The Hebrew Alphabet - Hebrew Lesson #1

[Music] the reason I would like you to at least get the basics it's super important to me that when I say go check me out that you're able to because we're gonna come up on something that's gonna be a little bit taxing I'm I'm on something in Psalm 91 it seems like either nobody wanted to deal with it or was too perplexing I've only found a few people one [Music] morphologically tagged version of Psalm 91 that actually does something accurately the rest of the people I think just took one translation and followed down the path and one word or in this case one letter changes the meaning and there'll be people who some of you are slightly steeped in some traditions including the way you have read scripture or have memorized it I've done that where I've memorized something and I've memorized it and then I've memorized something that doesn't it's not even in the book I heard dr. Scott used to say something all the time and I just started repeating it and what he was saying was a paraphrase of something but it wasn't a scripture it was getting the gist he used to say no one comes to the Father by the spirit and although that's right the scripture is Jesus saying by the son so I'd walk around saying that all the time somebody once asked me what chapter and verse is that nice I don't know but if you're going to give out information such as I'm doing I have a few motives behind telling you go check me out not believe me if I worried about my studies or the way I study or the way I treat the scripture or how what I'm doing I had I don't think I invite you to look I spend a lot of time doing this and even the minutiae of it the slightest detail is important to me so one motivation behind all this is for you to be able to go and check when I say go check and I've given you some ideas of some tools that are available I'll discuss them again tonight to make sure as we start from the beginning I'm taking everybody along with me now the other motivation behind this is I really believe with a few basic tools just a few you don't need to if you weren't a master the language vibe go ahead but I'm telling you only need a few basic tools to be able to find your way around through these different books that I'm suggesting to be used so what we're gonna do is I've made some fabulous artwork for you let's start with the alphabet and I want to I want to discuss this the Hebrew alphabet has no vowels all consonants 22 letters and I'm I'm gonna try and do this in a way where everybody will not go to another source afterwards and say well but some of these people include two letters for this and two letters for that the Hebrew alphabet only has 22 letters so if you buy Hebrew book or you want to do a Hebrew course online or wherever you find it don't get confused where people are trying to tell you well there's there's more one letter of this and I've tried to start from scratch so I want you to look at and I made it big enough hopefully so that you can see and I'm we're gonna try and make this available it's really it's very horrible to look at but I try to give you an idea of how the letters are made in fact I'll do it on my tablet in a minute I actually included in this I've included some some letters to show you for example where my finger is here it's this finger I'm looking at backwards here alright so this letter here and I'm showing you what it looks like in its final form but I have another page that will demonstrate the final form so I've numbered the letters on top for you I am reading backwards from behind the piece of paper so the numbers are on top and I've also tried to show you how the letters are made now if you're gonna do this at home let me recommend something get yourself some either ruled paper do the old-fashioned way and what I've done I very poorly used the ruler which I hadn't done in a long time and I made my own lines you push in see I made pencil lines here so that they would all be the same size and the line through the middle just the way you when you learn how to write the English language the alphabet so you see I where the middle line is get yourself some ruled paper so that when you're writing the middle line pull out just a little bit director for me please the middle line of the alphabet you can see where it's supposed to be on each letter as I said this is my chicken scratch so I tried to make it neat but it's you've got pencil lines and all kinds of things on here so if you can read this and we'll try and make it available for you but I'm gonna try and show you for example on that first letter we're gonna do this slowly I told it was gonna do this slowly we're gonna do it slowly got lots of time folks right it's just time and you know if we use a part time then we'll be heaven and will be speaking God's language with him so who cares right the only time here all right so I want you to see the first letter is just one line you're making one line from top to bottom on an angle and then if you're writing the way I'm doing it you've got another leg that goes this way and you've got or another arm and I always make a little curve at the top there now you can be fancy and put a little knob there and a little knobs there and then it has a shape to it but this particular letter I'm I'm going to try and get you a fine pen here so you I can write underneath it this word this letter rather is pronounced I left I said I was gonna do it slow and it would look if you were writing out this letter in the Hebrew believe it or not it would look if you were writing out the letter just to make it sound its name it would look like so I know this is great for the short shortwave radio people you my friends who are listening on radio I'm sorry but I have not perfected the art of describing the Hebrew letters so he's a go to the Internet or close your eyes and imagine that something so a first letter I've shown you we're gonna do it again I want you to get see the picture of how this letter works I did a thick marker here whoops will give you a thick marker marker all right so one line down and then we've got a second line so line from top to bottom and number two that next line and keep it simple for you all right I'm gonna change get you a pencil and it would be like this so one line that first line is going this way the second line goes this way and the third line goes up this is not equivalent to a like our alphabet a and our alphabet would be a vowel there are no vowels present now I want you to picture something for a minute once you the picture we were let's pick a scripture here let's pick let's pick Psalm 91 its have some fun with it to show you why you've got to change your frame of reference as you're going along with me and we're doing this together let's see we're gonna try and write this way so Psalm 91 I know you're gonna love this example for you people who are radio I am writing part of verse one and I am deliberately leaving a few letters wow this is kind of difficult now whoops I almost did it I almost did it let's see if I can get through this you know I think kids today whoops I almost did it again kids today would be able to get through this because they text Lord only knows but you get the point so if you were reading Hebrew