Basics of Biblical Hebrew - Session 1 - The Hebrew Alphabet

welcome to the lecture for basics one the Hebrew alphabet in this lecture we will cover the 23 consonants of the Hebrew alphabet we will also cover the five constants that have final forms we will identify the six Paganica fat consonants the four and a half guttural consonants and then we will discuss traditional versus modern pronunciation the first thing to do is to take a look at the Hebrew alphabet the Hebrew alphabet consists of 23 consonants written from right to left and they appear on your screen in red before we read through this alphabet together let me say three things about this alphabet that may be of interest to you one scholars are now suggesting that this may be the oldest alphabet in the history of the world a gigantic advance in technology secondly it is the oldest alphabet that is still in use today and third it is the alphabet that contains the language of the entire Hebrew Bible and that Hebrew Bible constitutes over 75% of the Christian Bible so if you want to study the Bible in the original language you're gonna want to love and learn the Hebrew alphabet let's say these letters together working from right to left there's no need to memorize anything at this point just follow along and repeat after me as we work through the 23 consonants of the Hebrew alphabet Olive bait gimel dalet Hey Wow Zion het tete yodh COFF la med mim noon Tomic ayan pay Sade Cove race sin Shin tau these are the 23 letters or consonants of the Hebrew alphabet there are no vowels in this alphabet will learn the vowel symbols in chap - let's take a look at a chart that contains important information about the Hebrew alphabet in the chart on your screen you're going to see the Hebrew letter the name of that letter spelled in English and the basic pronunciation value what's important to understand is that the name of the letter will help you with the pronunciation so keep that in mind as we're working through these names let's begin with olive it's the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet and it is silent in its pronunciation next is Beit and it sounds like the B as in boy gimel sounds like the G in god dal it sounds like the D in day hey sounds like the H in hay wow sounds like the W in way Zion sounds like the Z in the proper noun Zion pet sounds like the CH in the German word buk pronounced back in the throat with the guttural sound Tet is one of the T sounds in Hebrew and it sounds like the T in toy Yoda sounds like the Y in yes cough is pronounced like the K in king and Alam it is pronounced like the L in Lion you'll notice with most of these forms the letter that begins the spelling of the name in English is the sound of that letter let's continue to see how that works in the right hand column mem sounds like the M in mother noon sounds like the N in now Tomic is one of the s sounds in Hebrew and it sounds like the s in sin ayan like Olaf is silent and so will pronounce that with the vowel that appears with it but we won't learn the vowels until chapter 2 pay sounds like the P in pastor Sade sounds like the TS in boots Cove sounds like the K in King the Cove and the cough sound alike rash sounds like the are in run sin is another of the s sounds in Hebrew and it sounds like the s and sin just like Sonic shin is another s sound it looks exactly like the sin above but it has a dot to the right to distinguish the sin from the shin the shin with the dot on the right sounds like the SH in ship and finally the tau one of the T sounds in Hebrew it sounds like the T as in toy those are the twenty three letters are consonants of the Hebrew alphabet you'll need to memorize the form the name and the pronunciation for each letter at the end of this lecture we'll go over how to write or produce each of these forms written out by hand in addition to the 23 forms of the Hebrew alphabet that we just learned five of those forms have an additional or final form the final form of the letter is the form that that letter takes on when it appears in the final position of the word at the end of the word in the examples in the right column you will see the final form of each with other letters so there is the noun Derek because the COFF appears at the end of the word the final form is used if it were to appear at the beginning or the middle of the word it would take the regular form Koff with the example am because the MIM appears at the end of the word it appears as the final form and not the regular form that would appear at the beginning or middle of the word likewise with the word cane because the noon appears at the end of the word it also will take the final form in the same way kesef or Eretz because the pay and the Sade appear at the end of the word it uses the final form and not the medial or irregular forms that we see with noon pay and Sade you will have to memorize each of the five final forms and be able to identify the fact that each one is related to the regular form at the end of this lecture we'll go over how to draw or write the five final forms six of the letters in Hebrew have two possible pronunciations there's a hard pronunciation and a soft pronunciation these are the six bug-out cough add consonants now the word begad cough at is going to sound strange to you and it is strange it's a made-up word in fact it's a pneumonic device and a pneumonic device simply is a way of helping you to memorize which letters in the Hebrew alphabet are the begad cough at letters if you say the word begad cough at you'll recognize that the consonants in English are b GD k PHT which relate to the bait gimel dalet cough peyto and Hebrew so if you can say begad cough at you'll know which letters are the begad cough at letters let's look at those together on the screen you'll see six sets of examples in each set there are two letters the first letter written with a dot the second letter written without a dot the dot that appears in a begad cut fat consonant to distinguish its pronunciation is called the doggish laning the doggish laning appears in a big a fat consonant when it's indicating the hard pronunciation now by heart i mean that there's a full stop of air rather than air passing through the mouth to create the