Adventures in Hebrew (and a bit of Japanese)

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
User avatar
aokoye
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1818
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 6:14 pm
Location: Portland, OR
Languages: English (N), German (~C1), French (Intermediate), Japanese (N4), Swedish (beginner), Dutch (A2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=19262
x 3309
Contact:

Re: Adventures in Hebrew (and a bit of Japanese)

Postby aokoye » Tue Mar 28, 2017 1:40 am

Good luck with Hebrew! I just got done taking a the second term of a beginning Hebrew class at my university. From what I could tell most people took it because they were Jewish or interested in Judaism and then three of us had the additional need for a non indo-european language for our degree (applied linguistics).

In terms of resources all I can really give advice on is that the Hebrew from Scratch book wasn't liked by anyone in my class (a class of 10) and four of us had learned other languages to a fairly high level. The book doesn't have enough exercises and the audio is not user friendly (it's just one long track so you have to scroll to find the audio you want...). I could see the book being a good review, but as a beginning text it's really pretty bad.

That said, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has some resources, though they aren't maintained well
1 x
Prefered gender pronouns: Masculine

User avatar
Xenops
Brown Belt
Posts: 1444
Joined: Mon Nov 30, 2015 10:33 pm
Location: Boston
Languages: English (N), Danish (A2), Japanese (rusty), Nansha (constructing)
On break: Japanese (approx. N4), Norwegian (A2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16797
x 3559
Contact:

Re: Adventures in Hebrew (and a bit of Japanese)

Postby Xenops » Tue Mar 28, 2017 1:49 am

aokoye wrote:Good luck with Hebrew! I just got done taking a the second term of a beginning Hebrew class at my university. From what I could tell most people took it because they were Jewish or interested in Judaism and then three of us had the additional need for a non indo-european language for our degree (applied linguistics).

In terms of resources all I can really give advice on is that the Hebrew from Scratch book wasn't liked by anyone in my class (a class of 10) and four of us had learned other languages to a fairly high level. The book doesn't have enough exercises and the audio is not user friendly (it's just one long track so you have to scroll to find the audio you want...). I could see the book being a good review, but as a beginning text it's really pretty bad.

That said, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has some resources, though they aren't maintained well


I remember I had found this site before: http://www.teachmehebrew.com I haven't gotten a chance to further explore it.
2 x
Check out my comic at: https://atannan.com/

User avatar
CurlySue
White Belt
Posts: 38
Joined: Sun Mar 26, 2017 6:43 pm
Location: Toronto, Canada
Languages: English (N), Russian (N), French (advanced fluency), Japanese (JLPT N2), Spanish (intermediate), Hebrew (beginner)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=5609
x 47

Re: Adventures in Hebrew (and a bit of Japanese)

Postby CurlySue » Wed Mar 29, 2017 12:36 pm

Just an FYI, I updated the first post (at the top) with some online Hebrew-related resources, feel free to check them out.
1 x
: 3 / 16 Pimsleur Conversational Hebrew
: 2 / 9 Hebrew: A Language Course 1
: 0 / 10Hebrew: A Language Course 2
: 0 / 12Hebrew: A Language Course 3
: 4 / 500 Hebrew Comprehensible Input (500 Hours)

User avatar
CurlySue
White Belt
Posts: 38
Joined: Sun Mar 26, 2017 6:43 pm
Location: Toronto, Canada
Languages: English (N), Russian (N), French (advanced fluency), Japanese (JLPT N2), Spanish (intermediate), Hebrew (beginner)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=5609
x 47

Re: Adventures in Hebrew (and a bit of Japanese)

Postby CurlySue » Sat Apr 22, 2017 7:34 pm

So it's been a few weeks :) time for an update I think.

First off, I should probably admit that I haven't been doing very much the past ~2 weeks because I've been finishing up my semester and things have been busier than I expected. But I'm done now ( :D !! ).

