A ע״י root has a י in its middle slot, and like the ו of ע״ו it never surfaces as a consonant in pa'al. Everything you learned about hollow verbs applies — two audible consonants, a short unstressed past, an identical masculine singular in past and present. One thing changes: the future, the infinitive and the imperative are built on a long i instead of a long u.
That is the entire lesson. The rest of this page is about the consequences.
u against i, side by side
| Root | Past 1s | Present ms | Future 1s | Infinitive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ק־ו־ם get up | קַמְתִּי kámti | קָם kam | אָקוּם akúm | לָקוּם lakúm |
| ג־ו־ר reside | גַּרְתִּי gárti | גָּר gar | אָגוּר agúr | לָגוּר lagúr |
| שׂ־י־ם put | שַׂמְתִּי sámti | שָׂם sam | אָשִׂים asím | לָשִׂים lasím |
| שׁ־י־ר sing | שַׁרְתִּי shárti | שָׁר shar | אָשִׁיר ashír | לָשִׁיר lashír |
| ר־י־ב quarrel | רַבְתִּי rávti | רָב rav | אָרִיב arív | לָרִיב larív |
Cover the last two columns and the five rows are indistinguishable. That is the practical problem: the past and present of a hollow verb carry no information about its future. קַמְתִּי and שַׂמְתִּי are the same shape; אָקוּם and אָשִׂים are not.
שם in full
| עָבָר past | עָתִיד future | |
|---|---|---|
| אני | שַׂמְתִּי sámti | אָשִׂים asím |
| אתה · את | שַׂמְתָּ sámta · שַׂמְתְּ samt | תָּשִׂים tasím · תָּשִׂימִי tasími |
| הוא · היא | שָׂם sam · שָׂמָה sáma | יָשִׂים yasím · תָּשִׂים tasím |
| אנחנו | שַׂמְנוּ sámnu | נָשִׂים nasím |
| אתם · אתן | שַׂמְתֶּם samtém · שַׂמְתֶּן samtén | תָּשִׂימוּ tasímu |
| הם · הן | שָׂמוּ sámu | יָשִׂימוּ yasímu |
Present: שָׂם sam · שָׂמָה samá · שָׂמִים samím · שָׂמוֹת samót. Infinitive לָשִׂים lasím; imperative שִׂים · שִׂימִי · שִׂימוּ sim · sími · símu.
שמתי את המשקפיים שם על השולחן ועכשיו הם נעלמו.
sámti et hamishkafáyim sham al hashulkhán ve'akhsháv hem ne'elmú
I put my glasses there on the table and now they've vanished.
שים לב, יש מדרגה.
sim lev, yesh madregá
Careful — there's a step. (to a man)
אני אשים את זה ביומן שלי כדי לא לשכוח.
aní asím et ze bayomán shelí kdéi lo lishkóakh
I'll put it in my calendar so I don't forget.
The stress contrast, again
Everything the ע״ו page says about stress holds here unchanged. The past feminine singular is מלעיל and the present feminine singular is מלרע, written identically:
| Written | Past — מלעיל | Present — מלרע |
|---|---|---|
| שמה | sáma — she put | samá — she puts |
| שרה | shára — she sang | shará — she sings |
| רבה | ráva — she quarrelled | ravá — she quarrels |
היא שמה את התיק ליד הדלת וישבה לנוח.
hi sáma et hatík leyád hadélet veyashvá lanúakh
She put her bag down by the door and sat down to rest.
היא תמיד שמה סוכר בקפה, גם כשהיא אומרת שלא.
hi tamíd samá sukár bakafé, gam kshehí oméret sheló
She always puts sugar in her coffee, even when she says she doesn't.
Three words spelled שם, and no two of them sound alike
Unpointed שם is three different words, and learners often assume they must sound alike. They do not — the spelling hides both the shin/sin split and the vowel.
| Pointed | Reads as | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| שָׂם | sam | puts / put — the verb, with a sin |
| שָׁם | sham | there |
| שֵׁם | shem | name |
These are homographs, not homophones: one spelling, three pronunciations. See ש and שׂ for why the dot is the only thing separating sam from sham.
שר works the same way: שָׁר shar "sings, sang" against שַׂר sar "minister, cabinet member" — again a shin/sin pair, again audibly distinct.
השר שר את ההמנון יחד עם כולם.
hasár shar et hahimnón yákhad im kulám
The minister sang the anthem along with everyone else. (journalistic)
רב is the one genuine near-miss. רָב rav "quarrelled, quarrels" and רַב rav "much, great; a rabbi" differ in the niqqud and in nothing you can hear — in Israeli Hebrew both are simply rav. Only the syntax separates them.
הם רבו הרבה בזמן האחרון, אבל זה עבר.
hem rávu harbé bazmán ha'akharón, avál ze avár
They've been fighting a lot lately, but it's blown over.
אל תריבו על השטויות האלה, יש מקום לכולם.
al tarívu al hashtuyót ha'éle, yesh makóm lekhulám
Don't fight over this nonsense — there's room for everybody.
