Pa'al ע״ו Hollow Verbs: קם, גר, בא, טס | Hebrew Grammar

A ע״ו root carries a ו in its middle slot, and that ו never surfaces as a consonant anywhere in pa'al. What you hear is two consonants with a vowel between them: kam, gar, ba, tas, rats. Grammars call these נחי ע״ו or, in English, hollow verbs — the middle of the root is empty.

You cannot postpone this class. It holds come, get up, live somewhere, fly and run — and its ע״י twin adds sing and put — so the "weak root" label is misleading. These are words you need in week one; they are not exotic, they are the furniture.

קם in full

	עָבָר past	עָתִיד future
אני	קַמְתִּי kámti	אָקוּם akúm
אתה · את	קַמְתָּ kámta · קַמְתְּ kamt	תָּקוּם takúm · תָּקוּמִי takúmi
הוא · היא	קָם kam · קָמָה káma	יָקוּם yakúm · תָּקוּם takúm
אנחנו	קַמְנוּ kámnu	נָקוּם nakúm
אתם · אתן	קַמְתֶּם kamtém · קַמְתֶּן kamtén	תָּקוּמוּ takúmu
הם · הן	קָמוּ kámu	יָקוּמוּ yakúmu

Present: קָם kam · קָמָה kamá · קָמִים kamím · קָמוֹת kamót. Infinitive לָקוּם lakúm; imperative קוּם · קוּמִי · קוּמוּ kum · kúmi · kúmu.

Three things in that table are worth naming. The past keeps its stress on the stem and never grows a syllable — kámti, not a three-syllable kamáti; the ending is the unstressed part. The future prefix takes a kamatz, not the chirik of יִכְתּוֹב, and the stem vowel is a shuruk: אָקוּם, not אֶקוֹם. And the *infinitive begins with לָ־, matching the future prefix rather than the לִ־ of לִכְתּוֹב.

קמתי מאוחר והחמצתי את האוטובוס.

kámti me'ukhár vehekhmátsti et ha'otóbus

I got up late and missed the bus.

אני חייב לקום בחמש מחר, אז אני הולך לישון.

aní khayáv lakúm bekhamésh makhár, az aní holékh lishón

I have to be up at five tomorrow, so I'm going to bed. (m. speaker)

💡

The niqqud distinguishes the patach of קַמְתִּי from the kamatz of קָם, but Israeli Hebrew pronounces both as plain a. That difference is worth nothing to your ear and everything to your reading of a pointed text — which is the usual bargain with niqqud.

Four more, in principal parts

Verb	Past 1s	Past 3ms	Present ms	Future 3ms	Infinitive
בָּא come	בָּאתִי báti	בָּא ba	בָּא ba	יָבוֹא yavó	לָבוֹא lavó
גָּר live, reside	גַּרְתִּי gárti	גָּר gar	גָּר gar	יָגוּר yagúr	לָגוּר lagúr
טָס fly	טַסְתִּי tásti	טָס tas	טָס tas	יָטוּס yatús	לָטוּס latús
רָץ run	רַצְתִּי rátsti	רָץ rats	רָץ rats	יָרוּץ yarúts	לָרוּץ larúts

בָּא is the odd one: its future is אָבוֹא, יָבוֹא, לָבוֹא — a cholam, not the shuruk of the others. Do not look for a rule behind it. ב־ו־א is indeed doubly weak, hollow and ל״א, but the final א is not what produces the o: in ל״א verbs א pulls the theme vowel to an a, which is why מָצָא gives יִמְצָא. בוא simply inherited a cholam where its neighbours inherited a shuruk. Learn בא separately and the rest of the class is uniform.

גרנו שם שלוש שנים ואז עברנו לחיפה.

gárnu sham shalósh shaním ve'áz avárnu lekhéifa

We lived there for three years and then moved to Haifa.

טסנו לברלין בסוף אוגוסט, היה זול בטירוף.

tásnu leberlín besóf ogúst, hayá zol betirúf

We flew to Berlin at the end of August — it was insanely cheap. (informal)

אני אבוא ישר מהעבודה, אל תחכי לי לארוחה.

aní avó yashár meha'avodá, al tekhakí li la'arukhá

I'll come straight from work — don't wait for me for dinner. (to a woman)

The ambiguity that defines the class

In a strong verb, past and present look nothing alike: כָּתַב against כּוֹתֵב. In a hollow verb they collapse. The masculine singular is one form for both:

הוא בא כל שבוע בערך באותה שעה.

hu ba kol shavúa be'érekh be'otá sha'á

He comes every week at roughly the same time.

הוא בא אתמול ולא מצא אף אחד בבית.

hu ba etmól veló matsá af ekhád babáyit

He came by yesterday and didn't find anyone home.

הוא בא is both "he comes" and "he came", with nothing in the verb to separate them — the adverb does all the work. English has no comparable collapse; even put and cut, which have identical past and present forms, still distinguish he puts from he put.

