In 1990, I was planning a trip to Israel, but it got postponed due to Desert Storm and the Gulf War. I finally go on a tour trip of Israel in 1996. But in the late 80s, in Oklahoma, before the internet, how does one begin to learn Hebrew?
That was in the dark ages before internet. Audio Forum had a language catalog, and I learned about the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) courses. These courses were created by the US government, and used to teach either military or diplomats.
Back then, the FSI course included a large book and about 24 cassette tapes (today, you can find the book in PDF and the tapes are often on MP3 files). The course was designed for instructor-lead classroom use, and was definitely not designed for home-study. To this day, I have never finished that course.
I remember being "wowed" by a huge Borders book store on a business trip to Indianapolis. Back then, the stores were all huge, typically two stories, and they had a wide selection of books - meaning a few book on Hebrew. I found a primer or "reader" that taught the Hebrew alphabet in a very step by step fashion, with lots of practice exercises.
Attending synagogue and learning some of the Hebrew prayers really accelerated my understanding of Hebrew. The music, along with the weekly repetition, clearly helps with the learning the words and phrases. Each week, I would pick a favorite tune, and go home and break down the words of that particular prayer.
I used Menahem Mansoor's "Biblical Hebrew: Step by Step" to get an introduction to Biblical Hebrew. A few years later, a friend taught Biblical Hebrew to a small group using Jacob Weingreen's "A Practical Grammar for Classical Hebrew". This is a very serious book, which we finished a couple of years later, doing one lesson every week or two.
For Modern Hebrew, I remember using "Hugo Language Course: Hebrew in Three Months" and also Eliezar Tirkel's "Every Hebrew". Both came with a book and 3 or 4 cassettes. I like the Hugo course slightly better.
Eventually, in 2005, I took two semesters of "online" modern Hebrew from college in Boston. We used the "Hebrew From Scratch" textbook, and met online with our professor once per week. In 2008, via the same school, I took "Introduction to Talmud" and began learning my first Aramaic.
Unfortunately, I still can't speak Hebrew as well as I would like. My journey is still continuing. By creating software, and teaching others, I continue to learn each and every day.
That was in the dark ages before internet. Audio Forum had a language catalog, and I learned about the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) courses. These courses were created by the US government, and used to teach either military or diplomats.
Back then, the FSI course included a large book and about 24 cassette tapes (today, you can find the book in PDF and the tapes are often on MP3 files). The course was designed for instructor-lead classroom use, and was definitely not designed for home-study. To this day, I have never finished that course.
I remember being "wowed" by a huge Borders book store on a business trip to Indianapolis. Back then, the stores were all huge, typically two stories, and they had a wide selection of books - meaning a few book on Hebrew. I found a primer or "reader" that taught the Hebrew alphabet in a very step by step fashion, with lots of practice exercises.
Attending synagogue and learning some of the Hebrew prayers really accelerated my understanding of Hebrew. The music, along with the weekly repetition, clearly helps with the learning the words and phrases. Each week, I would pick a favorite tune, and go home and break down the words of that particular prayer.
I used Menahem Mansoor's "Biblical Hebrew: Step by Step" to get an introduction to Biblical Hebrew. A few years later, a friend taught Biblical Hebrew to a small group using Jacob Weingreen's "A Practical Grammar for Classical Hebrew". This is a very serious book, which we finished a couple of years later, doing one lesson every week or two.
For Modern Hebrew, I remember using "Hugo Language Course: Hebrew in Three Months" and also Eliezar Tirkel's "Every Hebrew". Both came with a book and 3 or 4 cassettes. I like the Hugo course slightly better.
Eventually, in 2005, I took two semesters of "online" modern Hebrew from college in Boston. We used the "Hebrew From Scratch" textbook, and met online with our professor once per week. In 2008, via the same school, I took "Introduction to Talmud" and began learning my first Aramaic.
Unfortunately, I still can't speak Hebrew as well as I would like. My journey is still continuing. By creating software, and teaching others, I continue to learn each and every day.
About the Author:
Neal Walters started creating his own interactive Hebrew tutorials to make learning Hebrew faster and easier. You can see video demos of his courses at http://HebrewResources.com. You can get a unique content version of this article from the Uber Article Directory.
No comments:
Post a Comment