The Hebrew New Year is back! That time of the year again when everybody is hopeful again and tables are full of great food and warm and cozy. Want to stand out and some some Hebrew off? Here you can learn how to say happy new year in Hebrew as well as a few other useful phrases and tips.

First off, New Year’s Beginning.

First day of the Hebrew New Year is called “rosh hashanah” written in Hebrew like this:

ראש השנה

This literally means “head of the year”. Makes sense, right?

ראש = head

ה = the

שנה = year

I pronounced it here for you:

Happy New Year in Hebrew

Now, let’s see how you would wish someone a happy birthday in Hebrew. What you actually would be wishing them is a “good year” or as in Hebrew they say “shana tova”, written this way:

שנה טובה

שנה = year
טובה = good
I pronounced the Hebrew word here for you:

 

You might have noticed that the word for good is usually “tov” instead of “tova”. The reason why we put the heh at the end of the word is that Shana in Hebrew is a female word. This should be kind of tricky, finding the female and male nouns, but a good sign we have here for female nouns is the final heh ה.
Now you know how to wish someone a happy new year in Hebrew, how about you learn a few more things? like the Hebrew greetings, how to wish someone a happy birthday in Hebrew or at least how to write Shalom in Hebrew?
By the way, there are things that are strongly related to the Jewish new year, like apple, honey and the Shofar. People usually have apple slices dipped in honey on this very special holiday.