without the vowel points underneath which we will get to you'd be looking at the consonants like I just placed at the bottom of this page here in English no vowels and I want you to really get that picture why it is imperative that you not only see the alphabet and understand it is strictly consonants but then the vowels that are added different than English the value of a vowel in the English language obviously fills in the blanks for us we know this would be he that dwelleth in the and so forth would complete the word but in the Hebrew the vowel whatever vowel may be placed under a letter will not only complete the word but it may in fact change its meaning and that's why we need to kind of approach this with a different set of glasses so back to our alphabet I see if you're trying to write on a ruled page this could be very interesting as well when I do this this is gonna be very beautiful folks Wow the straightest lines you've ever seen musical notes all right let me get my marker here all right so we've done the first letter aleph and as i said it is not equivalent to a it just for value for sound it is as if you're opening your mouth and going like I know you can all do that alright next letter we have and I'm gonna try and show you again you start with one line that goes like so and one line across the bottom I'm gonna give you a little what I call a little but just something that says I've got got something back there it's not too much but it's a little something alright and this letter is the equivalent right now the way we're looking at it would be the equivalent to our letter B to thicker so if you were if you were trying to figure out somebody asked me when it has a dot when it doesn't have a dot because it's very confusing you're gonna find as you as you thumb your way through some of these helps some of the people have taken the liberty to sometimes not put a dot sometimes put a dot and it becomes rather confusing to know is it B or is it V because the same letter can be our English letter B equivalent or V like Victor equivalent so let's do this letter one more time to show its form one stroke I know this it's going to be beautiful one stroke that goes all the way from this curve and then the bottom part right there so I use my pencil and we're doing one line I'm gonna make this available please do not think that this is a artwork it looks like a child did it mind you could be worse things I think there are some by the way there are some kings kids that are learning Hebrew and I'm getting the samplings that it's very interesting just interesting all right so let me go from the second word that's right on the bottom how we would pronounce this and it's very important I as I wrote Aleph underneath this one giving you the sound does not mean that this would be the way we would write it in English but this word bet if you were a French person it might it might sound better but they have a word like that beast or stupid all right bit or bait so it can be pronounced either way and if it is being pronounced as a V like Viktor vet you're really just saying like vet like Doc for animals vet with a little bit of an H sound to it vet so let's write out what this looks like for you because I want you to see the words as they're being spelt out will actually help you to learn the alphabet and pronounce and see for yourself what's going on here all right here I've spelt out this word for you here so you can see I want you to see how it'd be pronounced how to spell how we would write it and I'm gonna stop on my B and V to go to a second page I've produced for you which looks kind of freaky as well but I made it large enough so I could hold it up to show it to you so when the B appears when this form that we've just done appears with a dot in the middle it's be like boy so with the dot be like boy without the dot it's V but if you're trying to buy a grammar book it is not my problem but some have said well how come sometimes they have to bees or it says to two times most of the grammar books will assume I said this to you last week that you have some foundation they're not treating this as you're just starting out and you don't know so you'll see one person over here that says alef-bet Veit gimel and some will not have it so what I did for the alphabet this evening is I only used one only used put one letter here because we've now learned that with the dot it's a bee and without the dot it's a V so I'm only counting it as one letter and indeed if you are a true grammarian you will only found it that it is counted as one letter not bit vet which is number three it's just two so Aleph one bit - all right you get the picture so I want to do this with you I want to be able to take the time because this is how simple it is with this alphabet with the letters that you need to know that change their sound and with the letters that are final form I know it's large but I we have a tablet problem here is it's not enough tablet or not enough hands so with these three pieces of paper you're at least able to identify all of the alphabet and if nothing else you would be able to take your piece of paper from Psalm 91 one for example and you could find the first because Hebrew is always reading this way we're starting with that little small yodh and you'd be able to look here and find where the yo'd is knowing how to pronounce it what value it has as a letter so here we have for example the first word of Psalm 91 and verse 1 we have yes you've there is no dot inside the form of this letter so it is vit and then some of you are gonna go look in the lexicon and go but they put a dot in it there's grammar rules we'll learn later but I'm just telling you right now with these pieces of paper just these few learning how to pronounce and look at and identify the letters and the vowel points let me just tell you one other thing because like I unloaded everything on you thinking my brain says I think after 26 or 27 languages I'm speed-dialing all right so I'm gonna simplify the vowels for you as well we're not gonna do them tonight though and I want to do them I want at least the alphabet to be clear sir but he says I got it we're not there's no we're in the twenty mile an hour zone here it's not the freeways okay so we can do the next letter I want it I want you to see how we would write it and how it is gonna look let's go to the big marker here stick one it's three letters on here only not doing too good all right so start at the top and you work your way down and I do this one stroke this way and actually do the other stroke backwards that's the way I do it now on my piece of paper I showed the arrow going the other way but I just I look at it and I think if you want to have an imagery you're looking at what I call this is a pair of shoes at the bottom think of that listen this this is the way I learned ethiop ik remember I used to make jokes when dr. Scott was doing the optic and I'd say the man are smoking a pipe and he's kicking the other guy in the butt but that's the way I actually began to identify some of these things by using these small helps and saying oh yeah there's the heel right there there's the shoe that's that's a gimen that's a G that's a gimen so let's write it again let's