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דווקא - TAC 2015 - Team Rare

 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log Post Reply
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Magdalene
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4796 days ago

119 posts - 220 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Mandarin, German, Modern Hebrew, French

 
 Message 1 of 12
27 December 2014 at 9:38am | IP Logged 
In addition to the other languages in my profile, I'll be studying Modern Hebrew for TAC 2015. It won't be my main focus, but I hope to get the basics down this year. The title of my log, דווקא davka, means, among other things, unexpectedly and refers to my surprise at my interest in Modern Hebrew. If you'd told me even a year ago I'd someday want to study this language, I wouldn't have believed you.

Davka has a lot of possible translations in English. Here's a Haaretz article about its different meanings.

So, why Modern Hebrew? It fits a bunch of criteria I was looking for in a language.

- It doesn't use the Latin alphabet.
- It's not Indo-European (though some scholars maintain that Modern Hebrew is actually a relexified Yiddish).
- The pronunciation is fairly easy for native English speakers.
- It has fewer speakers and is less widely-studied than any of my other target languages.
- It has cool features. The binyanim are different from anything I've studied in other languages, and I'm excited to tackle them.
- It sounds beautiful. [x], [ʁ]/[ʀ], and [ts] are some of my favorite phonemes. Hebrew has them in abundance.
- I'm interested contemporary Hebrew literature, especially poetry.
- Israel has a vibrant LGBT culture. This was the deciding factor; LGBT history and media are among my greatest interests.

I'm currently a rank beginner. I know the Hebrew alphabet from having studied Yiddish years ago, though I'm unfamiliar with the points, and I know about a dozen words. I hope to be A2 by the end of the year.

!יאללה

Edited by Magdalene on 06 January 2015 at 6:39pm

2 persons have voted this message useful



Magdalene
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4796 days ago

119 posts - 220 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Mandarin, German, Modern Hebrew, French

 
 Message 2 of 12
27 December 2014 at 9:39am | IP Logged 
Hebrew Resources

Do It in Hebrew. Typing site with dictionary.

Hebrew Language @ University of Texas at Austin. Videos, audio clips, and tutorials.

Ivrit at Berkeley. Videos with transcripts.

Learn Hebrew Verbs. Conjugation site for common verbs.

Teach Me Hebrew. Short lessons with audio.

Milestones
1 Jan. Finished French Duolingo tree.
18 Feb. First conversation in Russian.

Edited by Magdalene on 20 February 2015 at 7:56pm

1 person has voted this message useful



Magdalene
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4796 days ago

119 posts - 220 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Mandarin, German, Modern Hebrew, French

 
 Message 3 of 12
27 December 2014 at 9:39am | IP Logged 
Team Threads

TAC 2015 - Rare Languages Team Thread

TAC 2014 - Rare Languages Team Thread. I wasn't on this team last year but I'll be perusing the log.

Team Members

The rare languages are bolded. "p. #" indicates where 2015 starts in the log.

Anya, p. 1: Sanskrit (A0/A1 to A2/B1), Portuguese, Turkish, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian, French
druckfehler, p. 6: Persian (A1 to A1+), Korean
Expugnator, p. 1: Georgian (B1 to B1+), English, Estonian, French, German, Mandarin, Norwegian, Russian
geoffw, p. 30: Modern Hebrew (A2 to B1), Dutch, French, Italian, Russian
IBEP, p. 1: Kannada (C1 to C2), French, Mandarin, Spanish
Lampang, p. 1: Sanskrit (A0 to A2), Thai (A2/B1 to B2/B2+)
Luso, p. 19: Arabic (B1 to B2), Sanskrit (A1 to A2), Italian, Turkish
redflag, p. 4: Indonesian (A1 to B1), French
Serpent, p. 27: Dutch (A2 to B1), Indonesian (A2 to B1), Karelian (A1 to A2), Yiddish, many others
Sooniye, p. 1: Albanian (A1 to A2), Croatian, Danish, Hindi, Hungarian, Japanese, Spanish, Turkish
Sprachprofi, p. 1: Modern Hebrew (A0 to B1), Dutch, Italian, many more
Stelle, p. 1: Tagalog (A1 to B1), Spanish
Teango, p. 1: Hawaiian (A1 to B1+/B2), Irish, Russian
tristano, p. 1: Dutch (A1 to B1), English, French, Russian, Spanish
YnEoS, p. 6: Hindi (A1 to B1), Malay (A0 to A1), Telugu (A0 to A1), Thai (A1 to A2), many more
Zirael, p. 16: Arabic (A1+ to A2)

