How to Learn the Ancient Hebrew Language
Learning the ancient Hebrew language, as used in the Bible and other texts, is not as difficult as you might think, especially if your goal is to learn how to pronounce the words and understand them with the aid of a Hebrew-English edition of the text. There are twenty-two letters in the Hebrew alphabet, which is written from right to left, and the grammar is not very similar to European languages. Beyond those obstacles, it is possible to teach yourself a modest amount of ancient Hebrew with the aid of online resources alone.
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Things You'll Need
- Computer with internet access
- Hebrew-English bible (online versions available)
- Hebrew-English dictionary (online translators available)
Instructions
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Learn the Hebrew alphabet. There are twenty-two letters, with five letters that are written differently if they appear at the end of a word (mem, nun, tsade, peh, khaf). This is considerably easier than the twenty-six letters of the English alphabet, all of which have upper and lower case forms.
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Learn the system of Hebrew vowels called "nekudot." These are dots, dashes and other symbols that are written around the consonants to indicate how they are to be pronounced. Printed Bibles and other ancient texts almost always include these helpful nekudot, but they are not printed in the Torah scroll itself.
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Learn the basic suffixes, prefixes and infixes that change the meaning of the three-letter root called a "shoresh." For example, the letter "bet" at the beginning of a shoresh means "in" or "with," as in the first word of Genesis 1:1, "bereshit," which is usually translated as "in the beginning."
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Practice reading Hebrew aloud and identifying the shoresh of biblical words with a Hebrew-English edition of the Bible. It will take some practice to recognize the shoresh, but with the aid of a Hebrew-English dictionary (or one of the online translation services), you will slowly develop the ability to translate the text.
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References
Resources
- Photo Credit la loi hebraique image by SADIA from Fotolia.com
