vijayjohn wrote:It's mostly just that, honestly. It's that there are so many words like that (and they throw them at you all at once!). I think I kind of have the same problem as Antea; the lack of apparent cognates in Arabic throws me off so easily. But at least there are cognates in Ugaritic, so that gives me at least a little more hope, I guess.
Verb conjugation so far doesn't seem nearly as hard as I would've expected; it's just hard to remember all the patterns and which verbs use which one. But it's only hard because I'm half-assing it.
Also I hate how they feel the need to mark every single instance of both o and u in this book, but that's because I want my answers to the exercises to look as close to theirs as possible and using holam and dagesh all the goddamn time is a pain when you're using Google Input Tools to write in Hebrew. (You can imagine how thrilled I must be to try to include vowel marks in Biblical Hebrew all the time!).
Antea wrote:For the vocabulary, I am trying a new approach. That is to take some specific events or subjects that I could find some connection or interest in it, and trying to remember to words associated to it, even with images. I am just doing that with רֹאשׁ הַשָּׁנָה.
Maybe it will take more time, but at least it won’t evaporate so easily if I can connect the words to something
n8an wrote:That's a great idea! What have you learnt about ראש השנה so far?
Antea wrote:שנה טובה ומתוקה A good and sweet year
שנה טובה Happy new year
לוחות שנה רבים Many calendars
אני לא יודע I don’t know
חלה קלועה Plait or braid the Khallot (bread)
לחם Bread
קמח Flour (ingredients)
ביצים Eggs
סוכר Sugar
לאכול To eat
n8an wrote:This is so different to my experience - when I learned Arabic (after Hebrew, obviously) I felt I was learning a super similar language full of cognates
Then again, I was learning Lebanese and not MSA, which may explain why I felt it was more similar (the Aramaic substrate in Lebanese maybe helped? I don't know).
In any case, don't despair. It gets easier as you go on. Just maybe throw away your expectations about similarities to Arabic - they'll appear when you don't look for them, I assure you
I didn't even really understand what binyanim were when I learned Hebrew so maybe that's why this thing never seemed that difficult to me. The main thing that confused me was using the passive ones (is that the correct terminology? Lol).
In any case, there is some logic behind it once you learn the basic form of most verbs. I think, lol.
Wait, do you mean that they use vav or they don't use vav to mark those vowels?
You can really tell how poor my knowledge of Hebrew grammar terminology is here
vijayjohn wrote:I have a feeling it might just be easier to go from knowing (maybe even just a little) Hebrew to learning Arabic than the other way around.
Honestly, I really just need to slow down. Fuck this stupid idea of mine of trying to do one whole lesson from this book in a day. Way too much for me at this point. I'm just going to take it slow for now.
No, there's plenty of logic behind it, and they don't teach you what binyanim are in this book, either. Again, it only looks hard to me because I've been trying to half-ass the whole language way too fast.
Neither. I mean they use the stupid dot every frigging time there's an o or an u in any word even though they don't mark any of the other vowels (they also use a dot specifically for distinguishing shin vs. sin) even though no one in real life does that (right? Or at least that's been my understanding). Like, I get wanting to distinguish these sounds from each other, but honestly, o is a lot more common than u, and shin is a lot more common than sin. Make my life easier and just mark the u's and the sins, Colloquial!
księżycowy wrote:That's why I like the Routledge textbook. It basically spells things in the unpointed form, unless it's too hard to guess the pronunciation.
n8an wrote:I'm interested in this. People usually say MSA is harder than Hebrew, and I tend to agree.
Good idea!
So they don't use a vav, but do the dot for o and u?
Do they use dots for pey/fey, kaf/khaf and bet/vet too?
vijayjohn wrote:Although it could just be that I have never seen any textbook for Arabic go "here's a lot of vocab you can use while ordering a meal, after three chapters where I taught you basically nothing. (dumps truckload of food on student) THAT ENOUGH FOOD FOR YOU, PUNK? HUH? Oh btw assume you have to remember all this vocabulary even though it's in the middle of some exercise in a list without any other context. You'll need it all later. But I won't tell you so."
Thanks! Maybe I'll need to do this for Biblical Hebrew, too. Though if I'm doing Biblical Hebrew again, it might actually help make Modern Hebrew look easier, even with this book.
Never mind, I was remembering wrong. They do use both a vav and the dot. It would be WAY easier for me if they just used a vav.
Nope, just shin, sin, u, and o! At least as far as I can tell.
n8an wrote:I know this sounds weird, but in the Jewish community or most Jewish schools, they don't really treat Modern Hebrew as a separate thing to Biblical Hebrew...at all.
However, you do find that most Jews in the west will sound hilariously biblical when they try to speak Hebrew.
I guess this sounds a bit like how Arabic speakers don't treat fus7a or other dialects as a separate thing, but as "accents" though Hebrew obviously doesn't differ that much.
Ahh, but sometimes even I would appreciate the dot with the vav
n8an wrote:I guess this sounds a bit like how Arabic speakers don't treat fus7a or other dialects as a separate thing, but as "accents" though Hebrew obviously doesn't differ that much.
vijayjohn wrote:Dismissing regional languages in Pakistan as simply "dialects of Urdu" is apparently pretty common.
n8an wrote:He says Hebrew has become like a mother tongue for him and that he speaks very comfortably - which tbh is clearly false by the way he speaks - and also that Hebrew isn't very complicated, which is interesting for someone making multiple mistakes and clearly reading from a pre-written text
vijayjohn wrote:księżycowy wrote:That's why I like the Routledge textbook. It basically spells things in the unpointed form, unless it's too hard to guess the pronunciation.
Well, technically, this is also a Routledge textbook...
Saim wrote:I think this may just be a case of them mistranslating لهجة, which can mean either dialect or accent. I don't think any Arabs would actually think the only difference between MSA and colloquial Arabic(s) is one of pronunciation, that would be too obvious a denial of basic reality to fly.
Luís wrote:Typical Youtube polyglot...
n8an wrote:I know this sounds weird, but in the Jewish community or most Jewish schools, they don't really treat Modern Hebrew as a separate thing to Biblical Hebrew...at all. I mean, you clearly do run into a bit of "what is this!?", but it's not treated as separately as such. However, you do find that most Jews in the west will sound hilariously biblical when they try to speak Hebrew.
I guess this sounds a bit like how Arabic speakers don't treat fus7a or other dialects as a separate thing, but as "accents" though Hebrew obviously doesn't differ that much.
Following the conventions of how Hebrew is usually written, you could probably expect this to be pronounced "mosheg" - since shin and "o" would be more likely here. He pronounces it as "MOsheg". In reality, it's pronounced "muSAG".
voron wrote:Wow guys, you have quite an active community here. It almost make me want to study Hebrew. (But I probably won't, because you know that my heart is already taken. )
Antea wrote:You know, mine is also taken.
voron wrote:It's funny because he makes a similar mistake in Turkish. At some point he says:
Bu dilden hoslanıyorum. (I like this language)
while it should be hoşlanıyorum. Looks like he studied it from texts with no diacritical marks.
Wow guys, you have quite an active community here. It almost make me want to study Hebrew. (But I probably won't, because you know that my heart is already taken. )
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