Davide's Notes

Some considerations on nouns:

• Masculine singular has no special ending
  
• Masculine plural usually ends with ים. (iym)
• Masculine dual ends with יִם ַ (ayim)
• Feminine singular usually ends with ה ָ (āh), but also with ת ַ (at) and ת ֶ (et)
• Feminine plural usually ends with וֹת (ot)
• Feminine dual ends with יִם ַ (ayim) - same as masculine dual

Example:

	Singular	Plural	Dual
Masculine	סוּס	סוּסִים	סוּסַיִם
Feminine	תּוֹרָה	תּוֹרוֹת	תּוֹרַיִם

Some exceptions:

Names with no special ending, but feminine gender:

אֶרֶץ land
עִיר city
אֶבֶן stone

Irregular stem change in the plural:

יוֹם (sg) -- יָמִים (pl) day
אִישׁ (sg) -- אֲנָשִׁים (pl) man
אִשָּׁה (sg) -- נָשִׁים (pl) woman

It is possible to give some general rules for plurals:

Propretonic reduction
With 2 syllable nouns, accented on the final syllable, and with qamets or tsere in the first or in the pretonic syllable: the qamets or tsere in an open propretonic syllable will reduce to shewa. Examples:
דָּבָר (sg) -- דְּבָרִים (pl) word
זָקֵן (sg) -- זְקֵנִים (pl) old man
מָקוֹם (sg) -- מְקוֹמוֹת (pl) place (1)

(1) this noun is masculine but takes a feminine ending in the plural

Segholate nouns (i.e. nouns with seghol)
With 2 syllable nouns, accented on the first syllable, and often two seghol vowels (but sometimes one, or even none): in the plural, they have a vocal shewa or a hateph under the first consonant, and a qamets under the second consonant.
Examples:
מֶלֶך (sg) -- מְלָכִים (pl) king
זֶבַח (sg) -- זְבָחִים (pl) sacrifice
סֶפֶר (sg) -- סְפָרִים (pl) book
נַעַר (sg) -- נְעָרִים (pl) young man (2)
עֶבֶד (sg) -- עֲבָדִים (pl) servant (3)

(2) note that there is no seghol here, but there is a first syllable accent
(3) remember that gutturals cannot take a vocal shewa, so there is a compound shewa here

Geminate nouns
Geminate nouns are biconsonantal nouns that originally were triconsonantal, with the last two consonants identical. In the plural, the consonant that orginally appeared twice takes on a dagesh forte.
Examples:
עַם (sg) -- עַמִּים (pl) people
חֵץ (sg) -- חִצִּים (pl) arrow (4)
חֹק (sg) -- חֻקִּים (pl) statute (4)

(4) note here also the change of vocalization; it is not easy to give rules for this.

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The rule of shewa
We can't have a sequence of two syllables each with a shewa. If this is going to happen because of inflection or combination of words and elements, this is what happens:

cons. + shewa + cons. + shewa ---> cons. + i + cons.

For example:

לְ + נְבִי (to + my prophet)
becomes
לִנבִי

In other words, the first shewa becomes an hireq and the second one becomes silent.

The rule of shewa for gutturals
Remember that gutturals take a compound shewa. But a vocal shewa cannot precede a guttural with this compound shewa, so the vocal shewa is replaced with the corresponding vowel of the compound shewa.

For example:

בְ + חֲלוֹם
becomes
בַחֲלוֹם

That is, the shewa of בְ changes to the vowel of the compound shewa of חֲ and becomes בַ

Nice page at http://www.andrews.edu/SEM/semtech/HebrewTutorial/lesson_03.htm. Here are the basic rules for the definite article, summarized:

1. Remember that the gutturals are א ה ח ע ; we need to consider also ר as a "special" consonant in this context
2. With words not beginning with a guttural or ר, the article is usually written הַ + dagesh, as in הַמֶּלֶך
   
3. With words beginning with one of the gutturals ה ח, and with words beginning with יְ מְ (note the shewa), the article remains הַ but without the dagesh (implicit), as in הַחֶרֶב
4. With words beginning with one of the gutturals א ע, plus ר, the article becomes הָ, without the dagesh, as in הָאִישׁ
5. With words beginning with an unaccented הָ or עָ, and always with words beginning with חָ, the article becomes הֶ, as in הֶהָרִים

In other words, the article is:

הַ : with all non gutturals, and with gutturals ה ח (in this last case, and with יְ מְ , there is just no explicit dagesh)
הָ : with gutturals א ע and ר (no explicit dagesh)
הֶ : with חָ and unaccented הָ עָ (in practice, pay attention to when a qamets is present with a guttural)

There are exceptions: some words change pointing when the article is prefixed to them, for example
אֶרֶץ becomes הָאָרֶץ

Now, remember that with prepositions the pointing becomes very important, because what will happen with prepositions directly joined to a word having the definite article is that we'll have the consonant from the preposition, and the vowel from the definite article. So, for example:

מֶלֶך king
הַמֶּלֶך the king
לַמֶּלֶך to the king, using the preposition לְ, to