Basics of Biblical Hebrew Video Lectures, Chapter 1 - The Hebrew Alphabet

welcome to basics of Biblical Hebrew chapter 1 where we get to study together the Hebrew alphabet now the Hebrew alphabet is in fact the oldest alphabet still in use today dating back almost 4000 years so not only will it connect us to the ancient Near East and the Hebrew Bible but it will also be the very first thing we do together to learn how to read the Bible in Hebrew the Old Testament now in this chapter we want to cover three basic things we want to learn the name of each letter the form of each letter and the sound of each letter the name the form the sound so we'll be working through each letter one at a time now you can follow either in the book or in the charts but it's very important that you watch on the screen how each letter is written now a couple of things to note before we write these letters first the letters as they're written by hand looks slightly different than as they appear on the page okay on the page they have the scripting and the the bold and the thin parts the calligraphy sections and all that good stuff that makes it look nice on the page very much like English fonts have all of that flair to them but when we write English we write them with simple straight lines or curved lines and we're going to be doing that learning how to write the alphabet now when you write the alphabet you want to practice so that the writing of the letters is clear and crisp each time and that is not something you're guessing about or fumbling with and you also want to learn at the beginning to write neatly now I know for all kinds of students out there handwriting is some for some students it's neat for some students it's sloppy and there's the whole range in between but with Hebrew at the very beginning the if you if you begin to write neatly and you keep that up you'll have more success as you go on you're actually able to write faster and more legibly as you go so this is a very important skill to work on and so we're going to work on it slowly go through all 23 letters and I'm going to teach you now how to write these letters all right so there are 23 letters each with a distinct form some with one some with two pronunciation we're going to cover all that but the most important thing you want to get now is how do I write each one of the forms of the Hebrew alphabet so let's begin the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet is olive and it's actually silent it's a silent letter and we'll talk about the impact that has on pronunciation later but for now you just need to memorize that the letter olive is silent it's written with three strokes there's the back stroke and then there are two curved strokes there's an upper curved stroke and a lower curved stroke that's the letter olive now when you're writing on the ruled page in your workbook you're going to want to fill the entire ruled line with the olive so let's practice you should have your workbook out and you should be practicing writing these letters as I'm writing them for you so let's begin let's write the letter all of four or five times together we'll begin with the back slash the upper curved line and the lower curved line again back slash upper curved line lower curved line keep going to more back slash upper curved line lower curved line one more time back slash upper curved line lower curved line notice how when I'm writing this letter the letters are pretty much for the most part touching the top part of the ruled line and the bottom part of the ruled line you want to take up the whole line the whole ruled line for this let's move on to letter number two the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet is Beit and it sounds like the B in the name boy or in the noun boy and the letter Beit in Hebrew when you write it looks like an upside-down J so let's begin on the big box here we're going to write the the hooked part of the J upside down and then we're going to give it a base so it doesn't fall over that's the Hebrew letter Beit the Hebrew letter Beit alright it also will take up the whole ruled line so let's practice a couple of times on the small ruled lines above here we go we're going to write the hook and the base the hook and the base the and the bass finally the hook and the bass that's the letter Beit okay that's the B sound in Hebrew the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet the third letter of the Hebrew alphabet is called gimel and it's the letter it's the G sound in Hebrew all right so let's let's look at this letter this letter is written by a long backslash with kind of a curvy top all right long backslash with a curvy top and then you have to do a support structure right there on the left side it looks very much like it looks very much like the the Greek lambda but without this little curve at the top okay the Greek lambda is just straight whereas in Hebrew we give it a little curve all right so let's practice writing the the the gimel three or four times in Hebrew we knew that that curved line backslash and then the other diagonal line two strokes one two one two one two good that's the letter gimel that's the G sound in Hebrew next we're going to do the fourth letter of the Hebrew alphabet and that's the dal 't or the D sound in Hebrew the dollar or the D sound in Hebrew D as in de this particular letter is accomplished also with two strokes there's a horizontal stroke and then towards the right end of the horizontal stroke but not all the way to the end there's a vertical stroke that's the Dalek okay it's very important when you're writing the Dalek that you make sure you have that overlap on the right hand corner of the Dalek character because it's going to distinguish itself from other letters of the Hebrew alphabet later that have a similar form so let's practice our doll it with two strokes the horizontal stroke and then the vertical stroke one two one two one two that's the Dalek that's the fourth letter of the Hebrew alphabet and it's the D sound in Hebrew the fifth letter of the Hebrew alphabet pronounced hey like the hey a horse eats and it's the H sound in Hebrew so H as in hey but the name of it is also hey so it sounds like H it's name is hey and it's accomplished with two movements of the pin the first is a right angle so we're going to create this right angle alright and then we're going to do another vertical stroke at the left side of the character all the way down but notice I've left an opening here that opening is very important you're going to want to always make sure that when you write your hey you've got the opening because that's again going to distinguish it from other