Hebrew is a high priority but low motivation language for me, so my general policy is to drop whatever I'm doing and study it whenever I have the motivation to work on it. I only ever studied Modern Hebrew before, but I get very frustrated trying to learn Hebrew spelling due to many sound mergers. I've considered ditching Modern Hebrew for Biblical before, but the general advice I've heard has been to learn Modern Hebrew first because it's a living language. That may be good advice in general, but I think that for me it makes more sense for me to start with Biblical Hebrew because of my high interest in ancient texts and reconstructed phonologies, so after my positive experience with Ancient Greek I decided to go for it.
The main learning resource I'm using is The First Hebrew Primer: The Adult Beginner's Path to Biblical Hebrew, Third Edition by Simon, Resnikoff, and Motzkin. It seems well regarded and I like that it starts you with easy stories that are translated into Biblical Hebrew, moves on to an abidged version of the book of Ruth, and I believe I heard somewhere that by the end of the book it will stop abridging Ruth. When I'm done with this book, I'll probably want to move on to a more advanced text.
That book does not attempt to teach reconstructed Biblical or even traditional Tiberian pronunciation but instead teaches standard Modern Hebrew pronunciation, so I am using a couple of extra resources in my attempt to use a decent reconstructed pronunciation:
Phonology and Morphology of Biblical Hebrew by Joshua Blau
"Ancient Hebrew Phonology" (a chapter by Gary Rendsburg from the book Phonologies of Asia and Africa)
Blau gives a set of standard pronunciations for Biblical Hebrew that I really like, because every letter (or letter variant that is clearly marked in pointed text) has a unique pronunciation, so if I learn the pronunciation, I will always know the spelling, with the exception that it isn't always obvious when to put in a consonant that represents a vowel (although I'm sure I'll get used to the patterns).
| Consonant | Classical IPA | Modern IPA | Hebrew name | Modern name pronunciation |
| א | ʔ | (silent) | אָלֶף | alef |
| בּ | b | b | בֵּית | bet |
| ב | v | v | בֵית | vet |
| גּ | g | g | גּימֵל | gimel |
| ג | ɣ | g | גִימֵל | |
| דּ | d | d | דָּלֶת | daled |
| ד | ð | d | דָלֶת | |
| ה | h | h | הֵא | he |
| ו | w | v | וָו | vav |
| ז | z | z | זַיִן | zayin |
| ח | ħ | x | חֵית | khet |
| ט | t’ | t | טֵית | tet |
| י | j | j | יוֹד | yud |
| כּ | k | k | כָּף | kaf |
| כ | x | x | כָף | khaf |
| ל | l | l | לָמֶד | lamed |
| מ | m | m | מֵם | mem |
| נ | n | n | נוּן | nun |
| ס | s | s | סָמֶך | samekh |
| ע | ʕ | (silent) | עַיִן | ayin |
| פּ | p | p | פֵּא | pe |
| פ | f | f | פֵא | fe |
| צ | s’ | ts | צַדִי | tsadi |
| ק | k’* | k | קוֹף | kuf |
| ר | r | ʁ | רֵישׁ | resh |
| שׁ | ʃ | ʃ | שִׁין | shin |
| שׂ | ɬ | s | שִׂין | sin |
| תּ | t | t | תָּו | taf |
| ת | θ | t | תָו |
And here are the vowels... probably. Nobody was nice enough to start marking exact vowels until the middle ages AD, so no idea if this was how they were actually pronounced during the classical period. They did start using consonants to represent some vowels at some point during the classical period, but each consonant symbol could represent one of two or more different vowels. (Alef is used as a dummy consonant below):
| vowel | Classical IPA |
| אְ | ə̆ |
| אֱ | ε̆ |
| אֲ | ă |
| אֳ | ɔ̆ |
| אִ | i(ː) |
| אֵ | e(ː) |
| אֶ | ε(ː) |
| אַ | a(ː) |
| אָ | ɔ(ː) |
| אֹ | o(ː) |
| אֻ | u(ː) |
Blau's set of consonant pronunciations isn't necessarily exactly how all Biblical Hebrew was written. The Hebrew in the Bible reflects language that came from a range of at least 800 years, so phonemes would have come and gone over the course of the text, and for other letters may have had one sound or another and the best we can do is an educated guess. Here are some examples:
- The letter שׂ (sin) originally had a value of /ɬ/ (as in the "ll" sound in Welsh), but would have probably merged with ס (samekh) by the end of the Biblical period, so both would sound like /s/.
- There are two letters, ח (khet) and ע (ayin) that we know used to have two different pronunciations because they were each pronounced two different ways because they were transliterated two different ways into the Greek septuagint. For example, ע generally has the value of /ʕ/, but some words starting with ע were transliterated into Greek with a gamma so they would have had a sound that was similar to /ɣ/. For example, Gomorrah and Gaza were both spelled with an ע but transliterated into Greek with a gamma. Other than place names, there's no way of knowing which value of ע to use and the gamma sound was merged into the normal /ʕ/ sound by the time the נְקֻדּוֹת (nekudot, meaning diacritic marks for vowels and other pronunciation distinctions) were added in the middle ages, so there is no mark to distinguish between the different versions. The alternate pronunciation of ח would have been something like /x/.
- "Soft" (fricative) versions of the plain stops probably arose at some point during the classical era, but estimates vary wildly as to exactly when. Three of these fricatives survive in Modern Hebrew: /f/, /v/, and /x/. Ashkenazi Hebrew preserves the split between the hard and soft ת, but they have it as /s/ instead of /θ/.
- The labial fricatives could have been bilabial or labiodental, but Blau leans towards labiodental like in English.
- The emphatics could have been pharyngialized like in Arabic or ejective like in Amharic, but Blau thinks they were most likely ejective because if they were pharyngialized that would have messed with the surrounding vowels, and that doesn't seem to have happened.
By the way, the Hebrew word in the title is "shibboleth".
