Lesson 5: At the Café

Maya walks into a café and orders. Read along and click the Hebrew to hear it.

The dialogue

Grammar: saying “I want” (m. vs. f.)

The verb “to want” changes with the speaker’s gender in the present tense:

Who is speaking	Hebrew	Romanization
a man	אֲנִי רוֹצֶה	ani rotse
a woman	אֲנִי רוֹצָה	ani rotsa

Maya is a woman, so she says רוֹצָה (rotsa). A man ordering the same coffee would say רוֹצֶה (rotse). This masculine ‑e / feminine ‑a pattern appears in almost every Hebrew verb in the present tense — get used to it now and the rest gets much easier.

Tip: תִּרְצִי (tirtsi, “would you like”, to a woman) is a softer, more polite way to ask than “what do you want”.

Vocabulary