I'm going to Israel in exactly a week (next Saturday) with my family. We'll be there for about 8 days, then we're going to Prague and Amsterdam for several days, then returning home. In Israel, we've rented an apartment close to where my grandpa lives (in Netanya), and we'll spend some time hanging out with him and other family.

Because I'll be spending a lot of time with my family, that also means I'll be speaking Russian most of the time. I don't know how much I'll actually get to practice my (very limited, at this point) Hebrew. A part of me wonders if I should ask my cousins to get me something, like the Harry Potter audiobooks in Hebrew. But from doing a lot of googling (both in Hebrew and in English), I get the impression that there are no HP audiobooks in Hebrew; just the print books. And other than that, I can get a lot of Israeli/Hebrew music, movies, and books free from the internet or from the libraries around here. (The Greater Toronto Area is home to a lot of immigrants, so libraries around here tend to have books in many languages, including Hebrew.)

In other news... I was thinking yesterday that it would be cool to have something to read in Hebrew. Something that would be easier (and shorter) than actual books, but longer than the dialogues in TYT Modern Hebrew. Out of curiosity, I went into my basement to take another look at these books that I had bought and studied from a bit when I was a teen. And you know what? I actually really liked what I saw. There is some grammar stuff, but a) it's explained in the clearest, simplest possible way, and b) it follows the dialogues, which are both a good length and actually quite funny/cute.

I do wish this course come with a CD/audio component, but I'm more confident with my ability to read nikkud now, and because I like the way it presents everything, I will probably use this course and the Pimsleur CDs going forward.

I'm going to do another post sometime this weekend (probably tomorrow) talking a bit more about immersion/comprehensible input and how I use that to pick things up.
0 x
: 3 / 16 Pimsleur Conversational Hebrew
: 2 / 9 Hebrew: A Language Course 1
: 0 / 10Hebrew: A Language Course 2
: 0 / 12Hebrew: A Language Course 3
: 4 / 500 Hebrew Comprehensible Input (500 Hours)

User avatar
Tristano
Blue Belt
Posts: 640
Joined: Mon Jul 20, 2015 7:11 am
Location: The Netherlands
Languages: Native: Italian
Speaks: English, Dutch, French, Spanish
Understands but not yet speaks: Romanian
Studies: German
Can't wait to put his hands on: Scandinavian languages, Slavic languages, Turkish, Arabic and other stuff
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=5141
x 1015

Re: Adventures in Hebrew (and a bit of Japanese)

Postby Tristano » Sat Apr 22, 2017 11:15 pm

Fellow Hebrew student here. Good luck with this language!
1 x

User avatar
CurlySue
White Belt
Posts: 38
Joined: Sun Mar 26, 2017 6:43 pm
Location: Toronto, Canada
Languages: English (N), Russian (N), French (advanced fluency), Japanese (JLPT N2), Spanish (intermediate), Hebrew (beginner)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=5609
x 47

Re: Adventures in Hebrew (and a bit of Japanese)

Postby CurlySue » Wed Apr 26, 2017 7:00 pm

Tristano wrote:Fellow Hebrew student here. Good luck with this language!


Thanks! :D
0 x
: 3 / 16 Pimsleur Conversational Hebrew
: 2 / 9 Hebrew: A Language Course 1
: 0 / 10Hebrew: A Language Course 2
: 0 / 12Hebrew: A Language Course 3
: 4 / 500 Hebrew Comprehensible Input (500 Hours)

User avatar
CurlySue
White Belt
Posts: 38
Joined: Sun Mar 26, 2017 6:43 pm
Location: Toronto, Canada
Languages: English (N), Russian (N), French (advanced fluency), Japanese (JLPT N2), Spanish (intermediate), Hebrew (beginner)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=5609
x 47

Re: Adventures in Hebrew (and a bit of Japanese)

Postby CurlySue » Wed Apr 26, 2017 7:07 pm

OK, so immersion. How does it work? What do I do?