sound let's look at what I mean with the consonant bait bait with the doggish laning is pronounced with the hard B as in boy ba but bait without the doggish Lane a is pronounced with the soft v as in vine there's more air that passes through your mouth with the V there's a stop with be because of that they'll call these our distinguish these as a hard and soft pronunciation let's look at gimel the gimel with the doggish lane a is the hard G as in God but the gimel without the doggish Lane a is the softer G as the G H in a ghast or maybe the G in giant The Da Lat with the doggish Lane a is pronounced with the hard D as in de the dollar would out the doggish Lane a is the D H sound as in the the COFF with the doggish Lane a is the hard K sound as in King but the coffin out the doggish Lane a is pronounced as CH like the German word Bach the pay with the doggish Lena is the hard P as and pasture but to pay without the doggish Lane a sounds like the pH in alphabet or maybe F the towel with the doggish Lena is pronounced like the T in toy but the towel without the - Lena is the softer pronunciation the th in thin you will need to memorize both the hard and the soft pronunciations for the big a fat consonants you'll also need to know that the hard sound is identified by the presence of a dog Ashley name the doggish Lane a in the consonant identifies the hard sound of the big a fat letter in addition to five final forms and six begad cough at letters Hebrew also has a group of consonants known as the guttural constants Hebrew has four guttural and one semi guttural consonant the four guttural contents are olive hey pet and I on the one semi guttural is Rach for now you don't need to know anything else about these consonants except that they are grouped together as gutturals it will also be helpful to know that all of hey pet and I in our full gutturals but the race is the semi guttural and later we'll learn some rules that apply to these guttural consonants you'll understand that with any language there are a variety of ways to pronounce the in that language let's take English as an example the pronunciation of English in America is different from the pronunciation of English in Australia which is different from the pronunciation of English perhaps in Scotland or England pronunciation can change over time and pronunciation can change by geography now when we're studying biblical or classical Hebrew we're studying a very old form of the language but there's also modern or Israeli Hebrew and modern Israeli Hebrew is not necessarily pronounced as traditional biblical classical Hebrew was pronounced so there are a number of different ways in which some of these words can be pronounced some professors and instructors will prefer a traditional pronunciation system and some professors will prefer a modern pronunciation system it really doesn't matter as long as you're consistent in this grammar we're going to use the traditional or a classical system of pronunciation the reason for that is it's going to make paradigm memorization and verse memorization easier there's nothing wrong with the modern pronunciation this is just the system that we're going to use in this grammar it's best just to use the system that the instructor uses and follow along in that case now when it comes to the major differences between traditional and modern pronunciation it's help to know a few of the major changes let's consider these together first in their traditional pronunciation the gimel is distinguished with a hard and soft pronunciation in the modern pronunciation whether it has the doggish leyte or not it's the hard G as in God the same is true for dawlat and tau whether it has two doggish laney or not in the modern pronunciation it's always pronounced with the hard sound like the D and de or the T and TOI finally with regard to the consonant that we call Wow in modern Hebrew it's called evolved and pronounced like the V in divine this is perhaps the most significant change of all the changes that we see now again it doesn't matter which system you use just as long as you pick one and are consistent with it in this grammar we'll use the traditional system now that we've covered the base information about the Hebrew alphabet the 23 forms the names the sounds to Paganica fat consonants the the the final forms and the guttural constants it comes time for us to learn how to write these letters and this will take some practice the first thing to understand is that when you write these letters they're not going to look exactly like the printed letter right the printed letters in a modern English book don't look like your handwritten script and from person to person a handwritten script may be slightly different I'm going to give you a good and basic starting point and you may end up modifying a little bit to suit your own needs or your instructor may have different suggestions for how to form different words but this is at least one basic system that will allow you to get started and be consistent as you work on memorizing the Hebrew alphabet we'll begin with olive and writing a backslash followed by two curved lines a curved line on the top and a curved line on the bottom once again backslash curved line on the top curved line on the bottom now any second two examples I'll provide you with another option for writing the letter backslash and in one continuous curved line some people prefer to do it that way backslash one continuous curved line they both produced the same basic form just pick one and be consistent with it next is bait we're going to have a rounded angle and a base a rounded angle and a base two more times a rounded angle with a base and a rounded angle with a base because this is a begad cough ad consonant we'll put a nice big doggish Forte in the letter to remind you of that now we come to gimel which is a wavy backslash with a leg to support it a wavy backslash with a leg to support it two more times watch with the wavy backslash and the leg to support it the wavy backslash and the link to support it this is our second begad calf at constant so we must put a doggish lena in there to remind you of it that doll it the doll is written as a right angle with a bit of a tail we begin with the