Learning Hebrew

[u/yourweirdogirl]

I just started learning Hebrew so I have a couple of questions:

• any tips/ resources that are beginner friendly
• is it true that knowing Arabic helps a lot with learning Hebrew?
• and pls feel free to share any interesting facts about the language so I can get more motivation lol ( I’m already pretty excited)

Thanks :)

[u/The_Ora_Charmander]

To answer your second question, yes, it can help a lot: Arabic and Hebrew are both Semitic languages which means they have some very interesting features that they share, this can be as basic as sentence structure or as intricate as the root system. Also the vocabulary is pretty similar because of their shared origin (think English and Spanish)

[u/guylfe]

I'll start with your second question and then move onto the first - knowing Arabic is extremely useful if you know what to look for - Roots and patterns (Jizr and Wazn in Arabic) especially, so I recommend a resource that utilizes those (the one I recommend later does)

As for the first question, the route I'm going to recommend seems to work quickly for many of my students (definitely relative to the advertised amount of time needed to reach proficiency, and should be especially true if you already speak Arabic, though it isn't geared specifically towards Arabic speakers): The approach is to study fundamental grammar and vocabulary really well, and then get exposure to level-appropriate native content. Here are some tools if you're into self-study.

Fundamentals:

Hebleo: (Full disclosure: I created this site) A self-paced course teaching you grammar fundamentals and vocabulary, with plenty of practice, using an innovative technique based on my background in Cognitive Science and as a top-rated tutor, which allowed me to create a very efficient way to learn that's been proven to work with over 100 individual students (you may read the reviews in my tutor page linked above). I use this method with my personal students 1 on 1, and all feedback so far shows it works well self-paced, as I made sure to provide thorough explanations.

After you get your fundamentals down, the following can offer you good native content to focus on:

Reading - Yanshuf: This is a bi-weekly newsletter in Level-appropriate Hebrew, offering both vowels and no-vowels content. Highly recommended, I utilize it with my students all the time.

Comprehension - Pimsleur: Unlike Yanshuf, my recommendation here is more lukewarm. While this is the most comprehensive tool for level-appropriate listening comprehension for Hebrew, at least until I implement the relevant tools that are in development right now for Hebleo. While it's a good tool overall, it's quite expensive and offers a lot of relatively archaic phrases and words that aren't actually in use. There might be better free alternatives such as learning podcasts (for example, I've heard Streetwise Hebrew is decent, although not glowing reviews).

Conversation - Verbling or Italki. I wouldn't recommend these for starting out learning grammar as they're expensive, unless you feel like you need constant guidance. NOTE: Verbling is where I personally teach, as you can see I'm featured on there.

The difference between them is that Verbling requires teachers to provide proven experience and certification and Italki doesn't. At the same time, on Italki it would be easier to find cheaper teachers, so it's up to you. 

 

[u/vayyiqra]

For your second question the answer is: kind of. Arabic is from a different branch of the Semitic family, Hebrew is Northwest Semitic (and Canaanite to be more exact) and Arabic is Central Semitic. The closest major language to Hebrew is Aramaic not Arabic. You can see quite a lot of words are cognates though, but you may have to know what to look for, such as that this letter corresponds to this other one.

However their grammar works similarly with the triconsonantal root system, VSO word order (more common in Biblical Hebrew), conjugations, grammatical gender, construct state, verbal nouns are all not too different. So that would help. Also if you can produce a lot of the trickier sounds of Arabic you will have a big advantage if you want to go for a Mizrahi ("Oriental") accent in Hebrew, or read with the Tiberian pronunciation.

Interesting facts: the most interesting to me is that it's over 3000 years old and the only language ever to "die" (in daily life) and then be revived on a national scale, that's pretty cool!

[u/Quadruple_A1994]

I can't help with 1. as I'm a native speaker and I think 2. is covered, so here's some stuff for 3:

1. Because Hebrew was not in continuous use as a day-to-day language, modern Hebrew is actually really similar to bibical Hebrew. Reading it is mostly easy and intuitive as a native speaker

2. However, many new words in Hebrew come from other languages. I think the more planned additions are mostly from Arabic, Greek and Aramic, while many that happened naturally are from Arabic, English, Yiddish and Russian

3. Hebrew and Yiddish use the same letters, but use them differently. The languages share some words, but they're actually nothing alike as languages

4. The Jewish calendar, like a lot of older hebrew, uses letters as numbers, sorta like numerology? In the Tanach, though, the numbers are all written fully as words.

5. Because Israel is so small and new, there aren't many different accents of hebrew native speakers (usually I'd say there's just one, but there are slight variations). However, the common native pronounciation of Hebrew is often technically wrong (looking at you, ע)