So far, I think the first couple weeks of Hebrew learning have been going well! I have been working with my Israeli language partner Pazit over iTalki. We spent the first week going over my goals for the semester as well as all prior knowledge that I have. Unfortunately, the answer to that is not much, just what I know from religious service / have picked up from being around the Jewish community. I can recognize some common phrases, greetings, and holidays, but am overall not educated in the language of Hebrew. Our knowledge bases don’t really match up, as I’m approaching it mostly with a religious background and my tutor is not religious, but I don’t think that’s a barrier; I’ll simply be learning from a different point of view. My focus was originally supposed to be Biblical Hebrew, but upon further conversations with my tutor and my rabbi, it will be easier to focus on Modern Hebrew and put Biblical Hebrew on the backburner until I have better fluency.
So, given where I’m currently at with the language, we’re going to start with the beginning: the alphabet. I purchased a Hebrew writing language book to practice the different letters, which I’m going to supplement by making flashcards, both so I can easier recognize the letters on sight, but so that I also can get practice writing them. I’m admittedly having a bit of memorizing the letters, but I’m also still in the first part of really learning them. I’m going with the philosophy that “a steady base is what I’ll build the rest of the language on”.
As well as this, an English / Hebrew dictionary should be delivered by Amazon later this week, so I’ll be able to use it as a reference when learning new words and phrases, or when I find new words that I’m unfamiliar with.
Comments