Lesson 1 | Letters
[1] The ABCs
This, your first grammar lesson, starts right at the very beginning: the ABCs!
The good news and the bad other good news
Learning the Hebrew alphabet has some major upsides that should greatly encourage you as we begin. Unlike English, Hebrew has no capital or lowercase letters. There are also only 22 letters to learn and no reason to study handwriting.
But there are also some hard parts. (But who says hard isn’t also good?!)
1. Hebrew is written right-to-left.
This is not so big a deal for reading, but does get tricky when you try to type Hebrew words within an English sentence.
2. A modern pronunciation of Hebrew (as we will employ) contains two guttural sounds foreign to English.
Just make sure everyone is out of spitting range when first learning these!
3. Vowels are a challenge.
While occasionally the Hebrew letters indicate vowel sounds, most of the time vowel sounds are indicated by small dots and lines placed around the letters. This is not necessarily harder, but it certainly is different from what English speakers are familiar with.
We will learn the vowels in Lesson 3.
4. Five of the Hebrew letters contain two forms.
The second form is used when one of these letters appears at the end of the word.
5. Seven Hebrew letters can be pronounced in more than one way.
The good news is that the vowels will indicate the proper way to pronounce them.
It starts with humility
One of the tough parts about learning a language is that you can feel like a small child at first as you learn the alphabet and really basic words. This is hard for us because we are proud. But thanks be to God that “those who walk in pride he is able to humble” (Dan 4:37).
The first test of your humility will be singing along to the A-B-C song. Or rather, since we are learning Hebrew, singing along to the א-ב (aleph-bet). So shut the door if you must, because to learn the letters you are going to have to be more than just a passive listener. I suggest echoing the singer the first few times, then trying to sing with her. Finally, note that there are four “dual-sound” letters. We’ll talk more about those later in the lesson.
Hebrew Alphabet chartpdfA very helpful Hebrew letters chart. It will be useful to print out and have on hand as you begin reading.
(Notice that the alphabet begins at the top right, not the top left—you know, the whole Hebrew right-to-left thing!)