characters that are similar to the hey very important that you get these details down when I when I circle or specify or give a particular detail you're going to want to capture that and memorize that particular detail so you're always thinking about the fact that the hey has the opening the hey as the opening so let's practice some of these Hays on our line we'll do four of them one will do the right angle that's one and then the vertical stroke on the left side that's two one two right angle vertical stroke right angle vertical stroke notice that in every form I've got that opening right here okay I've got that opening so the wind can get in alright you want to make sure that's open every time that's the letter hey in Hebrew and it's the H sound as in hey okay the next letter in the Hebrew alphabet is called wow this is I guess perhaps the most exciting letter of the Hebrew alphabet the Wow now on this particular letter and we'll talk about this later there are at least two different pronunciations for it some people will prefer to call it evolved and pronounce it like a V some people prefer to pronounce it or call it Wow and pronounce it like a W throughout basics of Biblical Hebrew in these lectures we prefer the W sound or the Wow form of the letter that's the traditional form that's the form for example Moses or David would have spoken with in modern hebrew it's pronounced as viii sound and called evolve and that's certainly fine to do it from your class does it and your teacher does it or your group of friends do it you can certainly do it that way it's just not the traditional pronunciation and it will make the memorization of scripture more difficult later and one of the things I like to emphasize in my own particular classes is memorizing blocks of Scripture and if you can if you memorize the sounds in the traditional pronunciation it'll be easier to spell Hebrew later so that will be up to you but let's look at this the WoW is written in one of two different ways the simplest way to write the Wow is a simple vertical stroke all the way down okay for me that's a little plain I like a little more flair in my Hebrew letters and so I bend the top of the line a little bit and then go down that's better that's a better way in my book but you may prefer to go for the quick single vertical stroke all right but I'm going to do it this way Wow Wow alright so let's practice up above again it's going to take the whole length of the ruled line here we go one stroke Wow one stroke Wow one stroke one stroke pretty easy consonant to write it's the W sound in Hebrew the Wow the next letter that we're going to work on is the Hebrew letter Zion it represents the Z sound in Hebrew now the Zion is accomplished with two quick strokes the first one is a vertical stroke spanning the length of the line the length of the section there and then it has a little slanted line at top okay notice how the slanted line up here works on both works on both sides it overlaps the line on both sides for example when you have the WoW you just have this little little break in the line at the top but the Zion just to compare it so you don't confuse them okay the Zion has two diagonal line and it spans both sides of the line so you're going to have overlap here and here very important to get the Zion right so two strokes you have the the quick vertical stroke and then diagonal quick vertical stroke diagonal quick vertical stroke diagonal one last time quick vertical stroke diagonal that's the Hebrew letters ayan and it's the Z sound in Hebrew the next letter that we're going to write is the Hebrew letter pet now for this letter you need a little more flume in your throat you're going to kind of spit it out a little bit in the back of your throat in that guttural area that pet now the head looks very similar to the hey remember with the head you had that little that space and there so the air can flow through but with the head it's going to be a right angle with a closed line okay so you're going to create your right angle but then you're going to go straight down you're going to create your right angle and then go straight down now notice here there's no opening with the letter het you do not want any opening it's almost like a rectangle without a baseline I'm going to write it again for you I'm going to actually write the hey for you over here so you can see the difference when you're writing out these forms the hay and the het are almost identical but the difference exists right here with the hay there's the space with the het there's no space hey and hit okay now let's practice writing the het above again it takes the entire ruled line you can write in a number of different ways but I found the easiest way is beginning at the base moving up creating the right letter with the right angle and then going down cut three movements one two three one two three and one two three it's like ballet you've got your three moves one more time one two three notice that with each letter this area is closed off make sure your het is always closed now this letter in English you would think of maybe as a rough CH sound or coughing when you're coughing trying to say CH and say it's the like the CH in Bach it's got that kind of Flemmi guttural sound in it and so you'll get used to saying and some people say it a little harder like Bach but you really want to get the fleming sound when you're pronouncing the het in hebrew it's just a lot of fun to do don't sit too close to your friends when you're pronouncing this letter at the beginning you're sure to spit on them okay so the next letter is the Tet now the Tet is one of the forms of tea in Hebrew they're actually a couple of forms of the letter T or the T sound in Hebrew the Tet now the Tet looks like a G that's been rolled back to the left a little bit now let me just play around here with you and give you the form of the capital gene English the way we normally do it we think of it as the letter C with a line okay now that's actually the fundamental form of the Tet in Hebrew except we're going to roll it back a little bit and that's going to be our form so I'll do it here too so you can see in comparison the Tet you've got the the C curve with the stroke at the base of the open line and so you can see here the difference between the two is simply the fact that the Tet in Hebrew has been rolled back about 45 degrees so let's look now again we're going to write the Tet with a C that's been rolled back and that stroke it's two moves it also is going to take up the entire ruled line above so let's do this there's the C stroke and then the line the C stroke and the line the C stroke the line the C