To learn Hebrew....

[DownNative]

Anyone know of a good place in Scotland that is good for learning Hebrew?

I'm a complete beginner, obviously, and there's only so far you can get with Duolingo!

Cheers!

Oofft! You're telling me! I had a look at the differences between block and cursive form. Wow, what a big difference!

Still learning the Aleph-Bet and recognising block form. But will add cursive in once I've got the hang of things.

Starting to see how words are formed in Hebrew although I can't really read yet. But it does seem a very logical language which is right up my alley!

Honestly, I’d learn to read the block and script, but I’d only practice hand writing in script. No one generally writes in block (handwritten), except if you are typing. Also I looked at your example letters you wrote , you’ve added in all the little kicks and things. You can write more simply than that (think basic letter forms va calligraphy)

hardly any text is written with vowels (nekudot), which has lead me to make some hilarious misreads 😆

I’ll hand write you a page of what block letters can look like in a more simple form, with script underneath

wowzers! I just tried to write out the aleph beis in block; I don't think I have written it out in full since early primary school, what a mess! 😂 I only write in script.

and if you learn Torah, there is also Rashi script.

Much easier if you don’t do flourishes!

Thanks for the tip!

Aye, I added the extra bits in my block writing example as that's really what the book told me to do. But I also find those extra bits helpful to tell what sound a letter makes at the moment. Seems to stick in my mind more when I add them, so when I see typed Hebrew online I'm looking for them too. Was thinking I need a magnifying glass! 🤣

So, how do you figure out if vowels are meant to be there if the nikud dots/dashes/etc aren't there?

Cheers for that - helpful to see how Israelis like yourself write them out!

I can recognise maybe half of your block letters off the top of my head, e.g. A, B x2, Tsade/Tzade, S, Ayin.

Lovely handwriting though! No matter what language I write in mine is just horrible! 🤣

So, how do you figure out if vowels are meant to be there if the nikud dots/dashes/etc aren't there?

I'm not sure what you mean by this?

The vowels are part of the nekudot.

https://www.inn.co.il/ this is arutz 7, an Israeli newspaper. If you click on it, you should be able to see it in Ivrit, and you'll see what I mean about no nekudot/vowels.

I guess I mean I'm learning that vowels are indicated by diacritics such as dots which I find helpful in knowing how to sound letters.

How do you work out the correct pronunciation/spelling of words if there's no diacritics?

For the letter B, for example, I know with the dot is a B sound and without its a V. So, I use them as a guide otherwise I'd be like an explorer without a compass for his map.

There's a FB group I'm on which is another way I try to learn when I don't have time to use my book. Example attached. 👇

@DownNative the sounds become more logical as you learn the language and the grammatical rules so eventually there is no need for the nekudot (the dots/dashes). The hardest words to pronounce are those that are transliterations from other languages because they don’t follow language rules.

Grand!

In other words, I've to stop being an impatient wee bugger and trust the process of learning Hebrew! 🙈

It's certainly an experience so far. Beautiful language, especially the writing of it! 👌

You get used to it with experience.

I bt y cn ndrstnd wht ppl sy when thy don't wrt th vwls!

Kind of the same as your vocab increases.

Grammar is very logical, which you have said you find useful, so concentrate on reading, listening and oral. Forget about writing it.
There are some good Israeli dramas on Netflix, or watch some Bluey/kids learning cartoon type things on YouTube. A is for apple. A big green round apple type things.

yes!! This is what catches me out 😅I’ll be really puzzled trying to read a word and then realised it’s an English transliteration 😆

my absolute fave is דיסקונקי …

I have no idea what a diacritic is 😅 this is way beyond me

you just get familiar with time. Also it helps I learned to read and write Hebrew at the same time as I learned English, and have been reading and writing it daily my whole life (pray in Hebrew, we had equal amount of Jewish studies as secular subjects). Of course classical Hebrew isn’t exactly the same but there’s a huge amount of crossover

Lol!
Danielle Lloyd also fell into the same trap... Fucking idiot.

Actually Op@DownNative bad tattoos are a fun way to learn letters and words. Especially noticing the little ticks like on r and d.
Your homework.... 😜
Would you be happy with these??

😆😆😆

I had to google what this said - oh my gosh 😅😅😅🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
i figured out ‘only’ but they smushed the vav and dalet so much I couldn’t tell in the next word if it was ches or what, so I was going gakh?! Mental 🤣🤣🤣🤣

אתבת

First tattoo looks like that to me - Aleph, chet, bet and chet again. It doesn't make sense to me, but translate says it's "You're a girl".

I'm worse than a P1 child! 🤣

It looks like it is supposed to say אהבה - love, in a square shape. But because they connected the 2 parts of the ה, it says אחבח

That makes sense now! So, it's supposed to say אהבה = ahava.

How do you say the word the tattoo looks like?

Achvach (ch like guttural ch in 'loch')

The ring one could conceivably actually say what the wearer wants it to say. It says חסר "chasser" (ch is a guttural sound), meaning missing. Or it could have been intended to say חסד "chessed", meaning grace (spiritual grace, rather than bodily grace), but the difference between ד and ר went unnoticed.

So, how do you figure out if vowels are meant to be there if the nikud dots/dashes/etc aren't there?

With the vowels you can read Hebrew even if you can't speak a word. Unlike English, virtually every consonant-vowel combination in Hebrew has only one sound, so if you recognise the grapheme you can read it. English learners have a thorOUGHly tOUGH learning process, thOUGH they get thrOUGH it in the end (cOUGH).

But to read without nikkud you do really need to have some idea what the word means. Rather like reading without vowels in English: bd could be bed/bid/bad/bod/bud, depending on context.

I think the ring looks more like חֶסֶר, (poverty)