Hebrew class
May. 1st, 2006 08:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cellioIt's a frustrating blend of "this is too easy" and "WTF?". I'm not sure how much of that is modern versus biblical, how much is speaking versus reading, and how much is teaching style.
I appear to have a somewhat methodical mind, and the biblical-Hebrew textbook I'm working with plays well to that. Here's a rule, let's apply it for a while, ok now there are some exceptions, now here's a variation... It's not completely front-loaded with rules; a previous book was more like that and I got overwhelmed, craving applications. This book does a good job of giving me almost exactly as much structure as I need, neither making me guess nor asking me to memorize a tome before reading my first text.
So, the conversational-Hebrew class... is different. It's structured around dialogues: Sarah buying stuff at the grocery store, the mailman delivering a package, etc. The teacher talks through the dialogue, pointing to things in a picture of the scene and gesturing appropriately to connect the spoken words with their meanings. Good so far. You can tell she's been reciting these particular dialogues for a gazillion years. Then she has us repeat it phrase by phrase, over and over. She has us read it to each other (each taking one half of the conversation) (yay, written text!). She asks simple questions in Hebrew about the dialogue (what did Sarah buy, did the mailman deliver a package, etc). Ok in principle, but it's really all pattern-matching; we could answer the questions just by recognizing the part of the dialogue they come from and quoting, and I suspect that's intentional. So there must be an education-design reason for what seems to this student to be unhelpful.
There are substitution drills (and we're into written text by now), where the text gives a sentence and then one word to substitute into it, for which you may have to change words. (For example, "Sarah shotah yayin" + Moshe -> "Moshe shoteh yayin".) These sentences are three or four words long -- subject, verb, object, maybe negation. There are written questions with, again, a lot of repetition -- but writing practice is good (and there are a couple letters I have trouble remembering in script, so that helps).
So in all of this, the rules evolve, ever so slowly. By this point in the course -- most of the way through the second-level class -- we know that present-tense verbs follow the pattern xoxeh for masculine subjects and xoxah for feminine subjects. No plurals, no other binyanim (and I don't know which this is either -- pa'al?), nothing irregular like drop-letter verbs. We know how to feminize masculine nouns (yelid -> yaldah) and adjectives (tov -> tovah), though there seems to be some unexplained variation in vowels (why is it yaldah instead of yeldah and does that generalize?). Having taught that, the book might have then said "and here's how you do plurals", for instance, because that's not hard, but it doesn't. I assume it'll emerge in a much later dialogue, but not in this semester.
I said I was having "WTF?" moments. Part of this is pure vocabulary; biblical Hebrew doesn't spend much time on groceries and mailmen and packages. Part of it is processing vocabulary (initially) aurally and not visually; I don't know why that's hard, but I better get used to it because, well, conversation. But I sometimes have to ask her to repeat words more slowly that I know, darn it. (Sometimes I don't know them, but sometimes I do.) A little of it is differences in both vocabulary and usage between biblical and modern Hebrew.
Here's an example of a mysterious vocabulary difference; maybe someone can clue me in. In biblical Hebrew (and, I believe, Dani's understanding of modern Hebrew, though I haven't asked him this directly), "l-" (derived from "el") means "to" or "for". There is also "shel" in modern Hebrew; "kosher l'pesach" and "kosher shel pesach" both mean "kosher for Pesach", and I've seen both on product packaging. When I used "l-" to mean "for" tonight, the instructor corrected me with (this is what I heard) "shivil". (Pronoun modifiers might apply; she said "for me" is "shivli".) I have never heard that word before; when I asked her about it she just said "that's the word". (I didn't think to ask about "shel".) Huh, ok, shrug. Another example: "but" is "ach" in biblical Hebrew and "aval" in modern; easy enough to memorize, but it's another little thing to trip one up.
Structurally, biblical Hebrew often leaves out subjects because they're inferred from the gender/number of the verb, and often puts the verb first and then the subject. She is teaching us to be meticulous about (1) subject then verb and (2) explicit subjects. If the shopkeeper just asked you what you want, you still say "ani rotzah (object)", not just "rotzah (object)". Yes, technically it's ambiguous if there's any other woman in sight (rotzah being feminine), but he just asked me a direct question, yes? Why would I respond by saying that that lady over there wants something? Again, it's no problem to do it, but I have to train those instincts. (Do Israelis really talk that way, or is this simplification because it's a beginning class?)