do it again same thing we have this line that goes down and just like that now interestingly enough this is another one of those letters that sometimes takes a dot and sometimes doesn't so we're gonna give a belly button to the first one and we're gonna write we're gonna write the spell this out for you so gimen and gmail your mem & Lomb it and I'm putting the points underneath alright and if we were going to write it in English I want you to think of this a word that should be really familiar to you and you know the gimlet-eyed lobster it has that sound to it except it's key men so it should be I'm writing this phonetically so don't say well this is the way it's spelled I would say key men now I want to make clear because if you go to a textbook they will be spelling they may be spelling these differently I'm spelling this like this for you so you can see if you were to pronounce it how it's going to be pronounced how it's gonna sound so as I described to you this first letter with the belly button the the bit the B versus the V these actually for G key Mel they both represent the good sound except this first one here with the belly button it represents the sound like great good and the one without represents the sound like a guest a gh sound has a lot of these or ghosts but a lot of these are you have to remember we're dealing with a foreign language so some of these sounds are not even common to us in our speech we have something akin to it but not quite if you are a student of modern Hebrew you will find that a lot of the letters that I'm describing with or without dots have become very ambiguous they're almost not concerned with the hard pronunciations anymore so what we are studying right now is Biblical Hebrew and if you're getting a textbook some of the text books will say classical Hebrew some will say Biblical Hebrew and somebody said can you recommend a book and I've tried to tell you this many times over no I wish there was a book I could recommend but no and the problem is I think I have every book known to man on the Hebrew language and the how to's and everyone may have some benefits over here but they've got so many downfalls assuming for example once you get into verbs there is an assumption that you will know automatically how to conjugate and translate what they've conjugated therefore there's no need to put it in English if you've ever bought one of those books they conjugate the verbs for you but they don't tell you okay translate what that means into English please so the idea is no I can't recommend there are plenty of great Hebrew scholars once you get the basics you're free to go navigate and search out those tools knowing you have tackled the worst part now I'm not going to get into severe there's all kinds of grammar laws just like we have grammar laws in English for the English language I'm not going to get into those we may touch on those for other reasons to make a point on something but the whole point is to get the basics down pat go through the alphabet show you how you would for example show you how to get numeric value because if you're reading a Hebrew codex for example like the wonderful copy I had of the aleppo codex or the Leningrad codex there it does not there are no English numbers although the Aleppo sheets and they have it typed on the top of the page for you but other sources will not so you'd have to know the numeric value of each letter to be able to find your text your chapter and verse so what we will touch all of those my earnest desire is that you'll get your own Hebrew book or you're going to make your own book with all the stuff I'm giving you of all the Hebrew from Psalm 91 and you'll pick that apart backwards and forwards look up the words and two things will happen you'll find that learning Hebrew is not as hard as it looks and the other thing is I think you're going to fall in love with God's Word even more when dr. Scott told me that I kind of went but I already love God's Word how can you love something more but you can't so and this is just another dimension another doorway to just wiggle your way in there and find wow there's there's a lot more depth here so we have three letters so far let's I'm gonna do the next one down below you say wow they're 22 of these we're gonna fit through the 22 yes because I really want you to see and then with this tool and with this handout I think this is a really good starting point so we have Aleph Beth wait Kim L gimel they are pronounced the same way next letter dalet now this as I said we have one line that goes across and one line that goes down and I'm gonna try and give you just a little bit of an edge right there so you can see that this is indeed a sharp crisp line why because this letter will be confused sometimes with another letter that is curved and I've exaggerated my arse for you so that you can see it's an R I just didn't offer you right here it looks like a D when you read it in the textbooks it will look like this just a little bit of a curve so you'll have to really look for the corner right here that nice crisp angle that tells you that's a D all right so let's do it again we've got one line that goes straight and the other line slightly underneath going down this letter dalet and we're gonna write it out for you again so they da da lead lammott solid all right so put the vowel points for you I know it's a thick pen and how I would write this phonetically for you to pronounce this think of it almost sounds like if you were from another southern instead of saying darling it has that Fame but you're putting a T at the end dial it darling like darling but it actually has a letter at the end so I'm writing these out that will not appear like that in a textbook this is for you need to repeat that several time so I say well you're so that's the way you write it no that's the way I want you to pronounce it next letter this one is the million-dollar trickster he will trick you every time so this letter is called hey hey how you doing that's fine all right one line one line go down and now you must leave a space right here so why why or why let's do this another color so this space must occur for this letter to remain hey I wasn't talking to you all right let's do it again so we have one line and I'm doing double because of this very difficult marker to navigate one line and then we go straight down in fact if you were looking you'd see that a lot of a lot of the letters have very simple shapes to them so this one straight across and down and then directly beneath but not attached to the other side I have this line you'll leave that space it's necessary because there's another letter in the alphabet that looks exactly like this one but there's no space and if you don't leave that space and you're trying to write the word for example yawa and you don't write you don't leave a space you're going to be saying something that even just to pronounce yeah it would it just not gonna work so I did that one time by the way dr. Scott asked me to go write something on the board and I think I did it all in front of you too I close and he said ah you forgot to leave that little space open that little space makes the difference so remember that little space and if you want to help I