My Hebrew learning has not gone as planed. I used to know how to read and write hebrew no problem when I was 12 years old. Did I understand what anything meant? No. But at least I knew the written and pronunciation part. Since my Bat Mitzvah I have done little to no Hebrew reading and writing so I decided to take this self directed course to get back my skills and hopefully learned what some of it actually means.
Unfortunately I had a rude awakening when none of it seemed to come back to me. I couldn't even remember the alphabet song! Something so basic! I spent a couple of weeks deciding to learn script or print since no one really writes in print anymore and the alphabets are very different (for me at least). I decided I want to learn print since most of the signage in Israel is in print and so are most religious texts. When you learn the alphabet you also have to learn the vowels. There are over 10 vowel signs in addition to the alphabet that you need to learn when starting to learn Hebrew but after about first grade they are never written. I have not take the step of not using vowels and do not know if I will be able to do that this semester.
So now I finally relearned the alphabet, vowels, and some basic words. Hebrew is much more specific than English in many ways; for example there are 4 ways to say you (one for a singular female, plural females, singular male, and plural males). Learning these basic words have also not been easy but I think we are about to start learning some more words to put together basic phrases. I am excited to get more conversational but it is not a walk in the park.
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