Maybe I'm being challenged by changing two aspects at once, biblical/modern and written/spoken. If this were spoken biblical Hebrew or written modern Hebrew, I'd almost certainly be ready for a more-advanced class. As it is, while the pace can be frustratingly slow and I want the class to fill in the extra bits that are being omitted, I suspect this is the class I belong with, at least through the ulpan.
But I'm still on the lookout for better ways to learn modern Hebrew.
several threads
Date: 2006-05-02 03:51 am (UTC)Actually, the pattern you just described is a drop-letter one. I usually use ktb ('write') as a standard-verb template - kotev, kotevet, kotvim, kotvot - as opposed to xoxeh, xoxah, xoxim, xoxot. (And yes, this one is pa'al - look at the 3rd person masculine singular past "katav"; the vowels and non-root letters of that form with the root peh-ayin-lamed is the name of the binyan).
"kosher l'pesach" and "kosher shel pesach" both mean "kosher for Pesach"
To me these have two different meanings: kosher l'pesach means kosher for pesach while kosher shel pesach means kosher of pesach (with a sense of kosher belonging to pesach or kosher somehow possessed by pesach), and I'd be surprised to see the second one on a package.
Re bishvil: This one is a preposition (and not a verb) meaning "for" as in on behalf of/for the benefit of. It conjugates roughly like l': li, l'cha, lach, lo, la,... with a few differences (because of syllable structure/minimum word length I think).
Re word order and implied subjects: Biblical Hebrew is generally VSO while Modern Hebrew is generally SVO. IIRC this change, and the preference for explicit subjects, is from fairly recent Indo-European influences. (Mishnaic Hebrew is also generally VSO, and often has non-explicit subjects, which gives some data re the timing of the switch.)
Re: several threads
Date: 2006-05-02 02:57 pm (UTC)Duh! Y'know, I've been so focused lately on drop-letter verbs where something drops off the beginning that I missed the fact that every verb this class has used so far ends in hei. How odd that they wouldn't start with the "normal" form. (But then, verbs really only started showing up in lesson 3, so the approach is a little odd. Yeah, you can do a lot with implied verbs -- "shemi Sarah; ani m'yisrael...".)
Are these present-tense verbs actually active participles? This would be the case in biblical Hebrew, as I understand it.
And yes, this one is pa'al - look at the 3rd person masculine singular past "katav"; the vowels and non-root letters of that form with the root peh-ayin-lamed is the name of the binyan
I know that that works in past tense; what I don't know is how to look at a verb in some other tense and figure out the binyan. "Kotev" doesn't follow the vowels of "pa'al"; how do I know that it is that binyan? Are there transformation rules, or do you just have to know?
and I'd be surprised to see the second one on a package.
I thought I'd seen this on a food package, but it's possible that what I'm remembering is a haggadah (floating around Dani's family, so not to hand) labelled "haggadah shel Pesach". That strikes me as a little peculiar, though I guess it tracks with what you said. (At the time I asked Dani what he meant and he said "for".)
Thanks for the help!
Re: several threads
Date: 2006-05-07 05:35 pm (UTC)Mishnaic and later (including Modern); Biblical uses the imperfect ("future") tense for the present tense, from what I've seen.
I recall seeing it once as well (and thinking "that can't be right; maybe it's Engrish?")
Re: several threads
Date: 2006-05-07 09:53 pm (UTC)That's my understanding as well. Mishnaic Hebrew often has sentence subjects of the form "hashoteh" meaning "one who drinks"/"in the case of one who drinks"/"if one drinks", which can be interpreted as active participles or as present tense.
I know that that works in past tense; what I don't know is how to look at a verb in some other tense and figure out the binyan. "Kotev" doesn't follow the vowels of "pa'al"; how do I know that it is that binyan? Are there transformation rules, or do you just have to know?
