Eight Points to Consider when Starting Your Hebrew Adventures
Any student of Hebrew must begin his or her adventure by learning the letters and vowels. This includes being able to sound out, or pronounce written words. Most students begin with the “printed” or “book” style Hebrew, and learn cursive later. While most of Europe and the Americas uses the Latin alphabet, Hebrew is entirely different, consisting of 22 letters and vowels that are written as special symbols above and below the letters.
The beginner student must examine his goals. While some students want to learn to read the Hebrew Bible, other students are preparing for a trip to Israel, and need to learn modern Hebrew. Other students might want to learn how to read the sidur (Hebrew prayerbook).
It makes since to learn the most popular words first, doesn’t it? If learning Biblical Hebrew, why not start with the most popular 400 words. We have put those words on audio-CDs, for learning at home or in your car, and we have also included the same words in our software program.
Let’s compare Modern and Biblical Hebrew. The verb systems are very similar, but Hebrew tends use the perfect and imperfect (past and future) where as Modern Hebrew uses those and a lot of the present tense. Nouns are similar, but Biblical Hebrew might talk about chariots, kings, and prophets, modern Hebrew might talk about plains, trains, and automobiles.
Hebrew words with various silent or interchangeable letters may confuse beginning students. In Hebrew, there are two silent letters “ALEPH” and “AYIN” that students often mix up. Further, there are two letters “SHIN” and “SAMECH” that have the “S” sound, and two letters “TAV” and “TET” that have the “T” sound.
Hebrew numbers come in two forms, masculine and feminine. So you basically have to learn to count to 10 two different ways. Learning to tell time and doing simple math problems are great ways to enforce the learning of numbers.
Children can begin learning Hebrew as young as three years of age. Why not let them learn Hebrew at the same time they learn their English letters? Children enjoy using software programs that have interactive games.
Just like we have cursive and printed letters in English, Hebrew has both styles of letters. People learning modern Hebrew will eventually want to learn the cursive letters. Biblical students need not learn the letters, but it’s actually easier to write the cursive letters than to try to print-out the “book-style” letters. No one really “prints” in Hebrew, everybody uses cursive.
Tags: bible, Education, Hebrew, home-school, language, learn, prayer, religion, self-study