In the feminine and the plural the two tenses are spelled alike but sound different, and the difference is pure stress:

Written	Past — מלעיל	Present — מלרע
באה	bá'a — she came	ba'á — she comes
קמה	káma — she got up	kamá — she gets up
גרה	gára — she lived	gará — she lives
באו / קמו	bá'u, kámu — they came, they got up	—

היא קמה לפני כולם והכינה קפה.

hi káma lifnéi kulám vehekhína kafé

She got up before everyone else and made coffee.

היא קמה כל יום בחמש, גם בשבת.

hi kamá kol yom bekhamésh, gam beshabát

She gets up at five every day, Shabbat included.

Those two sentences are identical for their first two words on the page. An Israeli hears the tense in the beat and does not consciously notice doing it — which makes this one of the most functional stress contrasts in the language, and it is drilled on when stress is the only difference.

💡

The whole past tense of a hollow verb is מלעיל — kámti, kámta, káma, kámnu, kámu — while the present is מלרע: kamá, kamím, kamót. Two cells wobble, and both wobble the same way, because Israeli speech likes to pull stress back off a final ending. The 2nd person plural past is kamtém and kamtén normatively but kámtem and kámten in ordinary speech — that is not a hollow-verb quirk, it is the entire 2pl past doing it (שמרתם is shmartém or shamártem, רציתם is retsitém or ratsítem). The same retraction can reach the present feminine in relaxed speech, so ba'á is sometimes heard as bá'a. Keep the contrast in your own mouth — careful speech has it, and so does the audio here — but expect context, not stress, to carry the tense when someone is talking fast.

Where the ו does show up

The ו is not fictional. It appears as the shuruk of the future and infinitive (אָקוּם, לָגוּר), as the cholam of בוא (לָבוֹא), and as a written consonant across other binyanim — הֵקִים "founded", הֵבִיא "brought", קִיּוּם "existence". Its absence in pa'al is a property of this binyan, not of the root; the cross-binyan picture is on ע״ו and ע״י across the binyanim.

Common Mistakes

1. Regularising the past to three consonants. This is the big one, and it comes straight from expecting a Hebrew verb to have three root letters.

❌ קמתי

kamáti

Incorrect — the past is two syllables with the stress on the first: kámti. The same for gárti, tásti, rátsti, báti.

✅ קמתי בשש וכבר הספקתי המון.

kámti beshésh ukhvár hispákti hamón

I was up at six and I've already got a lot done.

2. Stressing the past like the present. ba'á for "she came" is not an accent; it is the wrong tense.

❌ היא באה אתמול

hi ba'á etmól

Incorrect — the past is mil'el: bá'a. ba'á is the present, so this says 'she comes yesterday'.

✅ היא באה אתמול בערב, אבל אנחנו כבר לא היינו בבית.

hi bá'a etmól ba'érev, avál anákhnu kvar lo hayínu babáyit

She came by last night, but we were no longer home.

3. Writing the ו into the past or present. It is not there.

❌ אני קום מוקדם / קומתי אתמול

Incorrect as present and past of קם — the ו appears only in the future and the infinitive. Present: אני קם. Past: קמתי. (קומתי on its own is a different word, קוֹמָתִי 'my height'.)

4. Building the future like a strong verb. The prefix vowel is a kamatz and the stem is a shuruk.

❌ הוא יקום מוקדם

hu yikóm mukdám

Incorrect — the ע״ו future is yakúm. There is no yikóm; the chirik prefix belongs to יִכְתּוֹב-type verbs.

✅ הוא יקום מוקדם ויכין הכול לפני שנצא.

hu yakúm mukdám veyakhín hakól lifnéi shenetsé

He'll get up early and have everything ready before we leave.

5. Giving בא a shuruk future. It is the one member of the group with a cholam.

❌ אבוא

avú

Incorrect — בוא is doubly weak and takes a cholam, not the shuruk of its neighbours: אָבוֹא, avó. Compare אָגוּר agúr, אָטוּס atús.

Key Takeaways

A ע״ו root's middle ו never sounds in pa'al: you hear two consonants, קם kam, גר gar, בא ba.
The past is stressed on the stem and is short: kámti, kámnu, kámu — never kamáti.
The future takes a kamatz prefix and a shuruk stem: אָקוּם, יָגוּר, תָּטוּס; the infinitive matches, לָקוּם, לָגוּר.
בָּא takes a cholam instead: אָבוֹא, יָבוֹא, לָבוֹא. It is doubly weak (ע״ו plus ל״א), but the א is not the cause — in ל״א the א gives an a, as in יִמְצָא. בא is simply learned separately.
הוא בא is both tenses. In the masculine singular past and present are identical; only context separates them.
In the feminine and plural, stress carries the tense: bá'a she came against ba'á she comes, káma against kamá, gára against gará.
The 2nd person plural past is kamtém in careful register and kámtem in ordinary speech — both are real, and this retraction runs through the whole 2pl past, not just this class.
This class holds come, get up, live, fly, run, so it belongs in the first weeks, not in an advanced chapter.

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