Breakdown of הם רבו אתמול, אבל היום הם כבר השלימו ורוצים לשתות קפה ביחד.
קפה
coffee
לרצות
to want
ו
and
אבל
but
Questions & Answers about הם רבו אתמול, אבל היום הם כבר השלימו ורוצים לשתות קפה ביחד.
How do you pronounce רבו here, and what verb is it from?
Here it is pronounced ravu.
It is the past tense, 3rd person masculine plural form of לריב = to quarrel / to fight / to argue.
So:
- הוא רב = he argued
- הם רבו = they argued
A native English speaker may notice that רבו can be ambiguous in writing without vowels, but in this sentence the meaning is clearly they quarreled.
Why doesn’t Hebrew say רבו עם... here? Shouldn’t it be they fought with each other?
Not necessarily. In Hebrew, לריב is often used without stating the other side explicitly when it is obvious from context.
So הם רבו naturally means they had a fight / they argued.
If you want to make it explicit, you could say things like:
- הם רבו אחד עם השני = they argued with each other
- הם רבו זה עם זה = they argued with one another
But in your sentence, just הם רבו is completely normal.
What does כבר mean in this sentence?