From the Aleph-Bet 1: Ep. 01

you're watching shallow TV celebrating Jewish culture I left but Fred Kimmel the day Bob Sinclar Ted your dama hi Paisley tiny patience and tough now I think they're sane enough welcome to another lesson in Shalom TV series from The Aleph bet I'm Marc golem and it's my pleasure to help you to be able to read and pronounce Hebrew words and to be able to read and understand many Hebrew words they're part of the American Jews experience of Judaism and I want to take a moment to thank all of you who have been in touch with us since our first two programs with such lovely things to say about from the olive Bette I hope you enjoy the series as it goes along in this lesson I'd like to begin to actually introduce you to Hebrew letters and Hebrew vowels and if this is the first time you've ever studied Hebrew we go to whether you're a young person of 8 or 9 or whether you're an adult as old as 89 learning your first Hebrew letter and your first Hebrew vowel will be very very exciting now if you've watched our introductory lessons you know that Hebrew is a very easy language to learn much easier than it would be to learn English from scratch and one of the reasons why Hebrew is easy is that basically every Hebrew letter makes only one sound and always the same sound I want to say that again basically every Hebrew letter makes one sound and only one sound and that makes Hebrew a very easy alphabet and language to learn and the first Hebrew letter I'd like to show you is this letter the Hebrew letter Shin this letter is the Hebrew letter Shin by the way the Shin is the 21st letter of the Hebrew alphabet and it's the next to the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet but it's the first letter we'd like to teach you the Hebrew letter Shin and it's interesting to note that once you know the name of a Hebrew letter you also know the sound that letter makes the sound the Hebrew letter makes is the first sound of the letters name so in this case the Hebrew letter Shin makes the English sound Shh as in the English word ship in fact whenever I see this Hebrew style Shin I think of an old-time ship with three sails like pictures I saw as a child of the ship's Columbus sailed on his voyage to discover America the Nina the Pinta and the Santa Maria and it reminds me that the sound of this letter Shin is Shh as in the English word ship and here we have by the way a very nice cartoon that our producer Alan Ulrich has created where the shin actually turns into a ship to help you remember that the letter shin makes the sound as in the English word ship very nice Alan thank you so much yes there's the shin and you'll notice by the way that there's a dot over the right stem or the right sail of the shin and whenever Hebrew letters are written with dots and dashes called Nick adult the shin will always have a dot over the right stem and again the letter shin makes the sound Shh you try it what's the name of this letter it's the letter shin and what sound does the letter shin always make the shin always makes the sound as in the word ship so now you pronounce the sound of the shin Shh the shin always makes the SH sound in English the Shh sound and this is your first Hebrew letter Mazel Tov or Mazel Tov congratulations you now know the letter shin and that it always makes the sound of sh-shh very easy right okay so now let's look at your first Hebrew vowel and vowels in Hebrew work differently than English vowels vowels in English are actually English letters a e i o u and sometimes y and because vowels in English are actually letters English vowels look just like any English consonant and they're written alongside English consonants in every English word so for example in this English word strawberry unless you know which English letters are vowels there would be no way to immediately look at this word and know which letters in this word are the vowels and which letters in this word are consonants but in Hebrew recognizing vowels and consonants and distinguishing between them is very very simple for in Hebrew vowels are all dots and dashes technically called again niku dote Hebrew vowels are dots and dashes so Hebrew consonants are letters like the letter Shin which we just learned but Hebrew vowels are all dots and and they're written either under or over Hebrew letters and I want to say that again Hebrew vowels are dots and dashes written under or over Hebrew letters so I want to take a look at your first Hebrew vowel it is simply a short line drawn under a Hebrew letter a short line drawn under a Hebrew letter whenever this short line appears under a Hebrew letter it is a Hebrew vowel which makes the sound ah as in the English word father ah as in the word father and this Hebrew Bell is called pata and the pata makes the sound ah as in the English word father so now what does this Hebrew vowel sound like ah as in the English word father so now it's time for you to read your first Hebrew syllable remember one of the wonderful