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Gaining reading fluency in Hebrew | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| chgurlsng Newbie United States Joined 4528 days ago 17 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, French, Spanish, Biblical Hebrew | Message 1 of 7 01 October 2013 at 11:43pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I've been studying Biblical Hebrew since April and am probably somewhere around A1-A2 level. I can read through the book of Jonah slowly and understand every word, but I can't really construct any decent sentences.
My goal now is to build an active vocabulary so that I can start speaking more. Currently, I solidly know about 300 words. I hate flash cards, and I don't think I'll stick with this if I start making them. The only thing I think will help me at this point is intensive reading, which brings me to my dilemma. I've been studying for 6 months, and while I feel like my comprehension has greatly improved, my reading is horrible. I understand much better when I'm listening. How can I get myself to start reading quickly? It takes me quite a long time to sound out just one sentence, and then I am concentrating on phonics so much that I have to read through again for comprehension, sometimes reading through the same sentence several times. For the past week, I've been listening to audio while reading in Hebrew, but then I find that rather than actually sounding out each word, I just bounce from one word to the next trying to keep up with the reader. I know a week isn't a long time, and I've probably only put in 30 minutes per day, so I'm trying not to get too frustrated with my progress. I'm willing to spend more time working on this to jump past this hurdle if it will help. Any suggestions as to where I should go from here? Maybe I should just force myself to sound everything out no matter how long it takes? I can't do it for long or frustration kicks in and I zone out. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Cabaire Senior Member Germany Joined 5544 days ago 725 posts - 1352 votes  | Message 2 of 7 02 October 2013 at 12:16am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I do not understand your situation:
You say "and understand every word" and at the same time "I solidly know about 300 words"?!? Can you parse the verbs and nouns? To what are you listening? A recording of the Book of Jonah? You learn Biblical Hebrew and you want "start speaking more". What? Biblical Hebrew, a dead language? Or modern Ivrit? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4652 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 3 of 7 02 October 2013 at 12:33am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Just read and don't wtf every time you see something half unintelligible. It's Hebrew,
the rules for spelling are a little complicated. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| chgurlsng Newbie United States Joined 4528 days ago 17 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, French, Spanish, Biblical Hebrew | Message 4 of 7 02 October 2013 at 3:27am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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LOL, I realized after I posted this that I put it in the wrong forum. Very slow internet here so I didn't recognize that I had clicked on the wrong icon.
I know it sounds contradictory, but that is where my professor said I am. My active vocabulary is at about a 300 word level. I can probably understand way more than 300 words, but I can probably only use 300 (this is also not counting verb forms, because my teacher would only count "to be" as one verb, for instance). I can conjugate verbs. We did not work on parsing but on verb drills (I am, he is, she is, they are, we all are, etc) and then using those verb forms in sentences. So far, I have gone through book one and most of book two of Living Biblical Hebrew which is Biblical Hebrew spoken with a Modern Hebrew accent. At the intensive institute that I attended, we spoke it as if it were a living language using total physical response a lot. One of the benefits of doing this is that the language feels more inside of me. When I hear the word "water" in Hebrew, I immediately see flowing water rather than thinking of the English word for water (which took a LONG time for me to accomplish in German). Well, I guess I want to be able to make full sentences. Maybe not necessarily speak these sentences, I'm not sure. I may speak to the rare person who has had a similar experience to mine... But I also noticed while in Israel that I was starting to understand and respond to Modern Hebrew. I will probably eventually study Modern Hebrew once I have a solid foundation. I have many Israeli friends who say Modern Hebrew will be cake after this because Biblical Hebrew is like Shakespeare. Anyway, that's a long clarification. I hope it helps. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| sans-serif Tetraglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4504 days ago 298 posts - 470 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, German, Swedish Studies: Danish | Message 5 of 7 02 October 2013 at 8:31am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Subvocalizing has its uses, but it's not a good idea if you're mostly interested in expanding your vocabulary, as it slows you down tremendously. Try to read more visually, if you know how. If you do not...
...this is how I eased myself into it with Swedish and German. I'm not sure what kind of a challenge factor the Hebrew alphabet brings along, but if it's not too bad, I'd just keep trying. You definitely don't want to be sounding out the words; that's not the point. What you're trying to do is to follow the audio recording while familiarizing yourself with the visual representations of the words you hear. It's more listening than reading, I'd say. All that being said, normal reading is a different skill that you will have develop separately. Working with audio can make the early stages of learning to read a lot smoother, in my experience, but I'm not sure whether it's the faster or the more efficient way.
I'm sure this would work too, but I'd still advise against consciously sounding everything out. Edited by sans-serif on 02 October 2013 at 8:42am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| chgurlsng Newbie United States Joined 4528 days ago 17 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, French, Spanish, Biblical Hebrew | Message 6 of 7 02 October 2013 at 3:13pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Excellent thoughts. Thank you! For right now, I think I will try to do 30 minutes per day of listening with Hebrew script. If I don't see improvement after doing it for a longer period of time, then I'll try to evaluate things again. Sometimes the reader speeds up a bit and my eyes don't quite follow the words. I guess that's ok, since I"m really trying to gain comprehension and not actual word-for-word reading right now. Perhaps I should at least try to read one tiny chunk per day (or every once in a while) totally on my own just to see where I'm at? I forgot to mention that I'm currently reading through Genesis since I've already finished Jonah. The vocabulary is much more advanced, but I am understanding a lot. If I listen to a chapter without looking at the English beforehand, I can usually figure out what it's about the first go around. Sometimes it takes me a few tries. I don't necessarily understand every single word, but enough to get the gist. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Haelsa Triglot Newbie Israel Joined 3936 days ago 3 posts - 5 votes Speaks: Biblical Hebrew, Modern Hebrew*, English Studies: German, Arabic (Levantine) | Message 7 of 7 27 December 2013 at 1:01am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Are you only interested in the Bible proper? In Israel it is very common to start teaching
the Bible to children using what we call "the Bible stories", that is, stories from the Bible in a somewhat simplified and adapted version. It helps children to ease themselves into the vocabulary. If that might interest you I could look for websites offering free audio and text (it's easier when looking in Hebrew). Maybe you could start with a simplified version, and then, when you are familiar with some of the vocabulary, try the original version? Edit - only now realised this is a really old thread. Sorry... Edited by Haelsa on 27 December 2013 at 1:23am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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