stroke and the line and that's the letter Tet in Hebrew and it's one of the T sounds T is in toy the next letter in the Hebrew alphabet is actually the smallest letter and it's the Y owed or the Y sound the why isn't yes yo it's written some people like to do it as a sharp right angle at the top of the line or a curved stroke more of a curved okay either one is fine I tend to be a little more boxy in my Hebrew letter writing and so we're going to I'm going to prefer more right angled form and now one of the things you need to know in terms of its written form is one it's the smallest and and two it's written not at the bottom or in the middle at the top of the ruled line so when you're working on the ruled line we're going to be work now working up here we're going to do the the Hebrew letter yo the Y sound and it's going to be - it's like a right angle one two one two one two okay now let me just you write it with the tête that we had in the last letter remember the tete is the whole ruled line but the Y ode is just part of that at top okay so the Yoda is the smaller letter the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet and it's written at the top of the line the top of the line pretty easy to write a small right angle okay - two movements one and two good the yo'd the Y sound why isn't yes the next letter in the Hebrew alphabet is Koff and it sounds like the K as in King cough and it's written simply as a backwards C alright I think everyone can do this here we go backwards see we did it that's cough all right a backward C it's got kind of this big opening right here and we're going to reproduce that on these ruled lines above and it's going to take up the whole space so cough that's one two three and four C it's a backward C and it takes up the entire space on the ruled line that we're working on right here coffee it's the K as in King the next letter in the Hebrew alphabet is the low-mid and it's the L sound in Hebrew the llama l as in Lion and it's a fun character to write there's a little more flair to this letter in Hebrew specially if you look at the Hebrew manuscripts for example some of the Qumran scripts the low-mid letter is the tallest letter in Hebrew remember we just talked about the yodh it's the smallest the lammott is the tallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet if any of the letters in Hebrew would have played basketball this is the letter and it's written like this it's written well above the line and then it comes down to the base it looks in some sense like a lightning bolt some people prefer to begin at the base and write up others prefer to begin at the top and write down it doesn't matter how you do it as long as you're consistent and the character is clean let's look at it up here because one of the important features of the low-mid is that it goes above the ruled line this is one of those letters that goes above the ruled line so the limit is going to be written beginning at the base and up the base and up the base and up now if you want to write it starting at the top you begin above the line and you come down above the line and come down above the line and come down essentially where do you think about when you think about breaking the line you're going to want to break it right at this midpoint right at the midpoint see this one is too high okay but these others are right at the midpoint they're in good shape this one right here bad don't do that okay so you're going to begin one more time at the base break it at the midpoint line and then go above the rule line at the top this line this letter is the tallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet it's the low mid or the L as in Lion all right we're halfway there we're going to be looking at the next set of letters mem through tau the next letter in the Hebrew alphabet that we're going to learn is the mem or the M sound in Hebrew now this letter is a little bit tricky because it doesn't look like anything we have in English or Greek or any other language that I'm aware of it looks in some sense like a mountain so we're going to create this mountain but notice at the base of the mountain I curved it in and at that curved in place it looks somewhat like a note so you can think of a combination of a mountain and a nose but then on the left hand side of the mountain you're going to draw a diagonal line you can think of it as someone trying to hike up the top of the mountain so you have a mountain with a line on the left this is one of the trickier letters in Hebrew to write and so it may take a little more practice so we'll do it above here on the ruled line it's going to take up the entire ruled area so we're going to begin at the base curve our line and then the mountain climber make a mountain mountain climber make a mountain mountain climber make a mountain mountain climber that's the letter M in Hebrew and it sounds like M the M and mother this one will take a little more practice to write it's not going to be as familiar to you at the beginning but soon it will be second nature to you the more you practice the better off you'll be and one of the things you want to be doing as you're writing out these letters is you want to be not only writing the form but saying the name and perhaps mimicking the pronunciation ma as in mother the more you employ all your senses in the learning of the language the faster you'll acquire the language and the better it will stick in your brain the next letter in the Hebrew alphabet is noon and it is the n sound in Hebrew the N as in now or na and this letter is written very much like the Wow but with a base that goes to the left so let's begin by writing our Wow character we have this broken line at the top all the way down that's the first movement but then we create a horizontal stroke to the left from that Wow that's the noon no just like with the Wow there you can simply begin with a straight line a straight vertical line and move to that horizontal base line there it looks more like a backwards L and I don't like backwards LS I like a little more flair to my Hebrew letters and so I like the break up top okay so here we go let's practice this noon four times up top we have the fancy vertical line fancy vertical line sorry about that and then the base line one two one two one two that's the letter noon in Hebrew and it's the n sound noon or the n sound the next letter in the Hebrew alphabet is the psalm ik it's one of the S consonants Hebrew there are a couple 4s and this is the sonic it's written as if it were in some sense an English zero or Oh with a little bit of a fancy flare at the top right here as if you're zero or oh we're about