Matt Neilsen's Hebrew Log

[MattNeilsen]

Our Team Middle East thread is pretty quiet, so I figured I'd try to wrangle as many Hebrew learners into my log as I can

Very good idea! We may start writing Hebrew in that thread as a practice. Maybe someone will join or even someone will start correcting us.

I am impressed that you can use Clozemaster for Hebrew. This tool isn't bad, but there is no sound and I just couldn't use it not knowing how to pronounce the practised phrases. I could copy them and paste into doitinhebrew (in Pro version there is TTS) but it is simply too much work and there is no guarantee that TTS is correct.

That’s a good idea about writing practice! My sentences are quite boring at this point, but that gives me a target to shoot for.

As for Clozemaster: I do all of my practice on the iPhone app which has TTS for all the sentences. I’m pretty sure online has TTS as well, so I’m not sure why you don’t have audio? I agree with you - there’s no way I could do it without audio!

I’ve actually found the iPhone TTS surprisingly accurate. I verify some of the words via Forvo and 90% of the time it’s dead-on. Occasionally it messes up simple things like ‘you (female)’ את, but it’s worth it for the sheer volume of sentences.

[cjareck]

As for Clozemaster: I do all of my practice on the iPhone app which has TTS for all the sentences. I’m pretty sure online has TTS as well, so I’m not sure why you don’t have audio? I agree with you - there’s no way I could do it without audio!

I have an Android phone, and there is no possibility of turning on the audio. It says it works best on Desktop with Chrome or Safari. I have Chromium on my Desktop, and it didn't work either. I have Chrome on my phone, so I turned Desktop mode on and tried. Still no sound. So Clozemaster is currently not an option for me.

[MattNeilsen]

Yesterday's activity:

Clozemaster - 120 minutes
Anki - 15 minutes
YouTube - 15 minutes

Total study to date: ~99.5 hours

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Had to run a lot of errands yesterday with my fiance which precluded doing much audio work. However, I found a lot of moments to play Clozemaster throughout the day, so that was good. I almost have the 1-100 Words at 100% mastered at this point.

NoManches and DaveAgain were discussing in NoManches' log about the importance of listening and wondered whether the dichotomy of Audio vs. Visual learners was really just a skill question. For example, some people might tend to gravitate towards one or the other early on in life, and because they end up spending a disproportionate amount of time on one modality they became better at it than the other one.

I know I definitely fall into the camp of someone who's spent a LOT more time reading than I have speaking/listening, at least for most of my life. I regularly read 2-4 new books per month, and when I was a kid that number was often higher. It wasn't until a couple years ago that I discovered podcasts and began including larger amounts of audio material into my daily routine.

All that to say: would Reading-Listening to an audiobook in Hebrew represent a good meeting point between my affinity for reading (visual) while improving my auditory capability? And am I going to find out that all the Clozemaster work I'm doing doesn't have as much transfer as I hope in learning the language? I've been working off the assumption that Pimsleur and some YouTube exposure should be enough to keep my ear attuned while I develop my vocab base, after which I planned to use an audiobook as a bridge.

I don't necessarily have an answer, but I'm capturing my thoughts so I reflect on this later.

[StringerBell]

All that to say: would Reading-Listening to an audiobook in Hebrew represent a good meeting point between my affinity for reading (visual) while improving my auditory capability? And am I going to find out that all the Clozemaster work I'm doing doesn't have as much transfer as I hope in learning the language? I've been working off the assumption that Pimsleur and some YouTube exposure should be enough to keep my ear attuned while I develop my vocab base, after which I planned to use an audiobook as a bridge.

When I first attempted to read in Italian, I had a lot of difficulty because I couldn't "hear" the words in my mind. So, I bought two ebooks and the accompanying audiobooks. I listened to the audiobook while reading the ebook. I credit this for helping me to be able to subvocalize/read in my mind much more easily because it helped me develop a sense for how things should sound when reading.

If you feel like your level of Hebrew is too low to use this strategy, you could do what I did, which is to get the same book also in English, and first read a chapter (or even just a page or paragraph) in English so that you have a good idea of what's going on, then use the audiobook+book combo to get a sense of how the words sound. In the beginning, I'd listen to each chapter multiple times, then after a few chapters go back and listen+read again. In total, I probably L+R to each chapter 10 times. So it's important to pick a book that you really enjoy!

With that said, I'll say something potentially controversial, which is that I think in the beginning, reading books is a really inefficient and ineffective method if you're still trying to master a basic conversational level in a new language. Books are generally written with more advanced "literary" language and the dialogue is how people "should" speak, but not how they actually speak in reality. So I think they are best used much later on.

My experience is that with a exception of a few words, there was not much transfer going from books to conversation (reading those books didn't help my conversational abilities at all, yet reading a ton of informally-written articles did make a huge difference because they were written more or less in a conversational style). But that's just my 2 cents, and if you are excited or curious about giving a book/audiobook a try, don't let that dissuade you.