horizontal line and then a vertical line a horizontal line then a vertical line notice that in each instance there's a little bit of an overhang on our line this is a very important feature of the Dalek and will help distinguish the doll from other forms that we'll see two more examples the horizontal line and the vertical line the horizontal line and the vertical line and in each case there's that overhang the doll is our third begad calf at constant and so we're going to put a doggish Lane a in that form hey hey is a guttural consonant the guttural hey is written as a right angle with another vertical line the right angle and another vertical line notice that I have left space in each form to mimic the space in the printed form two more examples right angle vertical line right angle vertical line that's the hey now we come to the Wow or what in modern pronunciation is devolve we're gonna begin with a slight angle and then straight down a slight angle and straight down that angle mimics the angle that you see in the printed form but some people prefer to simply write this particular consonant as a straight line and that's fine too straight line straight line you can do either one just pick one and be consistent we now come to Zion AZ sound in Hebrew and the design consists of a long vertical line with a little hat that's tilted a long vertical line with a hat that's tilted two more examples watch a long vertical line and the tilted hat a long vertical line and the tilted hat that's the Zion pet that pet can be written in a number of different ways we'll begin the first two examples with a right angle followed by a vertical line a right angle followed by a vertical line notice that there is no space between the right angle and the vertical line to distinguish it from the Hey this also mimics the fact that it's closed here now in addition to the right angle with vertical line we can write this with one continuous stroke where we write it with your right up and over and down up and over and down it looks like a rectangle without a base either of those systems are fine just pick one and be consistent we now come to the tenth one of the T sounds in Hebrew and it's written almost as a circle with this backslash at the top there again almost as a circle and then bring that in that final line mimics the fact that the consonant dips back into the circle in its writing two more examples we'll begin our circle before we close it back into the line begin our circle before we close it back in that's the tete the Yoda is the smallest of the Hebrew letters and so far you'll observe that we have taken up two spaces or two lines too to write each of our letters there Yoda is only going to take up the top half of that space the Yoda will be written simply as a curved angle yo again down here Yoda and yo it might be helpful to consider it with the consonant yet that we just practiced there's the hit it takes up two spaces but the yode only takes up one that gives you a basic spatial orientation to the size of that particular consonant the Yoda is the smallest of the letters Koff Koff is written like a backwards see very easy Koff a backwards see two more backwards see and backwards see it's our fourth begat calf at continent so we're going to put a doggish Lanie in the cuff lawmen lawmen is the largest of the Hebrew letters in fact in Hebrew manuscripts you can always see the llamas on a page because they go way above the line so if we normally write in two spaces the lammott is going to start above the normal spot and then come down and look like a lightning bolt so we'll begin one spaceup lightning bolt and down one spaceup lightning bolt and down and if you think that's an over-exaggeration look up a Hebrew manuscript online and you'll see that this is the truth with regard to the size of the law but it's top stroke is very large that's the law but the lightning bolt lawmen next we come to the mem the M sound in Hebrew there are a number of different ways to describe how this particular character is written the first way will be like a giant wave with a surfer or it can be a giant mountain with a mountain climber or it can be a house with a chimney either way memorize the form and be consistent the noon looks very much like a backwards L I normally begin with a small angled line followed by a vertical line down to the base and in the baseline angled line straight line base line now like the Wow some people may prefer not to do the angled line at the top and that's fine you can make it look simply like a backwards L straight down and over straight down and over either form is fine the top one is a little fancier the bottom one is perhaps a little simpler and quicker to draw the sonic the sonic looks like a backwards Sigma what it is it's a big circle with a little hat a big circle with a little hat two more examples big circle give it the Hat in big circle and give it the Hat the Samet looks like a backwards Sigma if you've had Greek ion the ion is a guttural consonant and it looks very much like the English letter Y we're going to begin at the top here and angle down and then run that baseline and then connect it like a Y all the way down to the base run it along the base connect it to look like a Y two more examples all the way to the base connected all the way to the base in connected that's the ion or one of the guttural consonants in Hebrew next it's pay and because it's a begad calf at constant let's put a doggish Lena in it just to remember that and let's draw it we're gonna draw a big backward C and then in at the top a big backward C and then in at the top this stroke that brings it in at the top mimics this stroke here that brings the line inside the consonant a backwards C and in some people prefer to start at the top and come out and then over and around either way is fine just pick the system that works best for you and be consistent and as neat as possible Sade Sade is formed by making a back slash to the base running the line in the opposite direction on the base and then connecting it midway down with an angled line back slash run it down the base connect it with the arm back slash run it along the base connect it with the arm one more back slash running along the base connect