jpazzz Groupie United States Joined 4994 days ago 54 posts - 76 votes Studies: Russian
| Message 1 of 12 18 July 2014 at 6:46am | IP Logged |
Hello all. I hope someone out there can help me with a suggestion or two. I find in my dotage that when attempting to learn a language that has a non-latin script that I do best to begin with a Michel Thomas Method course. I'd like to begin the study of modern Hebrew; but, of course, there is no Michel Thomas or Michel Thomas Method Hebrew. Is there any other course that utilizes a similar method where an instructor guides a student through the basics of Modern Hebrew...not necessarily with the other two students?
I should appreciate any suggestions.
Cheers,
John
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Speakeasy Senior Member Canada Joined 4001 days ago 507 posts - 1098 votes Studies: German
| Message 2 of 12 18 July 2014 at 1:54pm | IP Logged |
Hello jpazzz,
You could try PIMSLEUR HEBREW (Phases 1-3). The Pimsleur Method is "not the same" as the Michel Thomas Method, but it is about "as close as you're going to get". Pimsleur Hebrew.
Generally speaking, the Pimsleur Method is very highly regarded. However, in my opinion, it has two weakness: (1) the lack of any meaningful written material, and (2) the lack of a direct discussion of grammar. Accordingly, the user would be well-advised to acquire a bilingual dictionary, a book of verbs, and a grammar to accompany the Pimsleur courses. These books will be helpful irrespective of the language method that you choose. If you complete the full programme (Phases I, II, III), you will acquire a "good feel" for the basics of the language; however, you will not have been exposed to much vocabulary. While I suspect that the FSI Basic Hebrew is somewhat dated, it might be a good place to start, following Pimsleur Hebrew. Otherwise, providing that your French is good enough, you might consider working with Assimil L'Hébreu.
Edited by Speakeasy on 18 July 2014 at 6:44pm
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jpazzz Groupie United States Joined 4994 days ago 54 posts - 76 votes Studies: Russian
| Message 3 of 12 18 July 2014 at 10:16pm | IP Logged |
Hello Speakeeasy. Thank you for taking the time to post your thoughtful reply. Much appreciated! I used Pimsleur German about a decade ago, and found that the method was useful but rather boring, and, as you mentioned, the lack of more than the most exiguous of printed materials is also not helpful.
Thanks you very much.
Cheers,
John
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Speakeasy Senior Member Canada Joined 4001 days ago 507 posts - 1098 votes Studies: German
| Message 4 of 12 18 July 2014 at 11:59pm | IP Logged |
Hello John,
Thank you for your reply.
Pimsleur Hebrew
As to the Pimsleur Method, the good news is that at least you know what you're in for; that is, it can be dull at times, it can seem excrutiatingly long, but it's effective for acquiring a basic feel for a given language. Frankly, I think that you should consider yourself "lucky" that they offer a full three-phase programme!
Linguaphone Hebrew
From memory, it seems to me that Linguaphone used to offer a Hebrew course. From my experience with other Linguaphone courses, I would say that their approach is not necessarily suitable for absolute beginners. I attribute this to the fact that (1) in terms of difficulty, the lessons progress quite rapidly, and (2) the explanations of grammar can be unnecessarily difficult; that is, they are correct in what they say, but the manner it which they say it can be confusing. In my opinion, Assimil suffers from the same problem. Nonetheless, the Linguaphone courses do provide material that seems to approach the Intermediate Level in the later lessons. I typed "Linguaphone Hebrew" into my Browser and came up with 312,000 results. While Linguaphone U.K and U.S.A. no longer offer this course, one website, Out Of Print Linguaphone Courses , offers the course as E-Book and MP3 downloads. I know absolutely nothing of this company and I am totally uninformed as to their legal right to sell the out-of-print courses. Caveat emptor! A quick check of Amazon.com yielded a couple of copies of the course. Take a quick look at the "Customer Review" and then follow the link "See all my reviews". You seem to have a kindred spirit with similar linguistic tastes (I assume that, in your dotage, Krav Maga is becoming less of a priority).
Learn Hebrew - Google/Youtube Searches
My goodness, there's a lot of material out there ... a lot which, I suspect, is pretty useless.
Good luck!
PS: Dotage you say? Hah, you don't know the half of it!
Edited by Speakeasy on 19 July 2014 at 12:43am
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jpazzz Groupie United States Joined 4994 days ago 54 posts - 76 votes Studies: Russian
| Message 5 of 12 19 July 2014 at 3:14am | IP Logged |
Hello Speakeasy,
Yes, I agree with what you've said regarding both Pimsleur and Linguaphone. I do have the Linguaphone Hebrew course. I've seen the downloaded version, and the Hebrew script is very difficult to make out, so when I found a hard copy of the course I bought it.
I do have a fair amount of Modern Hebrew learning materials, but, as I said, I'd prefer a Michel Thomas Method course, but that's not going to happen.
Thanks again for the adivce.
Cheers,
John
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ericblair Senior Member United States Joined 4660 days ago 480 posts - 700 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French
| Message 6 of 12 20 July 2014 at 7:55am | IP Logged |
It seems that the Out of Print site is just the same available courses from uz-
translations.
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Speakeasy Senior Member Canada Joined 4001 days ago 507 posts - 1098 votes Studies: German
| Message 7 of 12 20 July 2014 at 2:15pm | IP Logged |
Merde! ... With my apologies, of course.
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Speakeasy Senior Member Canada Joined 4001 days ago 507 posts - 1098 votes Studies: German
| Message 8 of 12 24 October 2014 at 4:59pm | IP Logged |
Under a separate discussion thread "Indiana University Arabic Archive", DARISTANI provided LINKS to the University of Michigan Resource Center. If you click on the View Products link at the bottom of the page, you will be directed to a list of the audio recordings that they offer. You will notice that they offer 26 CDs for the study of Elementary Hebrew which, I recall, you were interested in last July. They also list the title of the textbook for which this recordings were compiled. While I appreciate that this is not the Michel Thomas Method per your initial post, I suspect that there is an awful lot of material in these courses. If I were interested in studying Hebrew, I'd look into this further. Kind regards, Speakeasy.
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