Study Guide for Students of Beginning Biblical Hebrew/Aramaic From Letters, Vowels & Syllables to New Vocabulary Joab

Eichenberg-Eilon, PhD A. Learning Hebrew Letters and Vowels Hebrew Letters 1. For Biblical Hebrew, the most important skill is decoding. Decoding means identifying letters and vowels and instantly knowing what sounds they produce. Writing them and actually pronouncing them, let alone identifying the letters and vowels by listening to the sounds are nice skills to have, but they are secondary. 2. In the document library you will find several charts for learning the alphabet as well as a document with ready-to-print flash cards of all the Hebrew letters. If this is your learning style, print them out, cut them out, fold and glue them as cards and carry them everywhere with you. Use down time (waiting for a ride, at a doctors office, etc.) to review them. 3. Several songs exist for leaning the Hebrew alphabet in sequence. Most if not all of them can be found on YouTube, and you are welcome to use any one that you like. I personally like one song and included it in a document posted in the document library of our website. It is catchy and lively and easy to learn, and once you know it, you can always hum it to yourself if you forget the name of a particular letter. Writing Hebrew Letters 4. Many Bible scholars know a lot about the Bible, but when they write a word on the board what a disaster! If you are super ambitious, you may want to learn the cursive script, which is used in Modern Hebrew, and is easier to use (in such case, contact me). Otherwise, stick with the chart of the block letters with stroke directions. Every week, use it to do the writing homework, and if there is no writing in the homework, take a verse and practice. 5. When you writ Hebrew block letters, imagine an invisible rectangle within which the letter is written. Some letters fill the whole rectangle, some fill it vertically but are very narrow, one is so small that it does not fill it either way, and others stick out below or above the rectangle. Using the recommended stroke order will increase the chances of your doing so correctly. Hebrew Sounds 6. The Hebrew sound system is very simple. It has only five sounds (sounds are the audible outcome of vowels): ah, eh, ee, oh and oo. It is important not to equate Hebrew sounds with English letters, which sounds differently in different situation, e.g. the letter a in cat, father caught came and wall. 7. Because there are only five sounds, all you need to do to learn how to use them with letters is take a consonant and pronounce it with one of the five sounds: Aleph + ah = ah; Bet + ah = bah, etc. This is the traditional way children have been taught for century, only instead of ah, eh etc. they called out the vowels name.

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Vowel Signs 8. Hebrew, like other Semitic languages, is a consonantal language. This means that the Hebrew alphabet, from A to Z sorry from Aleph to Tav, contains only consonants. The vowels were initially added from memory, and gradually developed into a separate system of vowel signs, consisting of groups of dots and lines placed under, inside or above the letters. 9. Learners of Modern Hebrew can get away without vowel signs. In fact, they hardly know them at all. But on the other hand, they need the skill of reading texts without vowel signs and knowing which sounds to use in them. 10. Biblical Hebrew learners need to know the vowel signs and their names because they are used later on in analyzing texts, identifying parts of speech, explaining changes in vowels, and differentiating between identical words with different vowels. 11. Hebrew has more vowel signs than its five sounds. This means that for each sound there are several vowel signs. The good news is (a) in Biblical Hebrew we read, but dont write, so we dont need to know which vowel sign to use they are already there; and (b) there are tricks to remind us to which sound a particular vowel sign belongs (and a song we can use as a mnemonic tool for that purpose). 12. I was unable to find any songs for learning the vowel signs, so I have created my own. It is not perfect (some of the meter is a little stiff) but it is based on a well known tune (London bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down) and separated into stanzas, each of which is focused on a sign or a group of signs, so you dont need to hum the whole song but go straight to the one you need. The song is likewise posted in the document library. 13. For those of you who want a more serious (and maybe tedious) way of learning letter+vowel combinations, I will post two color-coded documents. The color coding corresponds to the sound of the vowel. For example green represents the sound ee, blue the sound oo, etc. 1. A list of all the consonant + vowel sign combinations, so you can go, like in the traditional method: Aleph Kamatz Ah, Bet Kamatz Beh, Gimmel Kammatz Geh, etc. 2. An Excel chart of all the possible combination of consonant + vowel sign and vowel sign + consonant, which create open and closed syllables (you will soon find out the difference) that can result from such combinations. After using one of the methods above, I expect none of you to refer to the letter a in the name Yaacov (Jacob) as a (pron. ay) but as the sound ah or vowel sign x Hebrew Transliteration 14. There are many transliteration methods for Hebrew, each with its own purpose: the easiest to recognize, the most suitable for speaking, etc. 15. The method used in our course represents the way Hebrew words are written, not the way they sound. Therefore, even though several vowel signs produce the same sound, in the transliterated text they are represented by different signs. For example, the sound ah can be transliterated as a, , or , depending on the Hebrew vowel sign each of them represents. The reason for this is that, until you have enough practice and confidence to refer directly to the Hebrew signs, you have another tool, which reflects changes in vowels, which are important for explaining other phenomena.