to get a baseball cap and I guess we can do that there it won't make too much difference so let me write that again for you we're going to make our zero or o and then we're going to give it a little bit of flair at the top extending extending beyond the break right here to give it this left handed this left handed line now if you've had Greek this will look very much like the Sigma however Hebrew is not written from left to right like ricans written from right to left and so you can just think of it as a backwards Sigma where the horizontal line on the top faces the other way alright it's pretty easy to make we're just simply going to make a circle with a line a circle but don't stop at the top and go over a circle that goes over a circle that goes over that's the sama kin Hebrew and it's one of the s sounds or s consonants in Hebrew Samet the next letter in the Hebrew alphabet is ion and it's one of those silent letters it's like all if it's silent will will tell you how that works later and this letter is written like a Y but the base of it is curved horizontally so let me just compare it with a Y in English a Y has a straight diagonal line and then another line connecting that goes the other way the ion in Hebrew is very similar to that except rather than a straight line as we have with the Y we're going to bend the line over here we're going to bend the line okay so the ion looks like a Y it doesn't sound like a y the ion looks like a Y and it's got the curved line at the bottom let's practice that it's also going to take up our whole area we're going to write the ion two strokes the curved Y line and then the backstroke the curved line and the backstroke one more time the curved line and the backstroke now you can see when you're writing the ion that its base is going to rest right on the base of the ruled line and then at the top it's going to touch the top of the ruled line okay so it's going to take up the entire section and it's going to book it's going to have that bent Y looking shape to it okay good the next line we want to learn is the pay now the pay can be written very much like the tête which is very much like the English capital G and so let me show you the progression here it might help all of them begin with a c-shape the G is a regular C with that horizontal with that vertical stroke at the base of the opening the tête we roll back a little bit we still make the C and our horizontal line goes at the base of the opening well the pay is going to be a backwards C and our horizontal line is going to go at the top all right it's as if we've flipped over and reversed the English capital G so we can see the progression here here's the here's where we begin with G then we roll it over for the tet then we keep rolling it over for the pay okay so let's practice this it's very easy ready backwards C and then a line backwards C then a line at the top of the opening again a backwards C and align the top of the opening a backwards C and a line at the top of the opening so this is the better looking character of my poorly handwritten ones previously and so you'll want to get it to look just like that this form is good okay it's it's like a G like a Tet like a peg and you just keep rolling that that letter over that's the pay it's the P sound in Hebrew the P is in pastor pup the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet we're going to work on it Sade and that Sade is pronounced like the TS in boots it's more like a hissing sound or letting the air out of a tires that's sound in Hebrew TS it's written with two strokes two movements if you're familiar with the mathematical notation the greater than sign you begin with that stroke the greater than sign and then half way through the top a diagonal line okay it looks like a why that was in a car accident where the leg was broken midway through okay so we want to do our greater than sign and then the other diagonal stroke to greater than sign diagonal stroke greater than sign diagonal stroke one more time the greater than sign diagonal stroke that's the Sade the TS sound in Hebrew the next letter we're going to do in the Hebrew alphabet is the cove the cove it's like the K in King like the like the COFF we learned earlier but it's a little more back in the throat you can think of there's king where the pronunciation is more forward in your mouth but then you can try to pronounce King slightly further in the back beginning deeper in your throat King very slight difference you probably won't hear it in in class but just so you know that there is a slight difference between the cough in Hebrew and the Cove in Hebrew there's a K and a K sound back in the throat maybe indistinct some professors will like to emphasize this more than others and you simply follow the lead of the people you're studying with okay now The Cove is simple it begins with a vertical stroke and then it it looks like you're going to make a P with it now some individuals will prefer you to keep that open and that's certainly how it looks in the type 2 script some folks will just think it's okay to write something like this where you've got no opening there because the letter Cove in Hebrew doesn't have any other letters with which it conflicts in terms of appearance it doesn't matter really how you write this one typically however is the best way to do it is probably this form right here we've got the slight opening additionally this this particular letter is going to dip below the line and we can't do it down here but above it above we'll show you the qoph is going to go a little bit below the line and then the P shape at the top so you're going to want to do a vertical line perhaps that's overkill with the P a vertical line with the P a vertical line with a semi circle back shape that makes it look a little bit like a P okay in terms of relative length we're looking something like this below the line not too far but something below the line to make a distinct that's the cove that's the K sound in Hebrew it may sound may perhaps one way to think about it is the slight difference between the the harder K and the Q in English although those also get blended together and so to vary the COFF and the cove very close in terms of pronunciation for Hebrew we're almost at the end just four more letters this next letter is the race or the R in Hebrew it's very easy to write ones one simple stroke it's like a shepherd's crook or a curved upside-down J I usually begin at the top and then curve the line down to the base that's the Hebrew letter Rach it's the R sound in Hebrew R as in run the RUS sound now one of the things I want to point out with this particular letter is notice up