always have helps reach one of these letters if it's something difficult this particular one as you're writing it you need to remember it's the name is hey hey Lex hey stop right there don't finish the letter all right are you going to be in trouble alright so hay is written out like this simply looks like that in Hebrew and sounds should sound exactly like hey hey or hey so depending on the emphasis but you get the idea I need to get a new page so let's get a new page we want to save this one all right new page Wow all right that's impressive actually that actually did it right that's what I meant was impressive all right so far we've done five of the letters here comes number six I'm going to help you to remember this letter I I know you're never going to forget this one so this one is volved and I want you to think of of a golf you know golf stick upside down iron it's got a little bit of a iron shape to it upside down if you stand the golf stick the wrong way right and it's just a simple really just a little slant and then you're heading downward and remember I drew those lines let's try and make some nice lines here make them in a different color all right I'm gonna be beautiful straight lines see what I told you whew wow those are nice straight lines but if you were really using straight lines at home maybe some of you took too much communion already I'm not quite sure all right so what we have here is just one line that starts down and it's just one line this single letter is extremely important because in the Hebrew it is used so much for primarily for conjunctions the conjunction and you've heard me say for dr. Scott say the five conjunction it's used it's it's a very unique tool but I'm gonna help you to remember this particular number I mean this particular letter it is letter number six and sometimes it is pronounced Wow or Wow or valve but I'm going to help you to remember this being the sixth letter of the Hebrew alphabet somebody asked me and you're all gonna go oh boy but somebody asked me about the mark of the beast about 666 and I said do you know listen I have my own theories and I tell you when there are theories and ideas and I don't I don't say this is doctrine or this is Bible I say this is theory it's an idea I find it interesting that the numerical value of the Hebrew letter valve is 6 and if you have evolved that's www it's find it very interesting it's a it's a great way to help you remember now I'm sure you're never gonna forget the value its number and the letter because it really does usually translate as as a W so if you all have the German pronunciation you may pronounce it differently but I'm calling it a valve that was a little bit of everything in there all right so just simply put and I think we've we can just safe to say put the letters here it looks just like that pretty simple right all right now the next letter is a little bit more taxing it is probably one of my least favorite ones to write because sometimes when I when I do this I think it either looks like a dead mushroom or it looks like something that just shouldn't be but it is so I'm gonna try and fill this in the blanks here you make one kind of slightly curved line and then a straight line right in the middle looks a little crazy let's do that again so we start at the top it's like having a little hat a little sombrero or something not quite and then a line down the middle and this letter is called Zion not to be confused with Zion Zion although if you were trying to spell Zion it would be this would be the first letter of that word so we have simply for Zion I'll spell it out for you this is also going to help you to see how the alphabet works together we have Zion yo and the long form because it's a final letter of the end syan and let's get pencil over here so we had one stroke going this way and one stroke going this way and you can see that the stroke is right there down the middle of the Hat so that's what that looks like and I think I'm gonna stay with this thinner it's not that thin alright next letter you're gonna like this one this is the one where you all get to clear your throat a little bit all right one line and right at the top of that one line we're making a door it's the door looks like a door we'll give you a little bit of a ledge right there so one line down one line straight across it's perfectly straight and I want you to I cannot stress this enough this side of the letter the left side of the door is straight not curved now I want you to see the difference between hey hey look like this hey my pens not working hey look like this with that open space right there Okin space pet boy that's just a tough letter to see you have a cold that's not but if you have to clear your throat it's not it's kind of that that's what happens that's how that letter is made hit so let's do that again one line down and one line that completes the doorway and let's spell this for you too let's write this out so we have hit yard and it's he at the end hits and if we were writing this this is a challenge we do not in the English language we do not possess anything that sounds like this the closest thing to this is the sound of character but that's still 2 K sounding ch still sounds like a K so this particular if you want to get technical here it it's something we don't possess so think of the ending of Bach Bach like Bach heads it's almost a roll at the back of your throat you almost have to make something move back there like you're clearing your throat it's attractive ladies I know but your husband's will say I'm learning Hebrew don't bother me alright one stroke this way and you can do three do it in three parts so up across and down next letter in the alphabet I said this is going to be slow but I think it'll be worthwhile this is an interesting one this is what I call the baker's hat now this is going to be ugly whew this is a real beauty what I just did here is just beautiful alright so this letter is called tit and it is the value of a tea I should go back and say let me go back to the beginning of this line here value of V or Y value of z like zebra heads we don't have an equivalent so it's just the way I said it value of this letter 10th tee tee like Thomas and depending on where it is and where it's placed will determine its sound because I will write if you are in fact a French person it may sound a little bit like head hit but phonetically let me put the H in here for you tit alright so the way you want to do this is and I'm it's one of my ugly Isleta zai have to tell you it's not this is not pretty but I I start with making one line in like I'm making a baker's hat and both it looks like a heart kind of that one looks more like a heart then I just add that line right there and that says I'm a tea kind of actually it looks like a bent nail looks like somebody messed with that nail and it's not looking too good but you can see the form of this so you've got it just curves around in fact probably we probably need to do this one more time because this should actually be curved in slightly more at the bottom you should have a little bit more concave let's just take that up oh the beauty of erasers all right so it should just like slightly be more concave there we go that