Edited by Magdalene on 20 February 2015 at 7:49pm

1 person has voted this message useful



geoffw
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4448 days ago

1134 posts - 1865 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish
Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian

 
 Message 4 of 12
28 December 2014 at 3:20am | IP Logged 
Good luck with your Hebrew studies this year!
1 person has voted this message useful



tarvos
Super Polyglot
Winner TAC 2012
Senior Member
China
likeapolyglot.wordpr
Joined 4467 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 5 of 12
28 December 2014 at 5:37pm | IP Logged 
Hebrew is one of the coolest languages you can learn.

The binyanim are very elegant. A surprise that I once had: when I was dating a Jewish
girl, they would sometimes have other Israeli guests over and speak Hebrew (or Romanian
in some cases) between them. I didn't speak much Hebrew at all, but one of them actually
explained to me that Hebrew word formation is very logical and fun.

The root system is a very clever invention (I don't speak Arabic well enough to compare)
and you will have fun with it mostly because it's such an intuitive system that they use.
1 person has voted this message useful



druckfehler
Triglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 4628 days ago

1181 posts - 1912 votes 
Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean
Studies: Persian

 
 Message 6 of 12
04 January 2015 at 7:21pm | IP Logged 
Good luck with Hebrew! I'm excited to read about your journey. I also like the sound of the language and word formation is pretty neat, but it took me a long time to kind of get it. I think I'll post some stuff concerning Hebrew in the group log now and then. I posted a bit of reading practice just now :)


1 person has voted this message useful



Magdalene
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4796 days ago

119 posts - 220 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Mandarin, German, Modern Hebrew, French

 
 Message 7 of 12
06 January 2015 at 6:38pm | IP Logged 
@geoffw: Thank you! Same to you.

@tarvos: It is so cool. The binyanim seem intimidating, but I'm looking forward to that and the root system most.

@druckfehler: Thank you! The reading practice was great. I'm looking forward to reading how you get on with Persian.

The year is off to a slow start for me. The main course I'll be using, Living Language Ultimate Hebrew, is in the mail, and I've done the first two lessons of Pimsleur. I can tell already I'll need to work on my R (either [ʁ] or [ʀ], whichever is easier for me).

Most of my time with Hebrew was spent in discussion with an eight-year-old I occasionally babysit. He goes to a Jewish school and learned some Hebrew there, mostly concrete nouns. We spent an hour sharing all the words we know. He spells much better than I do, and he made fun of my cursive handwriting (which is pretty wonky; I have a few bad habits I need to fix), but it was all in good fun and I'm motivated to get in at least a few hours of noun study before I see him next.
1 person has voted this message useful



Magdalene
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4796 days ago

119 posts - 220 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Mandarin, German, Modern Hebrew, French

 
 Message 8 of 12
27 January 2015 at 6:45pm | IP Logged 
I've almost finished Pimsleur Modern Hebrew 1A. Around the fourth or fifth lesson I started having to do each track twice, which was also the case when I did Russian 1A. With Turkish 1A, I only repeated a couple of the later lessons because I'd learned a lot of the basic vocabulary before I started Pimsleur; I only had to drill the more complicated sentences into my head. With Russian and now Hebrew, I'm hearing these words for the first time in the course. With even a little extra study on the side I'd have gotten through these lessons sans repeats.

For at least two lessons I kept saying HaShem (literally "the Name"; it's a word used to refer to God) instead of hamesh (the feminine form of the number five). I think I got that out of my system; hopefully now I won't make that mistake in front of actual people...

My Living Language course arrived, but I've only flipped through the textbooks. I think my schedule's pretty much settled, so I'll be able to put more time into Hebrew. But my focus this year is on Mandarin; I want to add it to "speaks" before the end of the year, which should be doable. I have three (!!) in-person conversation partners, one from Taiwan and two from Mainland China, and they're keeping me on my toes.


1 person has voted this message useful



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