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Comments on Is there a difference between when I should use "אוטו" vs "רכב"?

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Is there a difference between when I should use "אוטו" vs "רכב"?

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I speak Hebrew as a second language, and probably worse than most people expect - I live in Israel, but my Hebrew is still not that great.

I ride with a cycling team, and one thing that we do is to shout if there's a car on the road, to alert the other riders to be careful. I have at times shouted אוטו and then been told I should have used רכב instead.

Is there a functional difference between these two words? I'm aware that רכב is an ancient Hebrew word that meant "chariot", and that אוטו comes from the English "automobile", but as far as I know they both meant the same thing. Is it that one is more formal (e.g. "car" vs "automobile"), or do they have slightly different nuances, or what?

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From my experience as a speaker of Modern Hebrew as first language, the term רכב generally means "a vehicle" whilst the terms מכונית/אוטו generally mean "a car";
If I would relate to a car, I would say מכונית/אוטו because it's more accurate.

Many Modern Hebrew speakers tend to say רכב to describe just cars perhaps because in Israel (in which I don't reside) cars are a main method of transportation, a "prototype" for "vehicles" if you will and might keep be such until generally all currently developed metro lines would be completed until about year 2030.

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msh210‭ wrote over 4 years ago · edited about 4 years ago

The question was about רכב versus אוטו, not רכב versus מכונית.

deleted user wrote over 4 years ago

I have edited the answer.