here it's bent or curved it's not a hard right angle and there's no overlap in terms of the writing in some Hebrew Bibles and in some printed manuscripts it's difficult to distinguish sometimes between the dollar and the race remember the doll is a hard right angle with this overlap a hard right angle with the overlap the race has no overlap and it's a bent line a bent line that's the distinguishing feature of the race so let's practice on the ruled lines above here we go the race should begin at the top and it's curved down begin at the top and curve down into the top curve down one more time looks a little bit like a shepherd's crook there you go if this is the same movement that you would use to write the letter Beit you do the same curved line in some sense but then with the bait you have the base on it with the race there is no base there is no base but same basic movement race the R sound in Hebrew okay the next two letters sin and shin are written in the same way or the same basic form but there's only one dot that distinguishes them now some people when they count the letters of the Hebrew alphabet they'll say there are only 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet and and the way they get 22 letters is because they're combining sin and shin and the reason they do that is because in Hebrew acrostic poems frequently sin and shin just appear as a single letter and it's got the same basic form and so they'll count it as one for our intents and purposes we're going to count them as two letters for two reasons one they have two pronunciation values and two when you're looking up words in a Hebrew lexicon or a Hebrew dictionary there's a sin section a sin there's a sin section if you can say that there's a sin section in the lexicon or the dictionary and there's a shin section so practically speaking there are two different letters and if you switch them up on a word it makes a different word so if you switch a sin for a shin on a Hebrew letter it's not the same word so we're going to count them as two distinct letters and so we're going to count 23 letters in our Hebrew alphabet not 22 now the same base form is used for both sin and shin so I'm going to teach you how to write them both together the first form we're going to do is sin and it's the S sound as in the s in sin or the s in sali or the essence am and it's written as a broad you you want plenty of space in your big you and then you're going to have a diagonal stroke to the left ending up on the left-hand side of your you okay you see that now the sin is distinguished from the shin by a dot over the very left fork of the sin okay now the shin is written exactly like that let me write the shin on the left side I'm going to make a big wide u a diagonal backstroke and then instead of making my dot on the left I'm going to make it on the right okay the sin is pronounced as a simple S this the shin is pronounced as an SH sound like in he kicked me in the shin or the SH and ship okay the only difference in form between the sin and the shin is the placement of the dot the sin has the dot on the left the shin has the dot on the right so let's practice writing these above first we'll begin with a couple of sin forms we're going to make our big u diagonal stroke dot big u diagonal stroke dot on the left one more big u diagonal stroke dot on the left okay now the shin is the exact same form big u diagonal stroke dot on the right big u diagonal stroke dot on the right so with this particular character one form two sounds you distinguish the two sounds or forms by the placement of the dot sin on the left shin on the right sin on the left shin on the right sin and shin the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet congratulations here we go is Tao now some people will pronounce this as Tov it doesn't really matter how you pronounce the name of the letter tau or Tov it's the T sound as in toy and we're going to write it and it's going to be a combination of different letters you've learned in some sense it's going to begin with a vertical stroke up right angle to the left vertical stroke down and a little leg okay this little leg at the bottom is very important very important it will distinguish the head from the towel now I'll write them a little smaller side to side the head is simply up to the left and down the tete is fundamentally the same movement with one added feature you're going to go up to the left down little leg the difference is right here okay so it's going to be one two three four different lines we're going to write four different lines there so let's practice the towel together in our rule line ready we're going to go up over to the left down little leg up over to the left a little bit down little leg up to the left down and leg one more time up to the left down and leg fantastic that's the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet now one of the things you may have noticed as I'm working on these letters is the direction of my practice is not left to right but in fact right to left and this is a very important feature of the Hebrew language the Hebrew alphabet is not written from left to right as it is in Greek or English all Hebrew letters are all Hebrew writing is written not from left to right but from right to left and so on the slide you'll be able to see that the direction of the writing of the Hebrew alphabet beginning with olive on the right ending with tau on the left so you're going to write in some sense backwards now the Hebrew person didn't think of their writing as backwards and in fact in very ancient Hebrew inscriptions the writing of the direction wasn't necessarily set sometimes it be left to right sometimes right left sometimes up and down sometimes left to right right to left left to right right to left all that to say is there was some fluidity in how it was written 4,000 years ago it's not 4000 years ago and everything in Hebrew now is written from right to left and for example then books don't open at the left in Hebrew books open in what you would consider the back in Hebrew and they'll open at the right and you'll open it up and you'll read right to left so it's very important that when you're practicing the Hebrew alphabet you do not do this I'm going to write this on the board here you do not begin on the left and right all if Beit gimel dalet etc this is bad this does not occur in Hebrew we do not write letters left to right we only write them right to left and so when you're practicing the Hebrew alphabet you want to write them this way now what I'm going to do is I'm going to switch paper here and I'm going to write out the Hebrew alphabet for you in a proper