# Numbers in daily hebrew



## Chazz

Hello


I was watching eretz nehederet and one of the guy ordered food there said:


ארבע שיפודי כבס, שתיים קבב?"


While kebab and shipud are both masculine is it acceptable to use the femenine form in daily hebrew? Or whats the rule?


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## arielipi

It is a neglected issue in israel, people use the feminine form because its shorter, most though know what should be said.
also in one everyone says correctly, two almost always the feminine form, seven (due to yediot aharonot's shiv'a yamim/leylot) is said correctly.


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## origumi

Also, counting things with no specific grammatical gender is in the feminine form, which influences colloquial language also when there is one.
Also, it can mean ארבע (פעמים) שיפודי כבש or alike.
Also, there are some popular counting mistakes like עשר שקל so such way of speaking is no surprise.

I guess you can compare it to English "they was", explained as either a mistake or "dialectical", e.g.: 


> I flew down along the river here, and I'd seen a little herd of cows. They was grazing on their  meadow and they was really quite happy.


Cliven Bundy, Nevada, last week.


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## arielipi

I once read an article that suggested that israelis tend to say the stami/feminine form when referring to an already-counted collection, while talking about any unreferred/uncounted collection the male form is favored.


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## origumi

Prof. Zuckerman's article in Haaretz of last weekend may also be  relevant, starting with:

"עשר שקל" איננו ביטוי צורם ומזעזע בעברית קלוקלת אלא דווקא ביטוי נהדר וחסכוני בישראלית דקדוקית.

http://www.haaretz.co.il/magazine/the-edge/.premium-1.2293183


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## Chazz

arielipi said:


> I once read an article that suggested that israelis tend to say the stami/feminine form when referring to an already-counted collection, while talking about any unreferred/uncounted collection the male form is favored.



interesting. If you could link the article that would be great. Thanks




origumi said:


> Prof. Zuckerman's article in Haaretz of last weekend may also be relevant, starting with:
> 
> 
> "עשר שקל" איננו ביטוי צורם ומזעזע בעברית קלוקלת אלא דווקא ביטוי נהדר וחסכוני בישראלית דקדוקית.
> 
> 
> http://www.haaretz.co.il/magazine/the-edge/.premium-1.2293183



thanks for sharing  interesting article


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## airelibre

arielipi said:


> I once read an article that suggested that israelis tend to say the stami/feminine form when referring to an already-counted collection, while talking about any unreferred/uncounted collection the male form is favored.


Could you give examples, I don't understand what you mean by unreferred/uncounted collection.


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## arielipi

airelibre said:


> Could you give examples, I don't understand what you mean by unreferred/uncounted collection.


unreferred/uncounted - think of it as abstract or as objects.


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## airelibre

arielipi said:


> unreferred/uncounted - think of it as abstract or as objects.


I mean could you give example sentences?


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## sawyeric1

Do the teen numbers always need hyphens when you write them out? Can חמש-עשרה be written as חמש עשרה?


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## shalom00

In Modern Hebrew, you would not write such hyphens.


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## airelibre

Some people use the hyphens still, but the majority don’t.


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