kind of looks more like looks me now all right so we'll write this out for you it's my baker's hat and you can begin to see we're gonna be writing all the letters of the alphabet as we spell out the letters as well I think we've we're getting along pretty good here let me erase this we'll go to the next letter number 10 we're almost halfway there almost all right next letter and this one is the tricky one that's why I said make yourself a lined ruled sheet of paper because if I was using the space given to me on a on a lined ruled you would need to see where this seam is very straight lines here that I'm doing for you you would want to see where this falls on the line it should be in the line by the way nice oops we just erased the line all right so pretend that the line is still there and your Yoda should not be more than half of the rest of the letters it usually is even slightly shorter but it should not be more than that if it's bigger than that it's not a Yoda and let's write out its it should just sound like that yo-yo right it's a street a street name a street collar yo yeah don't forget the D alright that's what it looks like yo okay let's do it again one more time so it just can curve a little bit sometimes you'll see me write the Yoda and it just looks like this I'll just do it like that either one of these is perfectly fine and as you read through the Hebrew certainly what I've written out for you out of Psalm 91 you will see the form of it there's no other letter that looks like that you can't miss it alright next this is a tricky letter because it looks like something real simple and it is here we go so it looks like a C backwards so we would just be doing what I just did right here if you were writing with a normal pen and not this thing it would just be like you're riding a backwards C just one one stroke going around now here's the million dollar idea I did this for you so you could see this letter looks like this this letter is called cuff or it sounds like cough actually I like cost but it's cuff it is like this in the initial like if it begins a word or if it's in the middle of a word but if it ends if it appears at the end of a ward if it's the last letter in the end of a word it will appear like this it'll look like a D with a long body so this is where you you learn about the letters and they're different with what is called initial middle and final Hebrew has this Arabic has this there are other Semitic languages such as make rather Syriac that have final form letters so this is not just unique to Hebrew a lot of the Semitic languages if you're gonna look up languages they will show the alphabet it will be the initial letter middle or medial anywhere in the in the in the word will appear and look like this and the final form will look like this so it just like a D but with a long leg that goes far beyond the ruled lines of your paper and it's okay this is one of the times where it's okay to go beyond the lines just thought I'd tell you that alright so you can see it's really just like a d1 line this way and the other line that comes down goes far below the line and it doesn't have to go super far but you can see it has to be long enough so we know it is indeed not a d and dips down probably at least another half value so if you see the value of one line to line on rule paper it would be at least the value of another line if not a little bit more and I'm just showing this to exaggerate for you so you can know so this now this word this letter rather is one of those letters that also gets a bellybutton boy now you take three different things with this letter yes so but it's it it doesn't have as many problems well we'll do the bellybutton letters let's just get through the alphabet will do all the bellybutton letters on one page coming up how's that so let's write out what this looks like it's pretty simple this is a new letter we haven't seen yet we will see it soon and I'm gonna write up what it should be pronounced as cuff but it sounds like if you were from New England you said I got a cough just think of it that way God cough okay all right next letter number 12 only 10 more to go next letter this is actually my favorite letter to write I like it because I get to go outside the lines above this one is called lemon so I always think when I write this it's kind of like a 7 and a 1 on the top let's do that again that was kind of fun one line go in and then go down you've got to have that curve I'm not really sure what that looks like but it's a 7 with a 1 on top that's exactly what it is all right for the benefit of those who want to see that motion it's one line and then that line that curves in this letter la mid la MIT and we'll write it out for you you have the vowel points I'm including them as well and you're going to start to recognize some of the letters as we go one more actually there's a lot more than one more but it sounds good to say that all right let's go to a new page your page hopefully these will all be saved this is fantastic artwork here alright next letter this is called mem one line and one line and one line and one line I'm giving you the simple form my fancy picture over here looks a little bit prettier let's do that again it's kind of a slow the curved line just slightly curved yeah well we'll give it a curve not that much curve all right one line that goes slightly curved then we have another line that's slightly curved and then we have this straight line but I want you to notice something I'm leaving this open remember I just finished talking about initial middle and final when this letter mem occurs at the beginning of the word in the middle of a word it remains open but if it occurs at the end of a word it will be closed so you can always recognize if this is at the end of a word there's no opening you'll know that's the final form now this is a very crucial letter to recognize because it looks a little bit in block printing it looks a little bit like another letter it looks a little bit like as it's closed form it looks a little bit like another letter we're gonna see in a minute stomach you say well how did that how does that look the same well when you're reading it in the Hebrew Bible they make it look the same it's pretty close so you're looking for the curve here and this hard angle at the bottom right which tells you I'm an M I'm not an S don't confuse me all right so men is this is wonderful it's a demonstration mem this is the this is how you spell mem and it shows you the first one is open and the second one is closed mm to demonstration on all in itself and if we were writing it I hate to say this because a lot of these for some reason have the capacity to be French words men but I don't want to give you the e cuz I don't want it to be French so men M e m M you see mm there all right here's the next goodie for you I know you're gonna like this the next one is a noon and I have fun with this letter too so noon looks like this just kind of small not too much room there remember back there we saw at the beginning this is I'm going to write this noon noon I don't want you to say noon it's not noon it's noon at the beginning we did a letter we did the letter G I don't want you to confuse G gimen with noon why because