice over

נֶהֱנָה is the hard case, because it is a guttural-initial verb and a ל״ה verb at once. The result is a paradigm that looks unfamiliar in every cell and a spelling that Israelis get wrong daily.

Two separate spellings sit on this one verb, and both are worth knowing because both are broken constantly.

The third root letter is a yod, and it is written. The root is ה־נ־ה in the citation form but behaves as ה־נ־י, so the past first person is נֶהֱנֵיתִי — and in unpointed writing that yod stays: נהניתי, not נהנתי. Pealim lists נֶהֱנֵיתִי and has no entry for נהנתי at all. Usage is messier than that: Hebrew Wikipedia carries 87 נהניתי against 13 נהנתי, so the standard form is the majority practice without being anywhere near unanimous — one Israeli in eight writing it there drops the yod.

The infinitive is לֵהָנוֹת, spelled ליהנות — that is Pealim's headword for the verb. It is a worn-down development of the fuller לְהֵהָנוֹת (להיהנות), which has effectively left the language: five hits in all of Hebrew Wikipedia. What has not left the language is the non-standard להנות, which still turns up 243 times against ליהנות's 1,847. If you write ליהנות you are both correct and in the majority.

Common Mistakes

1. Giving נהנה a direct object. Straight from English I enjoyed the party.

2. Spelling the infinitive להנות. The standard spelling carries a yod for the e, because that e is a chirik stretched by a ה that could not take a dagesh — the same תשלום דגש that puts the yod into ktiv male להיאמר and להיחשב in the table above.

3. Building a ל״ה infinitive on the שלמים pattern. נבנה, נראה, נקנה and their family all end in ־וֹת.

4. Dropping a letter from the ייוולד cluster. Four letters in a row is unnerving to write, and every one of them is load-bearing.

Key Takeaways

• פ״י נולד: the ו is a vowel in נוֹלַד / נוֹלֶדֶת and a doubled consonant in יִוָּלֵד / לְהִוָּלֵד. Ktiv male: נולד, ייוולד, להיוולד.
• ל״ה נבנה ends its infinitive in ־וֹת — לְהִבָּנוֹת · להיבנות — and writes a yod in the suffixed past: נבניתי.
• ל״א נמצא keeps a plain tsere ending: לְהִמָּצֵא · להימצא. Its past first person is נִמְצֵאתִי · נמצאתי.
• A guttural first radical gives a segol prefix in the past and a tsere in the future by תשלום דגש: יֵאָמֵר, יֵחָשֵׁב, יֵעָלֵם — all two-yod in ktiv male.
• The past-tense vowel under that guttural splits by letter: א and ה take a chataf (נֶאֱמַר, נֶהֱרַג), ח a plain shva (נֶחְשַׁב), and ע is disputed — Pealim נֶעְלַם, Milog נֶעֱלַם. The chataf flattens to a plain segol when stress shifts: נֶאֶמְרָה, נֶהֶרְגָה.
• נהנה is weak at both ends. Write נהניתי with the yod and ליהנות with the yod; להנות is non-standard and להיהנות has all but disappeared.
• נהנה governs מ־, never a direct object.