maintaining and advancing slowly in Hebrew

[EmGeeFab]

Hi everyone,

I'm new here. I'm a native English speaker and learned German to nearly-fluent as a teen. Now, I've been learning Hebrew intensely for about 9 months but I need to reduce my study time in Hebrew. I know if I let Hebrew drop, I'll forget it because I'm only at the early intermediate stage. I have started reading short stories, but it is a ton of work and takes me about 10 minutes per page. I don't feel like I can devote more than 30 minutes per day to Hebrew; right now it comes closer to two hours per day doing a combination of Anki, reading, meeting with a tutor, writing, watching TV (very little), etc.

Any advice about how to keep going in Hebrew? I'm OK with slowly advancing, but I tend towards an all-or-nothing attitude.

I'm need to step back in Hebrew because I want to spend time reading and speaking in German again, and all my spare time has been used in Hebrew over the last 9 months.

Thanks,
Emily

[Deinonysus]

If you drop Hebrew now you will probably forget a lot of what you learned, but it won't be gone forever. When you pick Hebrew back up in the future, you won't be starting from scratch. It should come back to you very quickly. At least that's been my experience with Hebrew (and other languages as well). It will take you a little bit of time to refresh your memory, but then you'll be right back to where you are now.

[rdearman]

Hi everyone,

I'm new here. I'm a native English speaker and learned German to nearly-fluent as a teen. Now, I've been learning Hebrew intensely for about 9 months but I need to reduce my study time in Hebrew. I know if I let Hebrew drop, I'll forget it because I'm only at the early intermediate stage. I have started reading short stories, but it is a ton of work and takes me about 10 minutes per page. I don't feel like I can devote more than 30 minutes per day to Hebrew; right now it comes closer to two hours per day doing a combination of Anki, reading, meeting with a tutor, writing, watching TV (very little), etc.

Any advice about how to keep going in Hebrew? I'm OK with slowly advancing, but I tend towards an all-or-nothing attitude.

I'm need to step back in Hebrew because I want to spend time reading and speaking in German again, and all my spare time has been used in Hebrew over the last 9 months.

Thanks,
Emily

You might want to change your language list to English (N) since native speakers are well past "fluent".

As to your question why wouldn't you do both? If you've an equal amount of time say 3 hours you could split your time to hour and half each? Or alternating days.

[cjareck]

I struggle with Hebrew also. Initially, I thought I could focus on Hebrew and do other languages (mostly Arabic) in the background. This was unfortunately impossible. The progress of Hebrew was not that fast and when I realized my mistake and reduced Arabic to the minimum I noticed that I forgot most of that. Now I keep up with Hebrew with all my strength and I do not want to change my focus before I will start feeling confident in the language.

So the first advice would be not to switch the language
However, if it is impossible, then you may switch the days as rdearman proposed or just listen to a podcast or watch a movie.
There are very good podcasts made by Ran Levi: https://www.ranlevi.com/ (i listened to a few historical ones) or comedies with episodes below 30 minutes like
היהודים באים
כאן אנו גרים בכיף
Which are available on youtube and you should find them really amusing.

[EmGeeFab]

You might want to change your language list to English (N) since native speakers are well past "fluent".

As to your question why wouldn't you do both? If you've an equal amount of time say 3 hours you could split your time to hour and half each? Or alternating days.

Whoops - fixed that.

I just don't have the time to do both wholeheartedly right now. I think 2 hours per day is the absolute max I can devote to languages, though hopefully I'll be spending time with my kids in German over the next year. They have a fairly high ability to understand but low ability to produce.

[EmGeeFab]

I struggle with Hebrew also. Initially, I thought I could focus on Hebrew and do other languages (mostly Arabic) in the background. This was unfortunately impossible. The progress of Hebrew was not that fast and when I realized my mistake and reduced Arabic to the minimum I noticed that I forgot most of that. Now I keep up with Hebrew with all my strength and I do not want to change my focus before I will start feeling confident in the language.

So the first advice would be not to switch the language
However, if it is impossible, then you may switch the days as rdearman proposed or just listen to a podcast or watch a movie.
There are very good podcasts made by Ran Levi: https://www.ranlevi.com/ (i listened to a few historical ones) or comedies with episodes below 30 minutes like
היהודים באים
כאן אנו גרים בכיף
Which are available on youtube and you should find them really amusing.

I really feel like I need a stronger basis before backing off, but I think my German is strong enough that it won't feel like learning a new language as I used to dream in German, etc.

Thanks for those links! Listening comprehension has been a weak link in my learning. People actually are happy to respond to me in Hebrew, but then switch to English as soon as I don't understand something the first time. I really am enjoying the cultural differences between the cultures I know and Israeli culture.

[cjareck]

Listening comprehension has been a weak link in my learning. People actually are happy to respond to me in Hebrew, but then switch to English as soon as I don't understand something the first time.

It is not only your experience - but my also. I think that the reason for the advantage of speaking over listening is simple. When you speak you obviously use only words and phrases that you know, but you don't have any influence on the vocabulary used by your interlocutor.

I would like to advise you also some language exchanges. They helped me a lot.