G is wearing a shoe all right noon is not so be careful that you don't confuse the letters now this particular letter and let's spell this out for you have n noon I have evolved with a belly button and something really interesting happens in this let in this letter and word we have the initial n as I just placed it here but then it also this word also provides you the final form of n so n noon in its initial or middle if it appears at the beginning of a word like this it'll look like that and if appears at the end of a word it'll look like this with that long leg so let's draw let's go to it see if I can make some rather Wow that was not a straight line all right so final form of noon will look like this the leg comes down just feel free to now these are not nice pretty lines here but you understand small and then straight there's nothing curved about I want to make sure that you don't think mine is curved it's straight okay now what's interesting about this in its long form I want to point these out because these are things that can be confusing is you might confuse this final form with evolve you said just circled evolve in the middle of noon but you know how you will know them apart the valve always finishes on the line it never goes below okay so if you were writing out if you were writing this out here I'm gonna I'm gonna do something crazy I'm gonna all erase it but evolve would be this just like that we'd have just that you would know the difference between evolve and anoon in its final form because the bob stops right here above the line versus the final form of the end that descends below hopefully that's clear and I've just broken the lines all right okay here we go more number 15 this is what I said don't confuse this letter mem with this letter stomach now this one I always say this is a guy who's got a bad comb-over all right just think of it that way really you see look I could put a face in there alright guys got a bad comb-over alright so you're making this kind of circle look and then you the line goes right over he's got a bad comb-over I'm telling you so we have some ik and men and here's that remember I said we just did cough the final cuff so you're getting to see the letters at work as we do the alphabet together semuc it should sound semuc don't think sandwich but think stomach it's almost the beginning of the sound that you would say when you say huh as in sandwich but it's stomach I hope this is clear because I I always try and find things that sound like something but I'm giving you what it should sound like right here stomach number 16 this is a fun one i yen kind of looks like why sometimes what I'll do is I'll put a little tail right there and if I really want to get fancy I'll put some knobs over there just to make sure that everybody knows it kind of looks like me saying I'm here right I'm here but it's not a y and it's not a vowel so a lot of the one of the biggest mistakes that will probably encounter when we do translation is people think well you just said that this this letter is called I n like Ryan I in but it does not have a vowel value these are all the consonants so please keep that in mind let's do the letter again just to make sure so we have one line like that and the second one comes down and whoops curves just a little bit like I said sometimes if you want to get fancy you could put some little dots there that says I'm not a why I've arrived okay and we'll also write it up for you so we have here I in Y old and long noon final form okay next letter number 17 this is an interesting one you start with a little line and I probably need to draw some terribly crooked lines for you to show you where this must sit so forgive again I know these aren't the most beautiful straight lines you've ever seen all right here we go so let's do this let's do this again and we'll pretend that these are these red lines are equidistant and equal and straight all right just for the sake of imagination here so it's just like that I'm giving you the easiest way to make this letter just like that sometimes when I look at this letter I think of a Greek key some of those designs and it helps me to kind of see the form of the letter now you'll see on my piece of paper I've made it fancy I've given it a little Inlet and a little lip there because in some of the manuscripts that's exactly the way it will appear they'll put a little a little part here and they'll give a little squiggly there but you can recognize this letter and this is another one of those letters that is only counted as one we said this letter here this is number 17 on our as we go count down to 22 this letter with or without a dot will change it's value so I'm telling you now we'll go to another page where we'll do these letters but I did it for you here we've already seen the B with a dot B without a dot v the G the game and with the dot good Kim in without gah a D with a dot as in dog D without has a DHI we don't even have anything to compare it to so I just want to leave it alone for right now when we encountered in a word will pronounce it together the cuff the one that you had the cough with the dot its value is king without Bob the letter we just did with the dot P pretty P without the value is F fun so with the dot boy this is a beautiful letter right here I just really damaged this poor letter is never going to be the same you need to give it some cosmetic help here alright so with the dot it has the value of a P and without the dot it has the value of F and you're going to find if you are studying semitic languages again this is very common Hebrew Arabic Syriac they share the same problem there are letters that they have to bring and import an F for example in this language would not be would not be natural but the P is and and sometimes you'll see people say this what is being used as an F will also be translated pH so it has a different value than just the plain old P for pretty but actually the name of this particular letter is quite simple it's called it just pay let's put a dot there hey hey all right I don't know that you needed that but wait there's more this letter also changes in its final form in its final form so we have with the dot P without the dot F value now final form if it appears at the end of a word it will look like this and we're gonna draw what appears to be at first a cough except we're going to do something to it we're gonna add we're gonna add this tail right here so you can see basically what happens in the final form it maintains this curve and let's get rid of this I did this to be fancy I don't want to confuse you it maintains its curve but continues down straight line below the line and you'll know whether or not it has a dot or not it may be it may or may not have a dot that will depend on on other factors but at least now you have the final form of this letter all right I think we're ready for more okay next letter this one's kind of cool Soddy I'm gonna do it the way it's supposed to be not the way I normally do it because I've developed my own bad habits over the years Soddy so normally when I do this I'm going to try and do it without thinking I do this I don't not even sure what that looks like does that look kind of close no it's going the wrong