A small class in pa'al, a large one elsewhere
In modern pa'al the ע״י class is genuinely tiny: שים, שיר and ריב carry essentially all of the everyday usage. Behind them sit two survivors that live in liturgy, poetry and set phrases and nowhere else: שָׂשׂ sas "rejoice" (יָשִׂישׂ yasís, infinitive לָשִׂישׂ beside an older לָשׂוּשׂ) and גָּל gal "exult" (יָגִיל yagíl, לָגִיל). That is close to the whole inventory, and it is why grammars append this class to ע״ו rather than giving it a chapter.
But ע״י roots are everywhere — they simply show up in other binyanim. And there the two hollow classes stop being distinguishable: hif'il merges them, so הֵבִין "understood" (root ב־י־ן), הֵכִין "prepared" (root כ־ו־ן) and הֵבִיא "brought" (root ב־ו־א) come out in one shape despite belonging to three different root types. In pa'al they stay apart — קָם against שָׂם — which is why this page and the ע״ו page exist separately. The cross-binyan picture is on ע״ו and ע״י across the binyanim.
בוא נשיר משהו ביחד לפני שכולם הולכים.
bo nashír máshehu beyákhad lifnéi shekulám holkhím
Let's sing something together before everyone leaves. (to a man)
הוא שר אתמול בבית קפה קטן ליד הבית.
hu shar etmól bevéit kafé katán leyád habáyit
He sang last night at a little café near our place.
Common Mistakes
1. Regularising the past to three syllables. The same error as in ע״ו, and the commonest one here.
❌ שמתי
samáti · simáti
Incorrect — the past has no i and no third syllable: sámti, stressed on the first syllable.
✅ איפה שמת את הטלפון שלי?
éifo sámta et hatélefon shelí?
Where did you put my phone? (to a man)
2. Giving a ע״י verb the u-future. Nothing in the past tense warns you, so the wrong guess is natural — and wrong.
❌ אני אשום את זה פה
Incorrect — שים is ע״י: אָשִׂים, asím. אָשׂוּם does not exist. Compare אָקוּם from קם.
✅ אני אשים את זה פה בינתיים.
aní asím et ze po beintáyim
I'll put it here for now.
3. Writing the י into the past or present. It belongs only to the future, infinitive and imperative.
❌ שימתי את זה בארון
Incorrect — the י shows up in לשים and אשים, never in the past. The form is שמתי.
4. Stressing the past feminine like the present. samá is "she puts", not "she put".
❌ היא שמה את זה אתמול
hi samá et ze etmól
Incorrect — the past is mil'el: sáma. With final stress the sentence says 'she puts it yesterday'.
✅ היא שמה את זה במקרר אתמול, תבדוק שם.
hi sáma et ze bamekarér etmól, tivdók sham
She put it in the fridge yesterday — have a look in there. (to a man)
Key Takeaways
- ע״י is ע״ו with one substitution: a long i in the future, infinitive and imperative — אָשִׂים, לָשִׂים, שִׂים — where ע״ו has a long u.
- The past and present are identical in shape across both classes, so they carry no clue: קַמְתִּי and שַׂמְתִּי look the same, אָקוּם and אָשִׂים do not.
- Learn a hollow verb as past plus infinitive; that pair is what a dictionary gives you and what disambiguates the class.
- The stress contrast is the same as in ע״ו: sáma "she put" against samá "she puts", shára against shará, ráva against ravá.
- Unpointed שם is three words — שָׂם sam, שָׁם sham, שֵׁם shem — homographs, not homophones. Same for שר: shar against sar.
- רב is the real collision: רָב "quarrelled" and רַב "much; rabbi" are both rav, and only the syntax separates them.
- In pa'al the class is small — שים, שיר, ריב, plus the literary שָׂשׂ and גָּל — but ע״י roots are common in hif'il, where they merge with ע״ו (הֵבִין from ב־י־ן beside הֵכִין from כ־ו־ן).
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- Pa'al ע״ו Hollow Verbs: קם, גר, בא, טסB1 — Roots whose middle letter is ו lose it entirely — you hear two consonants, never three. The past is stressed on the stem and the future is built on a long u, which together produce the most useful stress contrast a Hebrew learner will meet: bá'a 'she came' against ba'á 'she comes'.
- ע״ו and ע״י (Hollow Roots) Across the BinyanimB2 — A root whose middle letter is ו or י has no middle consonant to build on, so each binyan solves the problem differently: pa'al shows two letters, hif'il inserts a long i, and the pi'el slot is taken over by the polel. Pa'al is also the only binyan that keeps ע״ו and ע״י apart — everywhere else the letter on the page is the mould's, not the root's.
- שׁ and שׂ: One Letter, Two SoundsA2 — The letter ש spells two different consonants, sh and s, told apart by a single dot — which unpointed Hebrew does not print. Here is the short, closed list of שׂ words that solves the problem, and the שער trap that catches even text-to-speech engines.