The first thing I should probably mention is that I don't start with immersion right off the bat, and don't think it's a good idea to do so. If you're completely new to a language, you have no way of telling what anything is. Unless you're e.g. a fluent Spanish speaker learning Italian, it's generally not a good idea to grab a dictionary and start trying to translate native materials word-for-word. There could be grammatical structures that you wouldn't even have thought of, e.g.:

食べなかった ("didn't eat" - notice how it's all one word)

Or, in Hebrew, things like איתך (itcha, "with you" - again, notice how it's one word).

I'm not big on explicit grammar study (I tend to find it very boring) but I think doing a bit of it at the beginning of your language-learning is immensely helpful.

With Hebrew, I worked through a bit of this course when I was flirting with the language as a teenager: https://www.amazon.ca/Hebrew-Language-C ... 874413311/

And I'm actually continuing with the same course now; picking up where I left off.

So once I've learned some grammar, what next? Well, immersion.

I start looking for stuff to watch/listen to. Because my vocabulary still tends to be very limited at this point, I generally try to find translations of things I've watched before in other languages. This means that I'll already know (basically) what is being said.

In Hebrew, one of the first things I recently found was the first few episodes of Cardcaptor Sakura, which I've seen countless times in English and in Japanese: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-EPeYYMfjE

When I begin doing immersion, I start picking out sentences (or even short phrases) to add to Anki. (For those who don't know, that's like a flashcard software program. You can add things you want to study to it, you rate those things based on how well you know them, and the program collects info about your memory in order to choose the best time(s)/day(s) to make you review them.)

In Hebrew, I tend to structure my cards in the follow way:

FRONT

"(do you guys) want to come with us?"

?רוצים לבוא איתנו

BACK

rotzim lavo itanu?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In other words, I post the Hebrew sentence/phrase along with a loose English translation on the front. My goal, when I see each card, is to a) be able to read it out loud, phonetically, b) write/copy out the sentence in a notebook (to practice writing and to further ingrain the spelling into my memory, and c) understand the meaning/function of every word in the sentence.

I don't try to memorize the sentences (although I end up doing just that for some of them, anyway). Rather, the idea is to expose myself to as many different words and structures in the language as possible, and to review them. I try to learn the language through concrete examples, which the sentences provide.

I also try to go for sentences/phrases that just a tiny bit above what I currently know. So in the example above, ?רוצים לבוא איתנו

I already knew that רוצה (rotze or rotza) means “want”, and because I knew that -ים is a (masculine) plural ending, I could figure out that רוצים means “want” when referring to a group of men or a mixed group (masculine/mixed plural).

I already knew that לבוא means “to come.”

And I knew that -אית means “with…”, to which you add endings, as in:

איתי (iti) – with me
איתך (itcha/itach) – with you

I knew that -נו (nu) is an ending that means “we/us”, so it wasn’t hard to figure out that איתנו means “with us.”

If this sounds a bit convoluted, just keep in mind that this is why I like to watch/sentence-mine media that I’ve seen before or where I could otherwise easily figure what’s going on. Context is everything.

If I think I heard something (a sentence) but I’m not sure, I usually ask a native speaker.

Lately, I’ve been watching episodes of Arthur (the cartoon) on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnScV976tKc

I watched these ages ago, as a kid. I don’t remember what happens in most of the episodes, but a plus to using these for learning Hebrew is that each episode has Hebrew subtitles that are 100% identical to what they’re saying. So I can pause the episode at any point and visually see what is being said. Needless to say, this is really helpful for sentence-mining.

