# אחד את השני



## cfu507

Hi, how would you translet אחד את השני

Examples:
הכרנו אחד את השני
חיבקנו אחד את השני


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## scriptum

We got to know each other.
We hugged each other.


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## Flaminius

> הכרנו אחד את השני
> חיבקנו אחד את השני
> 
> ריכלנו אחד על השני
> צחקנו אחד על השני


I wonder how come they use different prepositions.  Are the verbs in charge to select them or either of the prepositions can be used for both set of expression?


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## scriptum

Flaminius said:


> I wonder how come they use different prepositions. Are the verbs in charge to select them or either of the prepositions can be used for both set of expression?


Well, certain verbs require certain prepositions... Syntactic government, that's what it is called.


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## elroy

את is not a preposition, just an accusative marker, isn't it?


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## Flaminius

Not that anyone has asked but if I were to write a Hebrew grammar, I would say את is a preposition only visible when the governed noun is definite.  By calling _`al_, _le_, _`im_ and others preposition we have already expanded the definition of preposition since they "conjugate" according to person, number and gender.  Does a bit more excursion hurt?


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## scriptum

> Not that anyone has asked but I were to write a Hebrew grammar, I would say את is a preposition only visible when the governed noun is definite. By calling _`al_, _le_, _`im_ and others preposition we have already expanded the definition of preposition since they "conjugate" according to person, number and gender. Does a bit more excursion hurt? ...
> 
> את is not a preposition, just an accusative marker, isn't it?


I am afraid we are getting carried away with Latin grammar terms that are not necessarily good for Hebrew.
Elroy, such words as *את* and, say, *ב*, can replace each other, and they cannot follow each other. In other words, both belong to the same grammatical category and therefore should be called by _one_ name.


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## Aoyama

This being said, I have always wondered where the particle *את*(or the acusative marker as Elroy said) came from.
It doesn't seem to be classical Hebrew.
On guess would be that it is coming from _Russian_, as Russian Jews like Ben Yehouda and others were pionneers in establishing a new Hebrew grammar, not based on Arabic, as had done the previous Sefardim Hebrew scholars.


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## tkekte

Sorry to _dissappoint_, but in Russian, there is no such thing as an accusative marker.


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## Aoyama

Right.
-My mistake*את ,*appears in Bereshit, among other places.
- I had thought (naively and mistakenly) that the Russian (sorry, no cyrillic here) *et a* ...(this is ...) must have had something to do ...
Wrong ...


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