ways Hebrew is simple to learn is that every Hebrew syllable has one vowel never more than one vowel never fewer than one vowel every Hebrew syllable has one vowel and only one vowel never more never fewer which means that whenever you see a Hebrew word if you count the number of vowels in the word which basically means counting the dots and dashes in the word you immediately know how many syllables are in that Hebrew word if a Hebrew word has one vowel it has one syllable if a Hebrew word has two vowels it has two syllables if a Hebrew word has three vowels it has three syllables and if a Hebrew word has four vowels which is just about as many vowels as the Hebrew word will ever have then the Hebrew word has four syllables there's always a one to one ratio of Hebrew syllables and Hebrew vowels count the number of vowels and you know how many syllables are in the word and then by breaking Hebrew words into syllables any Hebrew word becomes very easy to read and to pronounce if we take our letter Shin and add the vowel pata under the letter Shin we have our first Hebrew syllable now Hebrew is almost always read down and then from right to left down beginning with the sound of the Hebrew letter followed by the sound of the Hebrew vowel either under it or over it so how do you think you would pronounce this syllable begin with the sound of the shin and then weeding down and the sound of the puck under the shin ah the shin plus the ah is read as sha shin plus ah sha this level is simply sha congratulations you've read your first Hebrew syllable now I want to create a nonsense word with two syllables in it here we have two shins side by side making a nonsense word and under each in is a pata which means that there are two vowels in this nonsense word and therefore two syllables by the way I remind you Hebrew was always read from right to left in the opposite direction from reading English so in this nonsense word we would begin at the right and simply read the first Hebrew syllable which is a shin with a pata under it so that the first syllable of this nonsense where it is sha and the second syllable of this nonsense word is another Shin which also has a pata under it so that the second syllable is also sha and if we read the two syllables one after the other this nonsense word is pronounced sha sha and that's how easy it is to recognize and pronounce many simple Hebrew words two syllables sha and sha produced the Hebrew nonsense word sha sha so let's try three Hebrew syllables how would you pronounce this Hebrew nonsense word cha-cha-cha Matsuya excellent you are now able to read and pronounce a Hebrew word with three vowels or three syllables and I want to teach you one more foul this vowel looks very much like the PATA we have just learned but instead of a straight line it looks like a miniature T this vowel is called a commas and just like the PATA the Komets almost always makes the same vowel sound ah as in the English word father and I say the Komets almost always makes an ah sound because in some rare cases the Komets makes an or sound as in the English word saw but for now whenever you see this vowel Komets pronounce it the same way you would pronounce a pata ah as in the word father now you might ask why do two Hebrew vowels make the same sound and in this case the answer is somewhat interesting there are basically two dialects of Hebrew to pronunciation styles of Hebrew one is called Ashkenazic Hebrew and the other is called Sephardic Hebrew and Hebrew philologist could go into a very long and detailed explanation of the background and subtle differences between Ashkenazic and Sephardic Hebrew but a simple explanation is that Ashkenazic Hebrew is the dialect spoken in Ashkenazic Jewish communities that come out of Eastern and Central Europe such as Germany and Hungary Poland and Russia Sephardic Hebrew on the other hand comes out of Spain and other Sephardic countries like Greece and North Africa in the United States until the establishment of the State of Israel virtually all Jews used Ashkenazic Hebrew in this country and to this day many if not most Orthodox synagogues still use the Ashkenazic pronunciation of Hebrew but the State of Israel adopted the Sephardic dialect which is somewhat simpler in its Hebrew pronunciation when I was a child learning Hebrew in an Orthodox synagogue I was taught the Ashkenazic pronunciation but then when I began studying Hebrew in a conservative synagogue I was taught Sephardic pronunciation because again it was the style of Hebrew spoken in Israel and there was a sense that the Jewish world in general wanted to adopt the Israeli style of spoken Hebrew now of course there's nothing more right or wrong in one dialect or the other Sephardic Hebrew is not superior to Ashkenazic Hebrew and Ashkenazic Hebrew is not superior to Sephardic Hebrew there are simply different ways to pronounce the same Hebrew words both are authentic Hebrew language dialects and very often it has to do with what one is used to as one