Some Small Success . . .

One month since I started, and I finally feel as if I’m starting to get somewhere. That’s good: I’ve had a few days (more than a few, really) when I thought I was getting absolutely nowhere. Hebrew is the first non-Indo-European language I’ve studied in any depth (read: expect completely foreign vocabulary and mind-bending grammar), and although there are many things that I find logical and useful, every so often the language will throw me for a loop. Example: the word את. You can’t translate it into English, but all it does is flag a direct object (similar to the info you get from the accusative case in, say, German.) On the other hand, where do I put it? Can I insert the indirect object with it’s attached preposition between the verb (or subject) and our friend את? What about adverbs? Since it’s not related to any language that I speak or have studied, how should I know?

 Enough of the frustrations, though — I hit a nice milestone today. One of the first things I did when I began studying the language was learn the alphabet; I thought it best to get away from transliterated texts immediately to avoid superimposing an American accent on the Hebrew (aside: I heard someone speaking with one in Hebrew on Kol Israel the other day — now I know what I’m trying to avoid.) I’ve been reading Hebrew script reasonably well for the past few weeks, but it’s always felt a bit, well, foreign — as if I’m playing some sort of high-speed crossword puzzle with sounds and squiggly marks.  Well, today I sat down in a local rabbi’s Hebrew reading class, and I just read. I didn’t know all the words, but I seem to have managed to develop a few brain cells for processing Hebrew text. (Another aside: my friends often ask if I have trouble reading “backwards.” It’s not hard, since I always read that script that way, but I don’t think I’ll ever get used to opening books the other way.)

 Tips for learning the Hebrew alphabet:

• Consistency. Drill it for an hour a day until you can decode on your own. The Pimsleur tapes came with a reader and a set of audio lessons that read each word in it successively (and also explained weird points, like how the dots work.)
• Find a local rabbi to help! He’ll teach you good pronunciation, be amazingly patient (at least, the one in my area is), give you all kinds of great tips and mnemonics, and give you insight into the Israeli and Jewish cultures.
• Practice. Once you can decode, practice all the time. Find a course with more extensive text than Pimsleur, and work on it regularly. I like the FSI course, even though it’s unvoweled. The Bergman/Band Hebrew series is also great for this, but be sure to get some feedback, since it lacks an audio pronunciation. (Note to publisher: sell a CD with the readings on them!)

 That should be enough to get you going if you’re even newer to Hebrew than I am.

!שלום