Lesson 2 | Vocab
Our Approach to Vocabulary
Memorizing vocabulary is something of great importance to living in the text. So what is our approach to vocabulary?
There are those among us who love to memorize vocabulary lists. Our approach, however, assumes that most people do not. So although we do give vocabulary lists in each vocabulary lesson, we are also providing you with two key features to increase your enjoyment of this process.
1. Making connections
We include related words in the same lessons.
Hebrew has this glorious feature of using 3-letter roots which allow for intuitive connections between groups of words sharing the same root. We will take advantage of this feature to multiply our vocabulary by learning word groups instead of only individual words.
For example, in an English-language course, we would include the noun “preacher” and the verb “preach” in the same lesson, instead of on different lists. This will help you learn more words more quickly.
2. Learning words through song
With the exception of Lesson 1 where the א-ב song was employed, each lesson will include a Hebrew worship song based on a passage from the תנ״ך. For grammar lessons, we will use these songs to point out the grammatical dynamics just learned. For vocab lessons, we will use these Hebrew worship songs to reinforce vocabulary.
Thus, before we introduce a Hebrew song, you will learn all the words in that song that are used 100 times or more in the תנ״ך.
After all, you cannot worship if you do not know what you are saying! Also, by approaching things this way, you will learn both the lemmas (dictionary forms) of Hebrew words and also see them in action—something that will become even more important when we get to verbs in Hebrew II. Put another way, learning words through songs will build in you morphological reference points.
So get excited! By learning only about 20 words in each vocab lesson of Hebrew I-III, you will master about 75% of all the words that appear in the תנ״ך.