This post is the fruit of the collective wisdom of the participants of the Spring and Summer Marathon from Language Heroes - the guys and I are exchanging really good, favorite, active and proven resources (and not just some selection of website addresses).
So - hand-picked for you by Language Heroes (Babylon!), thanks to my beloved Babylonians;))
Online courses
- The best Russian site for learning Hebrew is http://crazylink.ru/languages/hebrew-online.html Just go in and enjoy.
- Teach Me Hebrew http://www.teachmehebrew.com/ A good site for beginners who know at least some English. Basic grammar and simple dialogues are given. All this with translation into English is written pronunciation in Latin + voice acting of each phrase. In addition, here you will find simple (and very beautiful) songs with translation.
- The LanguageHeroes project - there you can find a lot of useful materials and in 12 weeks of intensive classes you can take your Hebrew to a whole new level on your own.
- Ulpan La-Inyan http://ulpan.com/yddh/ Super blog in English about interesting and relevant words in Hebrew (with voiceover).
- Learn Hebrew from Dream Team http://www.hebrew-language.com/ This is a library of resources for learning Hebrew, where everything is divided into categories. Here you will find children's songs, trailers for films in Hebrew, and texts for reading. What not!
- https://www.coursera.org/course/hebrewpoetry1 – course “Modern Hebrew Poetry” from Coursera
- Our friends - online Hebrew school IVRIKA http://ivrika.ru Hebrew for beginners from scratch, free videos, articles and courses + online lessons.
Good textbooks
8. “Sheat Ivrit (Sheat Hebrew)” Edna Louden, Liora Weinbach
9. “Easy Hebrew for you” Eliezer Tirkel
10. “Living Hebrew” Shoshana Blum, Chaim Rabin
Grammar
20. Course on Memrise - Hebrew. The first 2000 words. http://www.memrise.com/course/426282/2000/
Listen
38.Several audiobooks in the public domain http://www.loyalbooks.com/language/Hebrew
39. The Little Prince in Hebrew http://www.odaha.com/antoine-de-saint-exupery/maly-princ/ntv-n-dh-snt-kzvpry-hnsyk-hqtn
40. Children's books in Hebrew. With pictures :)
The Hebrew textbook (self-instruction manual), presented here, has existed on the Internet since the late 90s of the last century. During this time, hundreds of thousands of people used it. Letters of gratitude from our students and positive feedback on blogs and forums gave us strength and desire to continue and expand the project.
The textbook is intended for those who want to learn Hebrew from the very beginning and at the same time experience difficulties associated with the lack of a Hebrew-speaking environment and the inability to easily enroll in the Hebrew courses closest to home. Targeting those who learn the language “from scratch”, and also without a teacher, is the main feature of the proposed course.
True, if you really want to speak Hebrew at a high level, then at a certain stage you will have to start reading adapted (and then not adapted) literature, listening to the radio (there are Israeli radio stations broadcasting via the Internet), etc.
And yet, this tutorial is enough to start reading and navigate within 2000 words - and this is quite a lot, considering that in Israel a course in which only 1000 words are studied is considered sufficient to “get out into the world” and start working.
I would like to emphasize one important thing here. Our Hebrew tutorial is not an official manual, but a live Internet project. Thanks to numerous letters from our students, comments from well-wishers, as well as a “review” of ill-wishers-competitors that was accidentally discovered on the Internet one day (it’s a pity that it was too short), over the many years of our project’s existence, we have corrected a number of typos and errors in it. This process continues.
We cannot be mistaken in the main thing - in our method, in the convenient diagrams provided to you that give you an UNDERSTANDING of Hebrew grammar, the meaning of roots, binyans, etc. We believe in our methodology, especially seeing how successful our project is among Internet users.
We wish you easy and fun studying!