way so that's the way I normally write it because I'm that's the way I would write it but the right way to write it is this way you're making a slight line you go straight down and now you're going to curve backwards and one arm comes back up there's your toddy and I know you know this letter I'm positive that you know it look I just did it again see except I'm not gonna correct that I'm going to erase it because I can all right it's very liberating to be able to use this eraser I'm telling you all right here we go so now it's proper so Soddy and the value of this letter its phonetic value its sound we don't really have too much like this in the English language but the closest would be pronouncing TS or T Z so even me carry a little bit of a dental not labios sound so I know you all want to do that don't do it so this particular letter also has a final form to it that's let's move this down a little bit and create just a little bit of space let's see what the final form looks like the final form looks like this one line that starts and we're gonna go all the way down about as long as that one I probably exaggerated it a little bit and up so you can see this is the final form and let's keep it so they're all the final forms are all about the same length this is the final form so you know when this appears at the end of a word sadi appearing at the end of a word will have a long leg it's not curved curved straight final form almost there I think we can make it through the rest of the alphabet I think we can do this I have a feeling all right number 19 almost there this is one I certainly like to write because it looks like a P but it's not it's called cuff not COFF and not half alright it's an interesting thing first let's get let's get an idea here we did this shape that does look like a P but I want you to note two things it's not closed here and it's not closed here now in some manuscripts and in some sources you will find they will either attach it or at the tummy of the cuff or they will attach it at the top and leave it open I am showing you the letter I just did at the top is the textbook way of writing for Biblical Hebrew that's what it should look like don't be surprised if the letters look slightly different from from text to text that's the other thing that I always have to remind myself and others when studying Biblical Hebrew much like the English language you know we showed you that beautiful Wickliffe Bible and the writing inside was kind of hard for us to read it was almost barely legible for us to discern what was being said we know that the not only did the language progress but the stylized form of letters has progressed as well so what you're going to encounter depending on what manuscript you're looking at you may encounter manuscripts that have a Sephardic influence or Spanish influence a Yemen ish or Yemenite influence that will change the ligature that will change the style of the writing greatly I have I don't have it here tonight but I have a wonderful book that shows the history and development of the Hebrew language from a Phoenician appearance and block letter to some of this very great and wonderful script that it's very difficult to read so depending on your manuscript and the other gift is once you learn the basics what we're doing tonight you will be able to go in and discern in any of these manuscripts even if they look slightly different because the basic body of the letter does not change so this particular letter right here we're gonna write it like this cough I'd like to maybe put a little bit of an H there but it's not cough a it's cough like if you were from Germany or Sweden you were trying to cool you were trying to say the English word for cough but you were saying oh you open your mouth in a different way sounds slightly like loose loaf of bread loaf cool same sound all right so let's write this out for you here and we have cuff valve and this final form being an F sound so I just showed you the final form of this letter that we just encountered all right let's do it one more time one down one line down and one around it does look like a P but it is not number 20 there's a sense of relief that we're gonna have behind this number 20 adesh now I'm exaggerating this for your benefit because I want you to distinguish between this letter a Heche which is the equivalent of our our English letter R versus the D we first encountered that had that straight flat angle but when you get to read some of the books you will find that this does not have as pretty a curve as I just did and in fact will look more like this very hard to distinguish so what you're looking for in this particular letter is you're looking for this curve right here that will tell you I'm an R I'm not a deep okay so wonderful thing about this word is just the way the letter is sounds - it's just the way it is fish fish yo we have this fabulous s here fish Shh so it would sound fresh if you really want to be fancy it would maybe carry a Y sound fish and yes I think I have cleared my throat enough this evening all right now we're gonna do the wonderful thing that one of one of the folks that was traveling with me brought up this particular thing so I can explain it to you which are the two S's we're almost at the end of the alphabet these two S's are these wonderful letters called sin and shin now I say that because they both look the same and we have one that has the dot here and we have one that has the dot here and they both look the same so they're counted as one letter number 21 the dots distinguish if it is as in sin or as in shin and I've said this before sin comes first and then you get your shins kicked just remember that if you can't remember which one is which the one that comes in the first order is thin and then think of what happens after your sin get your shins kicked all right I just that's I don't know it's just something to try and help you remember the difference or you could say once you sin you fall and you hurt your shins how's that all right so but somebody asked me a couple of days ago they were reading a Hebrew grammar book and said while the order of the letters was different they had shin first and sin second and all I have to tell you is that if you're reading the alphabet the people do get confused it's a dot they do get confused but I'm telling you the gold standard textbooks including if you were using a lexicon lexicon somewhere around here well let's got the brown bag of drugs sitting right here how convenient we would go to the end of the book almost and here we have at the end of the book almost almost to the end of the book the - here we go so if you're not sure you can always consult this book because it's but it may have one or two mistakes and it may be but you can just pretend I didn't say that here you have sin I love that sin is in the lexicon just remember that all right so they have in here I want you to see this they have sin as shin and sin as shin as sin and sin as shin the dots are reversed I'm telling you you'll get any lexicon the dots may be reversed but the the the letters may be reversed but the dots are what always throw people off so sin first shin and then I mean just do the final letter and I'll spell out these for