Biblical Hebrew 101?

[us4-he2-gal2]

Thread Orientation: Doesn't "Biblical Hebrew 101?" say it all? This thread is dedicated to Lara for her Birthday - I'm only just over two weeks late!

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Hey all - thanks for clicking on "Biblical Hebrew 101" - I almost thought you wouldn't 0_0. Well. As some of you know I have acquired the ambition to initiate a direct assault on Biblical Hebrew!.. While this may seem a less obvious choice then say Sumerian or Akkadian for the person mainly enthused over ancient Mesopotamia, I've learned that those aspiring to Assyriological studies do well to be acquainted with Semitic language in general, and often Biblical Hebrew is a starting point or in any case a compliment to this effort. And on a more personnel note, due to my unfortunate location the only available university in the near future offers Hebrew but nothing Mesopotamian.

BUT WHY WAIT UNTIL YOUR IN CLASS!! (especially given the circumstances) And so, on with the study - Damn! missed my Bar Mitzvah! but only by 13 years or so 0_0

Biblical Hebrew 101

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Don't worry, I am fully liscensed Grammar shower)[/center]




I have begun the assault by borrowing from the library three intoductions to Biblical Hebrew, they are: "Teach yourself Hebrew" (Harrison 1955), "Biblical Hebrew" (Nakarai 1976), and "A First Hebrew Reader" (Cameron 1919.) At the moment, my idea is to work through these and to periodically sum the essential of a lesson on the thread below. Because all three books start by examining the Hebrew Alphabet, I believe this is the first step; So everyone have a look at this table adapted from Harrison, and we'll move on to post two soon: Learning the Hebrew Alphabet. 22 letters = easy!

Form. Primary	Name	Trans-	Numerical
or Medial -------------------------------- Final.	Name	literation	Value.

[/color][/td][/tr]
[tr]blah[td]blah[/td][td]blah[/td][td]blah[/td][td][/td][/tr]
[tr][td][/td][td]--'Aleph--[/td][td]--'[/td][td]--1[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][/td][td]--Bêth--[/td][td]--bh, b[/td][td]--2[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][/td][td]--Gîmel--[/td][td]--gh, g[/td][td]--3[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][/td][td]--Dāleth--[/td][td]--dh, d[/td][td]--4[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][/td][td]--Hē--[/td][td]--'[/td][td]--5[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][/td][td]--Wāw--[/td][td]--w[/td][td]--6[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][/td][td]--Záyin--[/td][td]--z[/td][td]--7[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][/td][td]--Ḥêth--[/td][td]--ḥ[/td][td]--8[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][/td][td]--Ṭêth--[/td][td]--ṭ[/td][td]--9[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][/td][td]--Yôdh--[/td][td]--y[/td][td]--10[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][/td][td]--Kaph--[/td][td]--kh, k[/td][td]--20[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][/td][td]--Lāmedh--[/td][td]--l[/td][td]--30[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][/td][td]--Mêm--[/td][td]--m[/td][td]--40[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][/td][td]--Nûn--[/td][td]--n[/td][td]--50[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][/td][td]--Sāmekh--[/td][td]--ṣ[/td][td]--60[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][/td][td]--'Ayin--[/td][td]--'[/td][td]--70[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][/td][td]--Pē--[/td][td]--ph, p[/td][td]--80[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][/td][td]-- Çādhê--[/td][td]--ç[/td][td]--90[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][/td][td]--Qôph--[/td][td]--q[/td][td]--100[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][/td][td]--Rêš--[/td][td]--r[/td][td]--200[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][/td][td]--Sîn, Šin--[/td][td]--s, š[/td][td]--300[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][/td][td]--Tāw--[/td][td]--th, t[/td][td]--400[/td][/tr]


[/table]
[/center]

I have lifted the above graphic from a misc. website and which helps again to put the Alphabet in perspective.

Remarks from Camron 1919/

- Hebrew words are written from right to left, not as in English from left to right.

- Aleph is a letter that is not sounded. In transliterating..it is usual to represent Aleph by ' .

- Ayin is not sounded. It is represented in tranliteration by '.

- We do not have a letter that can be compared with heth. The final ch [in the Scottish] "loch" represent the sound fairly well. We do not find that sound at the beginning of a word in English, but it is frequently placed in Hebrew.

- Tsadi has no corresponding letter in English. If we take the word "sail" and put the letter t before it, as "tsail," we get the sound of Tsadi

- There is no difference in the sound between Teth and Tau, Kaph and Koph, Samech and Sin.