Other than that, I also went to my local library recently and got some picture books in Hebrew - I'm reading one now about a kid who confronts his bully. That might sound a bit dinky, and while it's obviously not the most fascinating thing I've ever read, it is really cool to be able to read something written by a native speaker for other native speakers :D I know/recognize most of the words in the book so far, too, so that's encouraging.
1 x
: 3 / 16 Pimsleur Conversational Hebrew
: 2 / 9 Hebrew: A Language Course 1
: 0 / 10Hebrew: A Language Course 2
: 0 / 12Hebrew: A Language Course 3
: 4 / 500 Hebrew Comprehensible Input (500 Hours)

User avatar
tarvos
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2889
Joined: Sun Jul 26, 2015 11:13 am
Location: The Lowlands
Languages: Native: NL, EN
Professional: ES, RU
Speak well: DE, FR, RO, EO, SV
Speak reasonably: IT, ZH, PT, NO, EL, CZ
Need improvement: PO, IS, HE, JP, KO, HU, FI
Passive: AF, DK, LAT
Dabbled in: BRT, ZH (SH), BG, EUS, ZH (CAN), and a whole lot more.
Language Log: http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/fo ... PN=1&TPN=1
x 6093
Contact:

Re: Adventures in Hebrew (and a bit of Japanese)

Postby tarvos » Wed Apr 26, 2017 7:44 pm

Your log makes me want to return to my own Hebrew, which I have neglected for far too long in favour of other languages. I probably need to plan a trip to Israel at some point, hah.
0 x
I hope your world is kind.

Is a girl.

User avatar
CurlySue
White Belt
Posts: 38
Joined: Sun Mar 26, 2017 6:43 pm
Location: Toronto, Canada
Languages: English (N), Russian (N), French (advanced fluency), Japanese (JLPT N2), Spanish (intermediate), Hebrew (beginner)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=5609
x 47

Re: Adventures in Hebrew (and a bit of Japanese)

Postby CurlySue » Wed Apr 26, 2017 7:48 pm

tarvos wrote:Your log makes me want to return to my own Hebrew, which I have neglected for far too long in favour of other languages. I probably need to plan a trip to Israel at some point, hah.


Which language(s) are you actively working on nowadays?

I don't know how you found it, but I'm finding Hebrew incredibly, incredibly easy so far :) Unless you're working on, like, 3 or 4 other languages, it might not be so hard to add it in to the mix?
0 x
: 3 / 16 Pimsleur Conversational Hebrew
: 2 / 9 Hebrew: A Language Course 1
: 0 / 10Hebrew: A Language Course 2
: 0 / 12Hebrew: A Language Course 3
: 4 / 500 Hebrew Comprehensible Input (500 Hours)

User avatar
tarvos
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2889
Joined: Sun Jul 26, 2015 11:13 am
Location: The Lowlands
Languages: Native: NL, EN
Professional: ES, RU
Speak well: DE, FR, RO, EO, SV
Speak reasonably: IT, ZH, PT, NO, EL, CZ
Need improvement: PO, IS, HE, JP, KO, HU, FI
Passive: AF, DK, LAT
Dabbled in: BRT, ZH (SH), BG, EUS, ZH (CAN), and a whole lot more.
Language Log: http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/fo ... PN=1&TPN=1
x 6093
Contact:

Re: Adventures in Hebrew (and a bit of Japanese)

Postby tarvos » Wed Apr 26, 2017 8:42 pm

Mandarin, Spanish and some Czech are the ones I am actively working on now, and I am consistently maintaining about ten others. I would really need to drop either one of those three to get back to Hebrew (it would be Czech as I will stop studying that after the conference), but I am really busy with my Mandarin and I need to boost it further. I hope I can get to Hebrew during the second part of this year, but I somehow feel it will get shoved by the wayside - again.

I'm not counting the little side projects such as Hungarian which I need to revive for travel purposes, or dabbling in some obscure Asian languages or whatever. I've spent serious time with Hebrew and even have a phrase in the language tattooed on my arm.

The thing is, I've done the basics - I would need to refresh the basics and revive the vocabulary, which I could do in a month if I had to - but I'd need it to be a serious project to improve.
0 x
I hope your world is kind.

Is a girl.


Return to “Language logs”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests