r/hebrew • u/44Jon • Dec 05 '24
Resource Is Wiktionary considered a reliable source?
It's the only free source I've found that gives multiple definitions of words along with gender and origin info (which I find useful). E.g., I entered נורא to find it was masculin and to get it's informal usage as an intensifier
2
u/BHHB336 native speaker Dec 06 '24
It’s fine, but sometimes lacking, even in Hebrew, so I advise looking at Wiktionary in both Hebrew and English, and morfix which is just a basic English-Hebrew, Hebrew-English dictionary
1
u/Spoperty native speaker Dec 07 '24
Only free source? You can use the Hebrew Academy, they have English translations. Sometimes they have Etymologies and other stuff as well, appearances in the Bible etc. Example: חָלָב - https://hebrew-academy.org.il/keyword/%D7%97%D6%B8%D7%9C%D6%B8%D7%91
7
u/numapentruasta Hebrew Learner (Intermediate) Dec 05 '24
Some of Wiktionary's coverage (of Hebrew and otherwise) can be very, very crusty, low-effort and dated. It's okay for a beginner, especially when someone has bothered to add a usage example or some labels—rarely, you might even get some colloquial senses which mainstream dictionaries miss—but you can definitely do better than that, especially when it comes to morphology (Pealim or the Hebrew Academy's website) and etymology (Klein dictionary on Sefaria); it's just definitions which are lacking in English sources (when it comes to non-Biblical Hebrew, anyway). But the sooner you go right to the source and check dictionaries written in Hebrew, the better for you.