- Shin and Sin are almost alike in form. The only difference is that in Shin the point is on the right of the three upright lines, while in Sin it is on the left.

- Note the point in the center of b, g, d, d, k, p, t. The point is called Dagesh.

[ummia-inim-gina]

Sept 24, 2008 10:01:15 GMT -5 us4-he2-gal2 said:

Don't worry, I am fully liscensed Grammar shower

Shouldn't that read: Don't worry, I am "a" fully "licensed" Grammar shower

;D

[amarsin]

So for those interested, the Hebrew script is an (essentially) alphabetic script. You more or less have one grapheme ("sign" or "letter") for each phoneme ("sound").

Most of the sounds are familiar. For instance, the "hē" (said like "hay") has the /h/ sound. The "rêš" (said like "raish" and looking like a backwards "r") has the /r/ sound. And that gimel has the /g/ sound. (Ignore, for now, the little dot.)

If you put those together, you get h-r-g, "harag", a verbal root meaning "to kill".

You'll notices that this script doesn't mark for vowels, and we'll discover later why that is, and how later scribes eventually compensated for that.

But for now, if you're interested in learning Hebrew, just memorize the letters and the sounds associated with them.

[us4-he2-gal2]

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Lesson II: Final letters and Dagesh letters

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Cameron next discusses some fine points about the letters we have learned above. First of all we must understand final letters:


Final letters/


-Kaph
- Mêm
- Nûn
- Pē
- Çādhê



What is important to take away here, is the these five letters have two forms. On the left side, we have the letters common form, it is this form that is used in every case with one exception: when the letter appears at the end of a word, the form on the right is used. When writing any of these five letters therefore we need to ask ourselves, does the letter fall at the end of the word? If yes, use the form that appears on the right side of the above.



Dagesh letters/


There are six Dagesh letters, that is, letters with a dot appearing in the middle. See above the following letters: Bêth, Gîmel, Daleth, Kaph, Pē and Tāw. A word to help remember these letters is "Begadkepat" or Be-ga-d-ke-pa-t.

Cameron give the pronounciation as follows:

Bêth without Dagesh: like b in "bind"
with: like v in "vine"

Dāleth without Dagesh: Problematic. Like "th" in "that"
with: like "d" in "date"

Gîmel without Dagesh: like "ch" in "loch"
with: like "g" in "get"

Kaph[ without Dagesh: like "ch" in "loch"
with: like "k" in "keep"

Pē without Dagesh: like "p " in "pain"
with: like "ph" in "philosopher" (f)

Tāw without Dagesh: like "th" in "thing"
with: like "t" in "tea"

[us4-he2-gal2]

_______________________

Lesson III: The Vowels

____ __________ ____

Cameron next introduces the subject of Vowels within the Hebrew Alphabet. As is fairly well known the Hebrew Alphabet originally consisted solely of consonents, however vowels were artifically introduced to the writing system and take the form of "vowel points" as we will see below. The author beings with 5 long vowel sounds which I have reproduced below, following these I mention an onlin resource for the remainder.

The vowel marks are in form what I would call small "dots" or shapes that appear below, above or beside a consonant, each vowel mark has its own place. Even though most of the pictures below show the vowel marks position and do not picture the consonant itself, in practice they do not appear independently.



Long Vowels/

Qamets - ā makes "a" as in "father"


Tsēre. - ē makes "ai" as in "pain"


Chīreq - ī makes "ee" as in seem

Chõlem - õ makes "o" as in "sore"

Shūreq - ū makes "oo" as in "poor"

Short Vowels, Diphthongs and so on/


As of this time I am myself stuggling with the remainder of the vowels and am hard pressed to explain them from a learned standpoint 0_0 Just have to keep working! In the meantime I suggest a website that seems to phrase things as easily as possible and in an organized fashion, in addition they provide little illustrations to see just how is the brain supposed to interpret these weird looking vowel points?? So despite it`s apparent religious affiliations check out Hebrew4christians.com and their nice presentation of Hebrew Vowel points. The below illustration is borrowed from that site:

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Next to come... Transliteration exercises!

[amarsin]

In general, unless you're going to be doing serious scholarship in Hebrew, knowing things like the names of vowels just isn't important. Just know the basic sounds of the main points-- the qamets makes an /a/ sound, the tsere is a short e, and so on.

Note also that without an expert to practice with, you'll probably get a few things wrong because there are occasional exceptions to the established rules. But don't worry about that. Get the basics down and you'll get maybe 90% of it.