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Hebrew Syllables and Words 16. Words are made of Syllables. Syllables are combinations of consonants and vowels. 17. Hebrew syllables: a. Must begin with a consonant. When you think a syllable begins with a vowel, you must have forgotten that aleph and ayin, represented in the transliteration by or , are the invisible consonants preceding that vowel: Adam is in fact dm. b. May end with either a consonant (e.g. lot) or a vowel (e.g. go); c. A syllable may not contain two consecutive consonants (e.g. bread) d. A syllable can be open (CV, e.g. go) or closed (CVC, e.g. lot) 18. The shortest Hebrew words have one syllable, open or closed. In the first lesson you have learned eight of the 22 letters of the Hebrew language, and 15 vocabulary items made by combining those consonants with vowels, provided both as vowel signs (pending later explanation) and their transliteration. Those are summarized on page 2 of the book. 19. As a first exercise in syllabification (division of words into syllables), divide the onesyllable words into two groups: (a) open (CV); (b) closed (CVC). The two-syllable words are more difficult, because you have not yet learned the rules of syllabification, so I am using them as an example: a. = mar | mar = CV|CVC; = rh r | h = CV|CVC b. , however, uses the vowel sign , which complicates things, so well let it be for now. B. Learning Vocabulary 20. About memorizing vocabulary. Language learners often have the misconception that the way to learn new vocabulary is to memorize lists of words. The most effective way to learn vocabulary is in context. Once the terms have been learned, there is an important role for vocabulary lists, charts and flash cards as tools for review and repetition of vocabulary or for self-testing or mutual texting (working in pairs or groups) and creating artificial context. 21. Learning vocabulary in context. There are two types of context: a. Natural Contexts: In modern languages, natural context can be given immediately by the instructor, who often speaks only Hebrew to the students. It results from the very first conversations in class: Who are you? I am John Smith. In Biblical Hebrew, the natural context is the text of the Hebrew Bible. Period. Initially you will receive vocabulary out of any context. So what can you do? b. Artificial Context: Develop the habit from the very beginning to use new and learned vocabulary to create meaningful contexts. At first it will be awkward: in the first lesson there are 15 vocabulary items; what meaningful context can you create from 15 vocabulary items? Lets give it a try: Nouns (incl. proper nouns): brother; mother; mountain/hill; bread/food; stream/river, young man/lad; lamp; people

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Prepositions & Particles: to/towards; from; upon; no/not Verbs: [he] said; [he] saw (verbs are initially presented in the 1p.m.s.) All but one noun are m.s. and can be used with the nouns as subjects. So we begin. We dont know yet how to use the definite article, so we put it in brackets:

[the] brother said = h mar = [ ; the] brother saw =h rh = [the] brother did not say = h l mar = [ ; the] brother did not see =h l rh = [the] brother saw [a] hill =h rh har = [ ; the] brother did not see a river =h l rh nhr =

Now we add the negative particle. Intuitively, we place it before the verb:

Next we add a direct object. Let us use the verb saw:

When all the reasonable combinations have been exhausted and we still have unused words, we can add the missing words in English, for example: [the] people went to Aram = am went el rm = 22. Every week you will receive a new list of 15 vocabulary units. The vocabulary previously learned will be used as much as possible, but it is never enough. Some terms may appear only occasionally, not enough to provide the repetition necessary for deep learning. This is where the habit of creating artificial context comes in handy: it forces you to pull out the old words and plug them into new constructions to be used with fresh vocabulary. Examples a. When we reach the unit with the definite article, you will go back to the vocabulary learned up to that point, pull out all the nouns and adjectives and combine them with and without the definite article. b. As you learn the use of prepositions for indirect objects, you will pull out all the verbs and reasonable objects for them and plug in all the new prepositions to see how they fit. 23. Natural Contexts, again: Soon you will begin to read actual biblical passages first very short and simple, and more complex as you progress. This provides you with a growing body of natural context for reviewing mostly new grammatical concepts, but also for vocabulary. a. Again, when we reach the definite article, you can go back to all the leaned passages and identify it, looking for the specific phenomena taught in that unit; b. You can also look for words that were previously used in passages (which will include invariably unlearned materials), searching for new vocabulary in context. 24. We will discuss all this in class and, when there is an opportunity to use these techniques, you will be advised.

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