There are cues in each tense in each binyan that tell you which binyan it is, once you've memorized them well enough to recognize them. In general, if there's a cholam maley (i.e. "o" with a vav) as the second letter, then you've got present tense pa'al.
It helps to know one or a couple of verbs in each binyan really well, so that you have something to compare your mystery verb to (i.e. if you know rotzeh is present tense masculine singular, then any verb of the form xoxeh should be present tense masculine singular, and then you can take it to the 3rd person masculine singular by using ratzah as a template to find xaxah -> root is xxh).
Re shel: I looked it up in my Biblical concordance and was surprised to be sent to a subset of "she-" ("that"). After a bit of thought it makes sense, since "[noun] ["that" + "of"] [noun2]" = "[noun] [possessed by/belonging to] [noun2]". Of the 7 listings, 3 are from shir hashirim, 2 are from yonah, 1 is from kohelet, and 1 is from milachim b. A quick glance at other listings shows a lot of possessives done using suffixes (i.e. my horse = susi (sus + yud), his house = beytoh (bayit + cholam maley), etc).
Re ach/aval: This happened to me in a college course when I used some word and was told to use a synonym (which I also knew) since that was more modern - since I had been using both biblical and modern in school, often together, I hadn't realized that one word was old and the other new. Since a lot of Hebrew speakers learn (at least some) tanach, you're still likely to be understood if you mix the two vocabularies, although it will mark you as educated foreigner (your accent and vocabulary are likely to do that anyway).
Re: several threads
Date: 2006-05-08 08:50 pm (UTC)My textbook (for biblical) calls these participles -- active if talking about the actor or action (like "shomeir" or "yosheiv"), passive if talking about the state of being acted upon ("katuv"). Active participles, it says, can be nouns, present-tense verbs, or adjectives, and you use context to figure it out. (Ok, if it's got a "ha" prefix that tells you which, but otherwise there aren't syntactic clues.)
Thanks for the binyan info/advice!
Shel: yeah, my textbook teaches suffixes as the way to do possessives, and hasn't mentioned "shel" in the first 20 chapters (of 30).
Since a lot of Hebrew speakers learn (at least some) tanach, you're still likely to be understood if you mix the two vocabularies, although it will mark you as educated foreigner
Dani says Israelis have a word (well, phrase) for that: ivrit shel shabbat. :-)
Re: several threads
Date: 2006-05-11 12:28 am (UTC)I can see the active participles being used as either nouns or verbs, but I can't see them as adjectives (and I can see the passive ones as either adjectives or verbs but not as nouns).
Shel: yeah, my textbook teaches suffixes as the way to do possessives, and hasn't mentioned "shel" in the first 20 chapters (of 30).
I don't remember shel as being that uncommon. I wonder if it's a change in Modern Hebrew usage over the past 30ish years.
Dani says Israelis have a word (well, phrase) for that: ivrit shel shabbat. :-)
*g*
Re: several threads
Date: 2006-05-11 02:09 pm (UTC)Example from the book: ish yosheiv, which they translate as "a sitting man" or "a man who is sitting". Grammatically that's an adjective -- a post-nominal modifier. This feels weird in English, but I suspect we don't use gerunds as adjective very much so it's unfamiliar. We usually don't say "the (verb)ing one"; we say "the (verb)er" -- singer, worker, runner, leader, etc. So at that point it collapses into a noun, in English.
Learning a language isn't just about learning syntax and vocabulary and mapping the forms from your native language to the new one. Getting a feel for how Hebrew is put together -- what is natural to the language and what idioms arise -- has been interesting.
(and I can see the passive ones as either adjectives or verbs but not as nouns)
They give as an example ha-katuv, "the (one) that is written". I assume a better translation (tell me if I've changed the meaning in Hebrew) is "that which is written". "Katuv" isn't a real good choice here as most of their examples involve people (yeah, I guess on Rosh Hashana we talking about being written (in the book of life), but not normally). Let me see if I can apply this principle: ha-shamur would be "the one who is guarded", right? This might mean the VIP with the Secret-Service escort or the criminal being escorted to jail; English distinguishes "protected" from "guarded". (Does Hebrew?) The English "escort" is suitably vague here, but I don't know how to say that in Hebrew so I couldn't use it as an example.