# Give me!



## dcx97

Hello,

I just read that "Give me!" in modern Israeli Hebrew is תן לי (ten li) when speaking to man and ני לי (ni li) when addressing a woman. However, I cannot find these imperative forms on Wikipedia (נתן - Wiktionary). The corresponding forms given by Wikipedia are נְתֵן and נִתְנִי‎ respectively. Are תן and ני colloquial?

Thanks


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## shalom00

תן (ten) is male imperative.
תני is (t'ni) female imperative.


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## dcx97

Oh, I didn't hear the ת in תני. Is it pronounced very quickly?


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## shalom00

Depends on the speaker.


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## Drink

The imperatives in the Wiktionary table are wrong.

EDIT: Looks like now it's been fixed.


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## ADoA

dcx97 said:


> Oh, I didn't hear the ת in תני. Is it pronounced very quickly?



Many if not most people pronounce it with one syllable.


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## dcx97

It's hard to imagine how one could pronounce "tni" in one syllable. Sounds impossible.


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## bazq

dcx97 said:


> It's hard to imagine how one could pronounce "tni" in one syllable. Sounds impossible.



It is, in fact, a secondary articulation (to be more specific, it's a kind called "a nasal release").
It's been discussed here תנ

Other words with this initial cluster that give rise to a nasal release:
*תנ*אי   [tnay] "condition"
*תנ*ועה [tnu'a] "movement"
*תנ*ובה [tnuva] "produce"/"yield" in their noun sense. It's also the name of a big Israeli food company.


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## Drink

It maybe commonly be a secondary articulation, but it is nevertheless perfectly possible to pronounce it with a plain /t/ still as one syllable (although this may be difficult for people who do not speak languages with such consonant clusters).


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## 2PieRad

Hi,

Again, if this is from Pimsleur Hebrew, then yes, they do teach תן and ני. They pronounce words quite slowly and they do indeed teach ני and not תני. However, they teach תנועה later on, and it's very clear that there's a ת. It seems they're purposely teaching ני and not תני. Not sure why they do it the way they do, but I've learnt that not everything they teach accurately represents what people actually use and say.


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## aavichai

i have to say that i never hear ני

i always hear תני

i never heart that someone doesn't pronounce the T sound


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## utopia

To a foreign ear TNI would sound like NI, but Israelis can differentiate between NI and TNI.

TNI preserves the T at the beginning, and thus the articulation of the NI afterwards is different than just NI.
I think (after trying it on myself) that the difference is that because of the T, the N sound is more nasal. The T closes the nose tunnel.

When Hebrew speakers say TNI slowly, they say TE (shva) NI.


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