fashion and I'm going to say the name and write the form say the name right to form all 23 letters this is what you want to be practicing to do before you continue on to chapter 2 in the grammar you need to be able to write out from memory all 23 letters of the Hebrew alphabet from left to right so we're going to begin on the left here we go Olive Beit gimel dalet Hey Wow Zion Tet Tet yodh COFF lammott above the line MIM noon Tomic iron pay Sade Cove race sin with a dot on the left shin with a dot on the right and finally tell those are the 23 letters of the Hebrew alphabet and you want to be able to write them out and say their names as you progress you'll also want to begin to learn how these words sound in their context now in some sense it's difficult to know exactly how these sound until you put vowels in it in Chapter two so for now you need to learn the basic for example you learned that the Hebrew letter Beit is written with this form and has the B sound as in boy the Hebrew letters ayan is written like this and has the Z sound as in zebra okay you can begin at that level for this chapter okay that's the essence of this chapter the name of the form and the sound of the Hebrew alphabet letters there are 23 letters now before we move on there are a few things you need to know about the Hebrew alphabet in addition to the name the form and the sound okay now there's not a lot here but you need to know that the alphabet has a couple of interesting characteristics or features that we need to study the first thing that we need to study when it comes to the Hebrew alphabet is that there are five letters in the Hebrew alphabet that have two distinct forms there's a a medial form or a form of the letter that we just learned that can occur at the beginning or in the middle of a letter there are also with these particular five forms a distinct way in which the letter is written if it occurs at the end of a word now if you've had Greek you'll recognize that the Greek Sigma or you'll remember that the Greek Sigma has two different forms there's the regular Sigma for if the Sigma occurs at the beginning of its word or in the middle of a word but the Sigma is written a little bit different if it appears at the end of its word that's exactly like Hebrew okay there are five letters in Hebrew that have two distinct forms now you could ask well what is the reason for this well some of it is perhaps just to sanctify us and cause us to learn five distinct forms for these these five letters but one of the features about Hebrew and Manuscript traditions in general is that early on in the stages of copying Hebrew manuscripts paper was at a premium and writing was very difficult and storage was very difficult and and so there were no spaces between words because of that certain forms developed into final forms and those final forms helped the the reader identify the end of the word now thankfully all 23 letters don't have two distinct forms but there are certain letters that for one reason or another have a different final form and so these are also important to memorize with your regular form so there's going to be a regular form you can think of it that way and a final form a regular form in a final form so let's begin with the letters that have these five different features there are the five letters that have two different forms are COFF mem noon Pei and Sade so I'm going to begin writing those five forms the regular way Koff mem noon Pei and Sade okay cough mmm noon pay and Sade now the final cough is written as if it were a doll it but it goes well below the baseline okay you'll see here with this final form you have the the sharp break with the overhang that use characteristic of the doll it but what distinguishes the doll it from the COFF is the fact that the COFF the final cough goes well below the line it goes well below the line okay let me write that again for you the cough is written like a doll it but it goes well below the line that's the COFF the final form of the cuff now there is no change in pronunciation a regular coffee and a final cough are pronounced the same way it's the form that is distinct these final forms occur only when the letter is at the end of a word the last letter in a word the mem the final form of the mem is in some sense peculiar it begins with a right angle on the left and then it sweeps back up in a curve to the left let me do that again for you a right angle with a curve back to the top a right angle with a curve back to the top okay now the MIM in some sense is a little more square in its final form than the regular form you can think of it that way okay one more time the MIM is for some reason students normally have a little bit of difficulty with the MIM both in its regular form and final form and so we're going to write it again it's a simple right angle but now we're going to curve the line to the top very good sometimes there will be this little overhang and that's not a big deal okay sometimes there'll be no overhang like right here all right as long as you're consistent and you follow the pattern consistently or follow the pattern that your instructor gives you in class you'll be in good shape okay the noon the final noon looks as if the horizontal stroke at the bottom was bent down and straightened out so we're going to begin by writing the same basic noon but instead of stopping it there we're going to continue it below okay noon noon you can see here that with the final noon it goes well below the line well below the line well below the line each form it says if you take this horizontal stroke and you bend it down now the difference between the noon and the Wow then just so you know the Wow stops at the baseline the noon goes well below the baseline so you don't want to get these two forms confused at the beginning you may but here's the key the final noon only occurs as the last letter of a word the final noon occurs only as the last letter of a word and so you're not going to see it any other place final pay again the final pay looks as if this bottom curved line was simply straightened out okay and so we're going to do it we're going to write as if we're writing that C but instead of stuck but instead of stopping at the baseline we're going to go well below that baseline and then we're going to finish it off by writing our normal horizontal stroke so here we go again the curve J that goes below the line the stroke the curve J that goes below the line the stroke so the key feature here is recognizing the fact that it goes below the line the sodding is similar the same thing happens that this little curved line right here gets straightened out and it looks more like