you as well the final letter is tough and I want you to see it has a straight line like a D that angle but different then the hay and different then the hit this letter has a leg that's just kind of bent out of shape so I want you to remember that because these three letters sometimes people will get confused and say well what about what's happening here so this is its final form let me go to a new page I want to draw what will happen with this letter get you a pen pencil rather three lines all right so you I want I want you to see where the curve occurs it's about half way through if you were using an equally equidistant line ruled paper halfway through and then curve to the bottom so straight line across and down this letter sometimes takes a dot a belly button if you will all right so let's spell out the word for you and I'm gonna write it the way you would say it tough so you're not saying it's not tall but cows and here we go T Tov a and love and in fact the way it's spelled here would take a dot sometimes this letter as I said takes a dot so if you were writing this out not the best shape I just did for you the dot would go right in the middle let's do that again here we go kind of fun writing these letters they're strange letters that maybe a little bit too curvy a little bit too crazy on the curves but you get the idea this being number 22 I just wrote them out differently so we've gone through the alphabet this at least gives you the basic basics of the alphabet there are no vowels I have to repeat that none not a nyet okay so now that we've covered the alphabet now that we've covered the letters that take the dots these dots these dots change the sound of these particular six letters the dot inside these letters is called a de guiche Lenny imagine if that was your name all right you need to make it look like a real L there we go so there is a rule for this and simply it is these six letters which they call the get fat so begin the fat that's how you remember that these are the letters if you're reading in and there are plenty of good grammar books they'll always refer to the baguette key fat letters they're speaking of these six letters that take a dot to change their sound or are missing a dot and have a different sound so we covered these letters already I just want to make sure that you recognize and see them and I would also say as a sidebar because I don't think we pronounce the last one dot T like truck without dot sounds like as in thin but it's not quite as breathy so again one should keep in mind that I don't know that anybody really knows how to truly pronunciate Hebrew correctly when I say that I say that with all due respect seeing that this language went through some pretty brutal transitions specifically by the time the people were carried away in captivity and I reference Nehemiah eight eight the other night where it says they had to have someone to read the scroll that was found and the question of whether or not they were capable of understanding needed someone to interpret what was being read so that they could understand it why because the language that was once spoken ceased to be and ceased to be as they knew it that liturgical language if you will in the language that was read in the temple anything that we could classify as a gold standard of what was ceased to be and Aramaic and the Targum replace some of that along with the fact that there were other influences into the Hebrew language at the time of captivity a whole generation or so grows up seventy years and people that don't know the language and new languages basically on the horizon not like the language they formerly knew imagine picture yourself in 1066 with the Normans the invasion where the French language then took over English and a lot of a lot of linguistic challenges to people who could not speak the French that became the lingua franca for the English people and then many words were left behind by the French that we just basically took on and borrowed and made our own I don't know why but that is and so it is with many other words into the English language so picture that as what happened to some of the Hebrew concepts from the time of captivity and much like the progressive progression of the English language that has Old English Middle English late or modern English to modern present period Hebrew has several different periods of evolution as well so you can't just clump it all together and say well that this is Hebrew there's there is evolution within this language so that's for those of you that want to go study that it's not my subject tonight so we've done the alphabet we've talked about those six letters that are important because they change sounds called or known as the baguette Kafar letters and I will just reiterate they're called that because the the cuff so you put them all together and it says to get cuff at it's not a word but that's how you remember them and lastly what I've already covered on this which are the final forms we already covered it as we wrote the alphabet the cough taking the long leg the mem open in initial and middle positions but at the final it's closed the end the noon the same thing final position long we have the same thing here for pay or fake curved and in the final position long and the same thing with Saudi Saudi curved final position long so that gives you the basic basic of the alphabet now thank goodness for one of the people that was travelling with me a few days ago because this is what was brought to my attention a lot of books that are out there and there are some great books as I said I would can't recommend one because where one is good then it's not good and where there's a strength somewhere else but it was brought to my attention that some of the alphabet either is not written the same way or is not pronounced the same way so what I've given you at least is the beginning of what I call standardized based on what I'm using you will find and I will tell you this if you're looking you will find mistakes and there is always going to be mistakes remember I showed you mistake in my Bible on spelling where it said we're supposed supposed to say the son of nun I think and it said noon there's always going to be mistakes when you're dealing with ink and humans so just keep that in mind don't get dogmatic you have the foundation of the alphabet how to write it how to pronounce it so next lesson we will tackle the vowels and I think making it step by step like this will allow everybody to follow along for those of you who have already learned the alphabet review [Music] [Music]

Channel: Pastor Melissa Scott, Ph.D.

Views: 4,975

Rating: 4.9024391 out of 5

Keywords: the hebrew alphabet, hebrew lesson, basics of hebrew, learn how, how to, write and pronounce each letter, learn hebrew with Pastor Melissa Scott phd, psalm 91, ancient biblical language, biblical hebrew, language study hebrew, learning Hebrew alphabet, writing hebrew alphabet, learning hebrew via psalm 91, understanding biblical hebrew, understand the bible, pastor melissa scott, pastor melissa scott exposed, faith center, faith center glendale, faith center church

Id: U8mPz1Dy6BQ

Length: 87min 21sec (5241 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 17 2019