Matt Neilsen's Hebrew Log

[Lawyer&Mom]

I would see what is available in your local library first. For example, we have Israeli books for adults and children at our library, but hardly anything for teens/tweens, and YA fiction can be great for a learner. (Put the emphasis on “Young” when you are starting out. Like Diary of a Wimpy Kid or Goosebumps. Stuff an average 4th grader might read.) A few books from the same series would be great.

I’m know some people prefer ebooks for the electronic dictionary function. I prefer real books, but the languages I read in are way more transparent than Hebrew!

[jonm]

Additionally, I picked up a book called A Practical Introduction to Phonetics to help understand phonemes/phonology. It's very important to me to have excellent pronunciation from the beginning.

Just want to say, I think you chose the right book. IMO that's the best introduction to phonetics there is and a great book for all language learners to read.

[MattNeilsen]

Yesterday was a good study day. I went through Pimsleur lesson 2 twice, did around 10 levels in Duolingo, and spent an hour and a half making Anki cards + reviews. In total, it was about 3.5 hours of study.

I've realized that I really don't enjoy tracking the time I've spent in study; rather, I prefer to simply accomplish certain goals and let the time fall where it may. Consequently, I will try to continue to keep a rough count of the hours spent studying, but I'm not going to worry too much if it's a little off one way or the other.

~28 hours total

[MattNeilsen]

I would see what is available in your local library first. For example, we have Israeli books for adults and children at our library, but hardly anything for teens/tweens, and YA fiction can be great for a learner. (Put the emphasis on “Young” when you are starting out. Like Diary of a Wimpy Kid or Goosebumps. Stuff an average 4th grader might read.) A few books from the same series would be great.

I know some people prefer ebooks for the electronic dictionary function. I prefer real books, but the languages I read in are way more transparent than Hebrew!

That's a good suggestion, thanks. One of the things I've realized early on is that any reading I do should probably have audio accompaniment. Otherwise, I'm finding there's a higher likelihood of pronunciation mistakes since the vowels aren't written out in the text.

Just want to say, I think you chose the right book. IMO that's the best introduction to phonetics there is and a great book for all language learners to read.

Thanks for stopping by. I got the book suggestion from someone on the HTLAL forum, and I've learned a lot from it so far (and I'm only on page ~60). The exercises in the book are very practical and helpful. I have essentially no background in phonetics/linguistics but I'm finding the text quite approachable, and it's already made a difference in how I'm approaching Hebrew.

[Lawyer&Mom]

Since you are/were Christian, http://listen.bible.is, has the New Testament in Hebrew. Free audio book and text.

[Skynet]

Since you are/were Christian, http://listen.bible.is, has the New Testament in Hebrew. Free audio book and text.

Hijacking again...

Thanks, I have saved this link for my future Hebrew project

Diary of a Wimpy Kid or Goosebumps

Nostalgia level = infinity

[MattNeilsen]

Since you are/were Christian, http://listen.bible.is, has the New Testament in Hebrew. Free audio book and text.

Ooooh, this is great! This should help get around the grammar issue that was mentioned concerning the Old Testament, as I'm assuming (perhaps at my own peril) that the language will be less archaic since it's a translation.

Oh, and apparently Srugim is available for free on Amazon if you're a Prime member. I didn't see an option for Hebrew subtitles, but I'm excited to start watching it. I just need to get my vocab up!

[MattNeilsen]

Yesterday's status report:

Pimsleur Lesson 3 - 30 minutes
Duolingo - Multiple lessons (still working on my various crowns in Letters) ~20 minutes
Anki - Reviews + new card creation ~40 minutes
***Not counting this towards study, but I also worked through several exercises in Practical Introduction to Phonetics, including approximants. Incredibly helpful.

Total study to date: ~29.5 hours


Making new cards in Anki takes me on average 3 minutes per card when I'm in a good flow. It's more time-consuming than I'd like but I think it's good practice, and I'm only planning on doing it for the first 625 cards from the Fluent Forever deck. After that, I'm hoping it's enough to jumpstart reading/listening to an easy native-style resource. My learning strategy in L1 is all about massive input - I'm a voracious reader and podcast listenter, so the goal is to get to a point where I can leverage that in L2.

Here's another way of looking at my current strategy:

Pimsleur - Some listening comprehension and speaking production
Duolingo - Mostly reading comprehension, some listening comprehension
Anki - Vocab/basic reading comprehension/basic writing production, pronunciation training

My thought is that this covers Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing at a basic level to "get my feet wet", so to speak, in the language.

[Lawyer&Mom]

Since you are/were Christian, http://listen.bible.is, has the New Testament in Hebrew. Free audio book and text.

Ooooh, this is great! This should help get around the grammar issue that was mentioned concerning the Old Testament, as I'm assuming (perhaps at my own peril) that the language will be less archaic since it's a translation.

Oh, and apparently Srugim is available for free on Amazon if you're a Prime member. I didn't see an option for Hebrew subtitles, but I'm excited to start watching it. I just need to get my vocab up!

The Hebrew NT is a translation from 1995. They have a dramatized version and a non-dramatized version. I would go with drama! It’s remarkably well done and a really a wonderful language resource.

(I haven’t listened to the Hebrew version, but the “drama” is the same in all their languages.)

Amazon has the first two seasons of Srugim I think? Warning, you will get hooked and will pay to see the third season!

[MattNeilsen]

Yesterday's activity:

Pimsleur (Level 1, Lesson 2 and 4) - 45 minutes
Duolingo - 30 minutes
Anki - 40 minutes

Total study to date: ~31.5 hours

----------------

Slowly but surely my reading ability is improving. I'm a very fast reader in L1 and the default left-to-right neural wiring is ingrained deeply, so it's been a struggle trying to shift that. Guess Hebrew wouldn't be Cat IV if it were easy, huh?

I still find the "r" sound to be difficult to recreate. I don't think I'm getting the tongue/articulatory position quite right. There's something in the mouth arrangement that causes the "r" to almost sound like an "l" to me, especially at the end of certain words. For example:

הר (mountain) - https://forvo.com/word/%D7%94%D7%A8/#he
נהר (river) - https://forvo.com/word/%D7%A0%D7%94%D7%A8/#he

Perhaps I need to create more minimal pair cards in conjunction with an additional focus on my phonetics book. Or maybe booking an iTalki session to just focus on pronunciation would help as well. I know that perfection is an unrealistic goal, but I find it's harder to memorize a word where I'm unconfident about the phonemes that compose it.