a regular Y where you've got that the first stroke going well below the line now we what we want to do is we're going to practice here see if I can join this baseline what we're going to do is instead of instead of breaking the line like a greater than sign it's going to go below the line and then we're into our back stroke below the line and back stroke again the key thing here is this line that goes below okay now watch I want to point this out to you and I'm going to clear this page to do it I'm going to write these five letters again for you quickly okay we're going to do Koff min noon pay and saute what you'll notice is that with the COFF the noon the pay and the saute all of those characters when they're written in their final form will have a have a straight line that goes below the baseline so here we've got these bass lines these letters all at the base line all at the base line for the five final forms simply get straightened out at the bottom okay long line at the base long line long line below the baseline long line below the baseline so those four those four final forms share that feature where the bottom part of the line gets straightened out the mem is unique and perhaps that's why it gives students trouble it's that right angle followed up by that curved line again let me do the mem the right angle followed up by the curved line okay so in addition to the 23 letters of the Hebrew alphabet that we just learned you need to learn that five of those letters have final forms those final forms occur when that particular letter is written at the end of a word it's got the same pronunciation value just a slightly different form that's at the end the next thing you need to learn and this perhaps is a little trickier is that six letters in Hebrew six letters in Hebrew have two different pronunciation values two different pronunciation values now the pronunciation values are related but they are distinct and when you're writing Hebrew and pronouncing Hebrew as much as possible you're going to want to maintain the distinction okay now do we have this in English yes we have this in English for example think of the English letter C we have the C is in cat where we have a hard C but then we have the C as in celery where it's the softer slippery C cut and sup same thing with the English letter G we have the hard G as in get-go but we have the softer G as in giant J the gut and the jaw so in English we have the say the same reality there's one letter two different pronunciations they're related gut and jaw are related okay now we're going to have that same thing happening in Hebrew now we have a name for these six letters and it's a funny name but it will be helpful the name of these letters is the name of the name that we give these letters are begad cough at letters let me say it again begad cough at letters the begad cough at letters in hebrew are the six consonants that have two pronunciation values but GAD cough at now where did we get such a crazy name the begad cough at name comes from the listing of all of those consonants that are or have those two values so if you can say begad cough at you're going to be able to come up with the six letters that are written that way in Hebrew the slide will show you that but I'm going to write it out as well here we go begad cough at is Beit gimel dalet that's GAD bgd begad and then we have calf at cough pay and Tao begad calf at let's think of it as two words run together begad calf at now how do we distinguish between the soft sounds like the G and giant or the hard sounds like the G and get that's that's the basic feature that distinguishes these letters these letters will have two pronunciations one will be hard and one will be soft now what do I mean by hard by hard it means that when you're pronouncing them you will typically stop the flow of air through your mouth bah gah duh okay in order to pronounce these words you stop the flow of air through your mouth when they're soft you force more air through your mouth you don't stop them entirely vah gah and the more air goes through them now with these two pronunciation values you have to distinguish them in Hebrew the way in which you do that is with a dot and this dot is called the doggish lane egg let me write this out for you the dog is leaning the doggish Lane a is a small dot placed in the middle of a began a fat letter to distinguish between the hard and the soft pronunciations okay letters with the hard pronunciation get the dot or the doggish landing letters with the hard pronunciation get the dot or the doggish lane a so let me show you how some of this works we're going to begin with just the first three letters of the begad cough out letters debate the gimel and adalat i'm going to write these out we'll begin with bait bait gimel and dole it okay by themselves without the doggish lane a these letters are pronounced with the soft pronunciation now the soft pronunciation for the bait is like a V in the letter vine v''e the soft letter for the gimel is like the gh in a gas there's a little more air that flows through it or you can think of the G and giant where there's the just sound and the soft pronunciation of the D or the doll it is like the th sound in the that's a little trickier but we'll get there okay we'll get it let me show you what the doggish laning looks like the doggish laning is a small dot in the middle of a letter there you go that's the doggish laning and the bait the doggish laning in the gimel and the dog is landing in the doll it now here we go let's work on this a little bit the hard pronunciation is B as in boy the soft pronunciation is V as in vine so when you encounter the bait and Hebrew you're going to have to think in your mind I've got two options it can be but or v''e how do I know simple if there's no dot in it you're going to have the V if there is a dot in it that's the doggish Lane a that gives you the hard sound and it's going to be the B sound the hard B okay let's try it with a gimel if there's no dot in the gimel if there's no dot in the gimel you're going to have the soft sound which will be the gh sound as in a ghast or the G and giant however the moment you put the doggish Lane a in it you now have the hard sound the G as and get same thing happens with the dalek if you get rid of the doggish Lane a you're going to have the th sound as in the so let's do that th but the moment we put that doggish Lane a back in there the dot in the middle it's going to give us not the soft sound but the hard D sound the D isn't de alright these are the begad cough at letters this is the first three the bait the gimel and the dollar alright let's look then at the second