If you want to combine audio+text, my suggestion is to continue using native content in the form of Youtube videos; if they don't have subtitles, use the CC autogenerated option (if it exists) because I've found those to be fairly accurate. I'm not sure what you watch on Youtube, so maybe you are already doing this?

[MattNeilsen]

When I first attempted to read in Italian, I had a lot of difficulty because I couldn't "hear" the words in my mind. So, I bought two ebooks and the accompanying audiobooks. I listened to the audiobook while reading the ebook. I credit this for helping me to be able to subvocalize/read in my mind much more easily because it helped me develop a sense for how things should sound when reading.

If you feel like your level of Hebrew is too low to use this strategy, you could do what I did, which is to get the same book also in English, and first read a chapter (or even just a page or paragraph) in English so that you have a good idea of what's going on, then use the audiobook+book combo to get a sense of how the words sound. In the beginning, I'd listen to each chapter multiple times, then after a few chapters go back and listen+read again. In total, I probably L+R to each chapter 10 times. So it's important to pick a book that you really enjoy!

With that said, I'll say something potentially controversial, which is that I think in the beginning, reading books is a really inefficient and ineffective method if you're still trying to master a basic conversational level in a new language. Books are generally written with more advanced "literary" language and the dialogue is how people "should" speak, but not how they actually speak in reality. So I think they are best used much later on.

My experience is that with a exception of a few words, there was not much transfer going from books to conversation (reading those books didn't help my conversational abilities at all, yet reading a ton of informally-written articles did make a huge difference because they were written more or less in a conversational style). But that's just my 2 cents, and if you are excited or curious about giving a book/audiobook a try, don't let that dissuade you.

If you want to combine audio+text, my suggestion is to continue using native content in the form of Youtube videos; if they don't have subtitles, use the CC autogenerated option (if it exists) because I've found those to be fairly accurate. I'm not sure what you watch on Youtube, so maybe you are already doing this?

I don’t think your point is controversial - it makes a lot of sense to me, and it helped clarify my thinking. I absolutely plan to do some audiobooks simply because I love to read, but I agree that it probably doesn’t make as much sense to focus on that yet. I’ll continue to focus on the top ~1,000 words + Pimsleur and YouTube for production/listening practice.

I haven’t had much luck with getting CC-generated subs, but maybe I need to play with that more.

[MattNeilsen]

Yesterday's activity:

Pimsleur (Level 1, lesson 23) - 30 minutes
Clozemaster - 75 minutes
Anki - 20 minutes
YouTube - 10 minutes

Total study to date: ~102 hours

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Crossed the first 100-hour mark! Maybe I'll actually feel like I can do something after the next 100 hours

I finished getting the 1-100 Words in Clozemaster to 100% mastered, so now I need to focus exclusively on playing new sentences in the 101-500 Words category. Once I've seen a couple thousand sentences in Multiple Choice, I'll switch over to Text Input to finish the category and then I'll start reviewing.

I rediscovered the site Teach Me Hebrew yesterday - what a treasure trove! There are so many gems on it: pronunciation guide; Anki files for common verbs; wordlists; dialogues (audio + transcripts); songs (w/ lyrics and subs); and more. I will definitely be pulling things from this site over the next several weeks as needed. I've already added the "500 Basic Hebrew Words" and "100 Hebrew Verbs" files to Anki to provide another avenue of review, and I found their breakdown of the past/present/future/infinitive super helpful in confirming certain patterns I've observed in Clozemaster.

Also, just for fun: I'm reading an 'oldie but goodie' on HTLAL about smallwhite's vocab method, and the resultant discussion that ensued.

[geoffw]

Hi geoffw - I was going through an old thread and noticed that you've spent some time on Hebrew, particularly Assimil. How did you like the course? Are you still studying Hebrew? If you don't mind me asking, were there any other resources that you felt were particularly helpful?

Our Team Middle East thread is pretty quiet, so I figured I'd try to wrangle as many Hebrew learners into my log as I can

Thanks,
Matt

Wow, I guess Hebrew learners really aren't that common here? In any event, my Modern Hebrew is still very weak IMO, but I'm also yet to meet someone who is both 1) self-taught, and 2) has never been to Israel, who speaks significantly better Hebrew, so I guess I can speak with some authority as far as autodidactism here?

I can't remember the first time I picked up a teach yourself book for biblical hebrew and tried to study it, but I'm sure it was at least 25 years ago. I started learning prayerbook/Biblical Hebrew for real maybe 15 years ago by studying a bilingual Artscroll siddur, and I've been making occasional forays into the modern language every few years ever since. Over that much time, even weak efforts add up to *something*. I get constantly discouraged with the modern language because my great language successes all leveraged extensive reading to acquire vocabulary. That's not really possible with a language where you can't read it before you learn it, due to the missing vowels. So I can puzzle out the meaning of a text quite well, but not actually know how to pronounce it.

