A natural pronunciation is:
hi menahelet tsevet katan
A rough breakdown:
The stress is usually:
היא means she.
Hebrew marks gender in third-person singular pronouns:
So the sentence is specifically about a female subject.
Because it is the present-tense feminine singular form of the verb לנהל = to manage.
Hebrew present tense changes for gender and number. For this verb:
Since the subject is היא (she), the verb must be מנהלת.
Yes, but it works differently from English.
In Modern Hebrew, the present tense is usually built from forms that look like participles. A form like מנהלת can mean:
The exact meaning depends on context. Hebrew usually does not force a distinction between simple present and present progressive the way English often does.
Yes. מנהלת can also be a noun meaning female manager / female director / female principal, depending on context.
So by itself, מנהלת is ambiguous:
In this sentence, היא מנהלת צוות קטן, it is understood as a verb, because the structure is clearly subject + verb + object:
Because את is only used before a definite direct object.
Compare:
This is a very common thing English speakers ask about, because English has no equivalent marker.
Because in Hebrew, adjectives usually come after the noun.
So:
This is normal Hebrew word order for noun + adjective.
Because קטן describes צוות, not היא.
In Hebrew, adjectives agree with the noun they describe, not with the subject of the sentence.
Here:
That is why you get:
not צוות קטנה.
צוות is generally treated as a masculine singular noun in Modern Hebrew.
That is why it takes:
Even though a team contains multiple people, the noun itself is grammatically singular, like English team.
Yes, that would be wrong in standard Hebrew.
Why?
Hebrew adjective agreement is very strict:
It is indefinite.
צוות קטן means a small team, not the small team.
If you wanted it to be definite, Hebrew would usually mark that on both the noun and the adjective:
So:
Yes. This is a very normal sentence pattern:
subject + verb + object
So the sentence structure is straightforward and natural.
Yes. מנהלת comes from the root נ-ה-ל, which is connected to managing, directing, or running something.
Useful related words include:
Learning the root can help you recognize whole families of related Hebrew words.