Shalom, people of the internet. So concludes my first week of intensive
practice.
I have to say, I never thought
it could be so exciting.
I am actually
learning a language.
Can you believe
that?
It amazes me that if I keep at it,
I could be bilingual.
Hebrew has definitely
been a challenge, but it has been entertaining.
It is fun to pick up an apple and think
תפוח (that is pronounced tah-pooh-ach). That is written sans-vowels. In Hebrew, the vowels are not part of the
alphabet, therefore are not needed. It
just makes things a whole lot easier. In
total, there are 22 Hebrew letters, and about 11 vowels. Some vowels are pronounced, and some are not
real vowels, such as “:”. This is used
to combine two sounds together.
This is how Rosetta Stone is structured when you are learning a language.
I ran into a few problems this week.
First,
my timing was a bit off.
My Rosetta
Stone software is installed on my dad’s computer.
I was supposed to beat my mom’s house, but
that did not work out that way.
I was at
my dad’s house this week, so I started with Rosetta Stone.
And boy did it work.
I completed the first lesson this week.
It was all the linguistic basics of the
Hebrew.
I learned numbers, colors, basic
verbs and their conjugation, and some vocab.
You may be thinking “That sounds like boring classes that I take in
school.”
This is not true.
What happens is that they show you a picture,
and give you a word.
They use no
English, so they require you to figure out what the word means.
It is really effective for learning and
remembering words and phrases.
These are the Hebrew letters. Refer to this chart when I talk about the letters.
In school, since I cannot access Rosetta Stone on my school computer, I
learned some letters.
I learned about 16
of them.
I used AncientHebrew.org, which
is very helpful.
It has notes on the
Hebrew language and how to pronounce and use the letters.
For example, the Hebrew language has no verb “to
be”.
So, “I am happy” becomes “I happy”.
Very odd, right.
Also, some letters are attached as prefixes
and suffixes to mean “and” and “for”.
The letter vav is attached to the front of words, which makes it mean “and”.
Also, some letters change if they are at the
end of a word.
These letters include
tsade, fey, nun, mem, and khaf.
To help lock some vocab and letters permanently in my mind, I created a
booklet to keep track of my letters and other assorted words.
I have also created some flash cards.
All these help me reach my end goal of
learning Hebrew.
Speaking of goals, I am
just where I wanted to be.
I wanted to be
done with the first lesson by this Sunday.
I ended up finishing it on Thursday.
So, this week, I will study Israeli culture and finish learning the
letters.
Ian Wilenzik, signing off.