grows up hearing either Ashkenazic or Sephardic Hebrew and sometimes what we grow up with becomes correct in terms of language there is very little correctness in any languages pronunciation the way a community pronounces a language is the authentic way for that community and so again there's nothing more right or more wrong about either Ashkenazic or Sephardic Hebrew they're simply different and because Sephardic is the dialect of Israel the Jewish world has moved more and more toward the Sephardic see a ssin of the hebrew language in part because the Sephardic dialect is a little bit again more a little simpler than Ashkenazi Hebrew in part because some of the early Jewish pioneers to Palestine but Sephardic had a cleaner sound and in part because some of the early Jewish pioneers were rejecting the Judaism of their Eastern European shtetl life and therefore wanted a different sound to their Hebrew but whatever the reason the fact is that Sephardic Hebrew the Sephardic dialect is the basic dialect of Israel and I say basic because many many Israeli still do use the Ashkenazi dialect Orthodox synagogues in Israel throughout the world still tend to use the Ashkenazic pronunciation but much of the Jewish world has adopted the Sephardic dialect simply because it's the dialect of the State of Israel which is why we'll be teaching Sephardic Hebrew here on Shalom TV's from the olive bet and that brings me back to the question why are there two Hebrew vowels which make virtually the same sound the PATA and the comments and the answer is in part in Ashkenazi Hebrew the Pethick and commas do make different sounds in Sephardic Hebrew they make the same sound again Sephardic is a little bit simpler in certain ways one of the ways is the Komets basically makes the same sound as the PATA both the comments and the PATA make the vowel sound ah as in the word father in Ashkenazi Hebrew the Commons is actually called a comet's and makes an awesome as in the English word soar and even in Sephardic Hebrew there are instances when the Comets does make this same or sound as in the word soar but in Sephardic Hebrew the Comets is almost always making the same sound as the pot off ah as in the word father so if you see a word with a pata in it or a word with a comet's in it the sound that each vowel makes is the sound ah as in the word father so now let's look at the Hebrew letter shin with a pata or a comet's under it if you see a syllable with a pata under a shin the syllable is pronounced weaning down sha and if you see a syllable with a comet's under ash in the syllable is pronounced reading down sha very good in essence it's exactly the same syllable in terms of the way it sounds so again in this nonsense word with two Hebrew vowels of therefore two Hebrew syllables the question is how would this nonsense word be read again from right to left a two syllable word with the vowel pata of the vowel cummins take a moment how would you read this to Silva word Shasha Matsuya exactly right each syllable is read the exact same way whether it has a comma or a pata now what about this three syllable word how would you pronounce this nonsense word sha sha sha Mitsu jaan again to read this nonsense word you would simply read each individual syllable from right to left beginning with the Hebrew letter followed by the Hebrew vowel underneath it sha and then you'd be the next letter and vowel to the left sha again and then you'd mean the last Hebrew letter and vowel under it to the left sha and putting the syllables all together this nonsense word would simply be pronounced as sha sha sha and this is the basis of how the easiest of Hebrew syllables and words are read letter followed by a vowel move to the left another letter with a vowel a Hebrew letter followed by a Hebrew vowel together make a Hebrew syllable so now you've learned your first Hebrew letter Shin which makes the sound SH and your first Hebrew vowels pata and comets which make the sound of ah as in the word father and you understand how to create the simplest of Hebrew syllables and therefore the simplest of Hebrew words and when we meet for our next lesson I promise to teach you the secret to reading and pronouncing Hebrew so that you'll be able to pronounce any Hebrew word you see no matter how complicated it is no matter how long that Hebrew word is there is a secret - reading Hebrew I'm going to teach it to you next time so if you want to know the secret to reading and pronouncing Hebrew don't miss our next lesson from the Olive bet right here on Shalom TV thank you for watching and for being part of our Shalom TV family I left bad Fred Kimmel the day Bobson head Ted your dog man hi hey Fitz I D wish shits and tough now I think they're sane enough

Channel: JBS

Views: 53,999

Keywords: shin, vowels, from the aleph-bet, aleph-bet, alephbet, aleph, bet, learning hebrew, hebrew, language, rabbi mark s. golub

Id: hqvIGLO0Wqw

Length: 22min 50sec (1370 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 15 2011