set of big active fat letters the COFF the pay and the towel we're going to do the same thing I'm going to write them out here we have coffee here we have pay and then we have Tao okay now let's do it this way let's begin by giving the soft pronunciations the soft pronunciation of the coffee is the one we've learned it's the CH as in Bach so it's got more of a flim sound to it Bach the CH as in BA okay the soft pronunciation of the pay is like a pH sound like an English word phone or alphabet you can also think of it as the F sound in in English it sounds like an F okay and finally the towel when the towel does not have a doggish lining in it it's soft and it's pronunciation is th th as in thin the th and thin the thing thin thing these that th sound derives from the towel without the doggish Lanie's so the fuh and okay now the moment we put the doggish lanais into these letters they will shift from the soft sound to the hard sound and now we won't get the the softer ch we're going to get the harder case ound as in king the harder p sound as in prophet and the harder T sound as in toy okay now so this means that you've learned two additional things besides the alphabet not only do you have to learn the alphabet but you also have to learn that five letters in the Hebrew alphabet have final forms but you also have to learn that six letters in the Hebrew alphabet have two pronunciations two pronunciations the the letters of the Hebrew alphabet that have two pronunciations are called collectively the begad two fat letters the begad could fat letters that we're almost done with this chapter the last basic thing you need to know about the Hebrew alphabet is that there's a certain classification of some of the letters and that those letters are called the guttural consonants for letters in Hebrew are known as guttural consonant and we call them guttural countenance because they're pronounced in the back of the throat okay the only thing you have to know now about guttural consonants is that they are in fact guttural consonants there are four of them I'll write them out for you so we can continue to practice our writing the four letters of the Hebrew alphabet that are guttural consonants are all if hey pet and I on these four letters are known as guttural consonants because they're pronounced when they are pronounced in the back of the throat there's one additional letter that I want to alert you to and it's race the race is called a semi guttural sometimes it acts like a guttural and sometimes it doesn't for now you don't need to know that you just need to know that the foregut roles are Olive hey pet and iron and there's one semi guttural race that's all you need to know you can put it on a flash card you can write on the back of your hand you can memorize it however you want but you simply need to know that there are four and a half letters that are gutturals last slide for this chapter the last thing you need to know and this will become more and more apparent depending on the context in which you're taking first-year Hebrew is that there is a slight difference in pronunciation between what is known as biblical or classical Hebrew the traditional pronunciation and modern Hebrew modern pronunciation some instructors and ins even some schools or communities will prefer to have an entirely modern pronunciation and that's completely fine as long as you're consistent it will work for you other schools and other groups of people like their traditional pronunciation and that's fine too as long as you're consistent and you're agreed upon it in form all right which system are we going to use we are going to use the traditional system why for two reasons primarily number one the traditional system is the system that most closely approximates the original pronunciation of Hebrew or at least the traditional and preserved enunciation of Hebrew by using the traditional pronunciation it'll be easier to memorize biblical text and to write it out meaning this if you say it right you can write it correctly now that doesn't work in English the English spelling system is very discombobulated so the way in which you say something isn't necessarily the way in which it's spelled in Hebrew with the traditional pronunciation if you can say it you can spell it and that really aids in pronunciation all right so there's that so one it's the traditional or preserved pronunciation - it helps you memorize scripture and for me that's a big part of my teaching in my own life and so I want to be able to write it and say it together okay now if you use the modern pronunciation that's fine but let's go over that basically it comes down to three big ADCO fat consonants and the wild consonant now with three the began fight consonants the Gimbel the dollar and the Tao the gimel dalet the Tao in modern Hebrew there is no no difference between the form with the doggish landing and the form without a doggish landing for the gimballed adalat in the Tao there's only one pronunciation and it's always the hard pronunciation the gut the duh or the tough for the gimel the dollar or the Tao the fourth difference is that in modern Hebrew they prefer as I've mentioned earlier that the Wow to be pronounced as a V sound and they call it volve that's the only difference so if you know those four differences you know the basic difference is between pronouncing Hebrew in this traditional form and it's more modern form doesn't matter which form you use as long as you're consistent as long as you're consistent well that does it for us that's the end of chapter one I look forward to seeing you in Chapter two before you move on please be sure that you can write out the twenty-three letters of the Hebrew alphabet please be sure that you know the five final forms please be certain that you can identify the begad cuff at letters and know the soft and the hard pronunciations that are distinguished by what is called the doggish lanais and then you may or may not want to know the difference between modern and traditional pronunciation in this series of lectures and in the grammar we will use consistently the traditional pronunciation I'll see you next time

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Keywords: Chapter 1, The Hebrew Alphabet, Hebrew, Language, Learn, Rosetta Stone, Foreign Language, School, Miles Van Pelt, Zondervan, academic, Lesson, Lessons, Education, Free, Tutorial, Teacher, 9780310498247, Hebrew Language (Human Language), Biblical Hebrew (Human Language), Hebrew Alphabet (Language Writing System), Alphabet (Language Writing Type)

Id: uIfLf_ffDyw

Length: 62min 31sec (3751 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 25 2012