# Listen and repeat!



## dcx97

Hello,

I just heard someone something that sounded like "hakshivu ve shanenu". I am not completely sure about the pronunciation so you should take what I wrote with a grain of salt. However, the _meaning_ was clear: "Listen and repeat". How is the last word spelled in Hebrew? I know the rest of the sentence: הקשיבו ו

Thanks!


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## ADoA

It would actually be "listen and memorize."

הקשיבו ושננו.


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## dcx97

Thank you. Did I transliterate it correctly though? I mean is "שננו" pronounced "shanenu"?


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## ADoA

Yep. From what I could tell, the word with nikkud is שַׁנְּנוּ and is pronounced as you'd written it (with accent on "nu").


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## dcx97

Are you sure about the accent? Because "hakshivu" has the accent on the second syllable (hak-*shi*-vu), not the last. I would expect them to follow the same pattern since they're both plural masculine imperative verbs.


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## Drink

They don't, because in "shannenu", the "e" is a shva and a shva cannot be stressed, so the stress moves forward.


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## dcx97

Thanks! By the way, if "shanenu" doesn't mean "Repeat!", how do you say "Repeat!" in Hebrew? I distinctly remember being told by my teacher that "shanenu" meant "Repeat!", but I guess he was mistaken.


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## ADoA

I suppose it may have a double meaning in this case. All the definitions I saw for לשנן define it as "repeat in order to memorize," but the end goal is memorization. Sources are Milog & Morfix, which I can't link directly to because of moderation.

I believe that to strictly repeat something is לחזור. In the context of what you've heard, it would be הקשיבו ותחזרו. In old, proper and unspoken Hebrew, probably הקשיבו וחזרו. Would need someone to verify, though.


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## ystab

dcx97 said:


> Thanks! By the way, if "shanenu" doesn't mean "Repeat!", how do you say "Repeat!" in Hebrew? I distinctly remember being told by my teacher that "shanenu" meant "Repeat!", but I guess he was mistaken.


הקשיבו וחזרו (אחריי, אחריו, אחריה וכו׳)
An archaic, yet not obsolete, word for repeat is לשנות (lishnot, 3rd person past שנה), so theoretically you can say hakshivu ushnu or haskitu (a synonym of the same register) ushnu, but that’s definitely archaic.


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## aavichai

you probably mean שנו
Shnu (shebu)

שנה in hebrew is also to repeat


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## Ali Smith

aavichai said:


> you probably mean שנו
> Shnu (shebu)
> 
> שנה in hebrew is also to repeat



But שנה (from kal) can only mean "to repeat". By contrast, שינן (from pi'el) can mean either "to memorize" or "to repeat" or even "to keep repeating".


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## Abaye

Ali Smith said:


> But שנה (from kal) can only mean "to repeat".


This is inaccurate. Also to learn. Like Aramaic תנא.
שנה - ויקימילון
האקדמיה ללשון העברית - המוסד העליון ללשון העברית


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