the arm that's the Sade the TS sound in Hebrew Cove qoph is a constant that goes slightly below the line when you draw it and it looks like a pea so we're going to come vertically down and go a little bit below the line and then finish out the symbol that makes it look like a pea all the way down a little below the line and then finish it out with a symbol that makes it look like a pea all the way down curved line all the way down curved line this is the cove it's similar to the pea in English but not exactly like that and it goes below the line that's the Cove the race is another one of the gutturals and it's easy to draw it's written as a rounded angle from the top rounded and down from the top rounded and down it's important to render the race with the angled line because it will help distinguish it from the dot which has the sharp line with the overhang one more time angled line race be careful to distinguish between the race and the dollar sin the sin is written as a wide you with an angled line inside that you and a dot over the left arm a wide u an angled line within that U and a dot over the left arm to more wide you angled line dot wide you angled line dot that's the sin the shin is made in the exact same way why'd you angled line but the dots over the right why'd you angled line dot over the right let's look below at the sin again it's a wide u an angled line but the dots over to the left you can see the difference between the sin and the shin because with the shin the dots are on the right side of the constant but with the sin the dot is on the left side of consonant that's the Hebrew letter Shin finally there is tau and tau can be written in a number of different ways and I'll give you two of them you can begin with the right angle and then come back and do a vertical line with a foot a right angle and then a vertical line with a foot or you can do it in one a continuous stroke up down over up up down over up it doesn't matter which way you do it as long as you're consistent in your rendering of the tau and that will help you to distinguish between the hey the hit and the tau because they all look like rectangles without a base but you'll recall that the hey has space here and the hit does not have the foot in fact let me erase those two forms at the bottom and write the hey and the hat in context just so you can see the differences the hey is the right angle with a vertical line and space between the right angle and the vertical line the head however is the same right angle with a vertical line but no space again notice that the space here identifies the hey and the fact that there's no foot here identifies the fit or distinguish it from the Tao the Tao is the last of the six Paganica fat letters so once again we're going to add the doggish Lane a to the Tao to remind us that it's a Paganica fat letter we've now finished drawing the 23 letters of the Hebrew alphabet but before we end let's look at the five final forms that are written differently than the medial forms or the regular form the first one is COFF the regular coffee is written as a backwards see the final coffee is written as a horizontal line with a vertical line that descends below the line of the COFF it looks like a Dalek with a long leg you'll see here that the regular coffee and the final coffe have different forms in the final coffee is on the Left ma'am the regular mem looks like that wave with the surfer the final mem is more square so we're gonna come down over and back up that mimics the final phone we see on the printed page once again it's a little tough we're going to be down over and up that's the final form of the min the noon the regular noon consists of a small angled line a vertical line and then a base line the final form of the noon has that same angled line but a straight line that descends below below the line with which it was previously stopped so the nude looks like a long Wow you could think of it that way or the fact that the regular noon has had its leg stretched down further south the pay the regular pay is written like a backwards C with an internal line the final page is written the same way but its leg descends again below the line you can see there's some similarity in form there between the regular pay and the final pay the final pay has had that bottom line stretched sade the regular saw date appears as an angled line a base line and an arm the final Society does not get that base line it just continues below the line and then you get the regular arm again it's been stretched it looks like it backwards why that concludes the five final forms that you must learn to write so what must you do before you move on from this chapter first memorize the 23 consonants of the Hebrew alphabet in order be able to write out the alphabet completely from right to left you should also know the name and pronunciation of each letter memorize the five final forms the six begad cough at consonants and the pronunciation values and the four and a half guttural consonants this chapter will take some time to master you want to be careful and neat and clean when you write out each of the Hebrew letters consistency and clarity will help you learn the alphabet quickly also every time you write out a letter you should pronounce its name that way you can associate the name and the form in your mind more often and that will help you to memorize each of the letters the first thing I have my students do on their quiz for this chapter is write out the 23 consonants at the Hebrew alphabet then they have to go back and put a doggish laney in the six Paganica fat consonants after that they have to underline the four and a half guttural consonants and then they have to write the five final forms underneath the regular forms and if you can practice in this way you'll be able to master all of the different components and features of the alphabet that are required and in this way you'll master the material from chapter one

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Keywords: basics of biblical hebrew, biblical hebrew, hebrew alphabet, miles van pelt, learn hebrew, learn biblical hebrew

Id: 76IyeFx9jXs

Length: 31min 59sec (1919 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 22 2019