There are many, many resources I've used, and none of them seemed amazing. Assimil, Pimsleur, FSI, Duolingo, Colloquial, "A Textbook of Israeli Hebrew," they're all fine and worthwhile, I guess. I learned the basics of grammar and vocabulary from many, many, many hours with my siddur and chumash. Modern grammar and vocab are different, but not so much that the skills don't transfer well. The comparison of Modern English to Shakespeare seems apt to me, except for the convenient fact that a lot of the Torah uses reasonably simple language.

If I had to start from scratch and study only the modern language, I might start with Pimsleur to get my feet wet, but after that, I don't know?

[MattNeilsen]

Hi geoffw - I was going through an old thread and noticed that you've spent some time on Hebrew, particularly Assimil. How did you like the course? Are you still studying Hebrew? If you don't mind me asking, were there any other resources that you felt were particularly helpful?

Our Team Middle East thread is pretty quiet, so I figured I'd try to wrangle as many Hebrew learners into my log as I can

Thanks,
Matt

Wow, I guess Hebrew learners really aren't that common here? In any event, my Modern Hebrew is still very weak IMO, but I'm also yet to meet someone who is both 1) self-taught, and 2) has never been to Israel, who speaks significantly better Hebrew, so I guess I can speak with some authority as far as autodidactism here?

I can't remember the first time I picked up a teach yourself book for biblical hebrew and tried to study it, but I'm sure it was at least 25 years ago. I started learning prayerbook/Biblical Hebrew for real maybe 15 years ago by studying a bilingual Artscroll siddur, and I've been making occasional forays into the modern language every few years ever since. Over that much time, even weak efforts add up to *something*. I get constantly discouraged with the modern language because my great language successes all leveraged extensive reading to acquire vocabulary. That's not really possible with a language where you can't read it before you learn it, due to the missing vowels. So I can puzzle out the meaning of a text quite well, but not actually know how to pronounce it.

There are many, many resources I've used, and none of them seemed amazing. Assimil, Pimsleur, FSI, Duolingo, Colloquial, "A Textbook of Israeli Hebrew," they're all fine and worthwhile, I guess. I learned the basics of grammar and vocabulary from many, many, many hours with my siddur and chumash. Modern grammar and vocab are different, but not so much that the skills don't transfer well. The comparison of Modern English to Shakespeare seems apt to me, except for the convenient fact that a lot of the Torah uses reasonably simple language.

If I had to start from scratch and study only the modern language, I might start with Pimsleur to get my feet wet, but after that, I don't know?

I appreciate you stopping by!

There definitely aren’t many Hebrew learners here, and even fewer who are entirely autodidactic learners and who didn’t have a heritage/religious exposure to the language growing up.

Your comment about the vocab rings all too true. I’m someone who loves reading as well, but it seems like there’s no getting around spending a substantial amount of time with vocab + audio to learn how the language sounds. I’ve had several Jewish friends tell me that they STILL have to look up new words occasionally to see how they’re pronounced since it’s not always evident.

I’ve been using a combination of Pimsleur, Clozemaster, and Anki to build my vocab. I’ve also been starting to incorporate more native materials to build better mental audio banks. I think this language is just going to be a slow nut to crack.

[cjareck]

I’ve had several Jewish friends tell me that they STILL have to look up new words occasionally to see how they’re pronounced since it’s not always evident.

I have got some books on Israeli wars and in some places, and some single words have nikkud in crucial points. Evidently because of the specific pronunciation due to, for example, a foreign origin of the word.

[MattNeilsen]

Yesterday's activity:

Pimsleur (Level 1, Lesson 24) - 30 minutes
Clozemaster - 45 minutes
Anki - 20 minutes
Srugim (Season 1, Episode 2) - 30 minutes
Vocab (Top 10,000 Excel) - 15 minutes

Total study to date: ~104.5 hours

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Watching Srugim has been quite instructional in that I'm hearing how many elisions occur in natural speech. Sometimes I'll read a subtitle that I think, "Hey, I should know that", but then I need to listen to the scene 10+ times before I can finally catch the phrase. I know listening comprehension is simply a skill that needs to be developed, and I'm looking forward to further practice.

Oh, and I laughed at my first (very simple) joke in Hebrew that I actually understood - I'll take that as progress

One other note: readers of this log may notice I added a new activity yesterday (Vocab - Top 10,000). Motivated by smallwhite, I created an Excel file with the Top 10,000 Words* in Hebrew that I'm using for additional review/memorization. I have no intention of straight memorizing the list; rather, I think I'll work through it in 100-word chunks until I get to around ~2,500 words, at which point I'll assess whether my reading is good enough to tackle a book. I enjoy lists and I've always been good at memorizing things, so I see this as just another way to get more Hebrew into my brain. I also have a list of the Top 100 Verbs* that I'm doing the same thing with.

*Both lists came from Teach Me Hebrew, which I mentioned in a previous post.

ETA: Forgot to mention that I was also inspired by a post from Jeffers on HTLAL about how he tackles vocab acquisition. It's post #154.