Essential Hebrew phrases

Hello, goodbye and peace — the all-purpose Hebrew greeting.

Thank you. 'Toda raba' is thanks a lot; 'bevakasha' serves as both please and you're welcome.

Quarter. Ashdod is planned as numbered and lettered quarters — Rova Alef, Rova Gimel, Rova Yod Alef — and locals give addresses by rova rather than by street. Learn the numbers before you house-hunt.

The reinforced safe room built into flats since the 1990s technical standard. In Ashdod this is the first thing you ask about a property, not the last.

The port. It is the city's largest single fact — Israel's biggest — and half of Ashdod's conversations about work eventually come back to it.

The seafront promenade. Ashdod's runs for kilometres along an unusually wide beach and is where the whole city goes at dusk.

Municipal property tax, billed per square metre to whoever occupies the flat, by classification zone. Budget it alongside rent, not after it.

'Red Colour' — the rocket alert broadcast by the Home Front Command. Everyone in the south knows their own locality's shelter-entry time; check yours on the Pikud HaOref app.

Help! Emergency numbers are 101 for a Magen David Adom ambulance, 100 police, 102 fire, 104 Home Front Command.

Cool, fine, all good — the universal Israeli okay.

Come on, let's go. An Arabic loanword Hebrew absorbed completely, and one you will use hourly.

Thank you in Russian. More than 60,000 people from the former Soviet Union settled in Ashdod in the 1990s, and Russian is a working language in shops, clinics and bank branches here.