If you want to live in Israel or are going to visit it, then you cannot do without knowledge of Hebrew at least at the everyday level. And even more so if you like to feel like an independent person and are also planning to get a job in Israel. You understand that you need to learn Hebrew, but what is the best way to do this, where to start? Which method should I choose? Isn't it too late to start?
Many people believe that it is possible to learn a foreign language only in childhood or young age, since only at this age does memory work well. This is a completely erroneous opinion. According to our many years of experience, people who begin to learn Hebrew at 20, 40, 60, and even 70 years old successfully learn and reach high levels. So age does not matter, the most important thing is your desire to learn and willingness to engage.
Our main advice for those who are planning to move to Israel is to start learning Hebrew as early as possible before leaving. This is the most valuable luggage you can take with you. Many people hope that they will learn Hebrew in ulpan upon arrival, but later most people are disappointed in this idea. Firstly, the State of Israel only funds the development of one of the six levels of Hebrew, and this is completely insufficient for life in the country. And secondly, the teaching system and intensity of Hebrew learning in ulpans is not suitable for everyone. Therefore, having mastered Hebrew at least at the Aleph level before arriving in Israel, you will already have a language base and will be able to continue studying at a higher level.
How to choose the appropriate way to learn Hebrew? Let's look at the main ways of learning Hebrew, their advantages and disadvantages.
Learn Hebrew on your own.
There are many positives in this method: you can study at any convenient time and in any convenient way. There are many free resources on the Internet for learning Hebrew on your own: textbooks, audio lessons, films. To help self-taught people, we also constantly publish useful materials and simulators on various topics. You study at a time convenient for you and at a pace convenient for you. And of course, self-study is free and will save you significant amounts of money. But is this method of learning so ideal? Perhaps, not everything is so simple, because if you study on your own, there will be no one to correct your mistakes, and then it can be very difficult to relearn. And it often turns out to be difficult to motivate yourself to exercise regularly and fruitfully. Therefore, only if you are a truly purposeful person and are used to coping with all difficulties yourself will your studies be successful. However, we are often lazy and cannot always force ourselves to study. The modern rhythm of life sometimes absorbs us so much that classes become irregular, and it’s simply difficult to competently organize the learning process yourself. Agree that not each of us can motivate ourselves to study fruitfully without a mentor who would constantly guide and control the process. Well, some people still need the notorious spirit of competition, which can be felt in a group, while others need a competent teacher who will direct the learning process in the right direction. And yet, the main problem of self-taught people is that it is difficult to develop spoken language - after all, without company it is difficult to pronounce everything and use it in practice. And without active application, knowledge remains passive for many. This is precisely why it can be scary to start speaking. And this is logical - a person feels confident in what he is used to doing, and if he does not speak or participate in a conversation in Hebrew during his studies, then the well-known “language barrier” arises.
Learn Hebrew with a teacher individually
Many people consider this method of learning Hebrew to be one of the most effective. Here are its advantages: the teacher will take into account only your interests and pay full attention to you, you will be able to study at a pace convenient for you.
However, such pleasure is not the cheapest if you want to learn from an experienced and good teacher. And finding a truly qualified specialist is not so easy. Not all Hebrew teachers speak the language at a sufficiently high level and have good methodological training. You can meet a teacher who works according to outdated methods and spends a lot of time in class doing exercises from the textbook, which you can do yourself at home so as not to waste valuable class time on this. It happens that even in individual lessons, students speak very little Hebrew, but mostly read texts and exercises. As a result, the effectiveness of such activities can be very low, despite the high cost.
Learn Hebrewin a group on courses.
There are many courses and ulpans around the world. And until recently, this was perhaps the most popular way to learn Hebrew. There are the following advantages to studying on courses: classes follow a developed program, and you usually know in advance how long the course lasts. organize the educational process and discipline the student much better than individual lessons and, especially, self-study. While studying in a group, you will communicate a lot, and this will definitely help you to talk, as well as develop the skill of understanding Hebrew by ear. Of course, we are talking about small groups of 4-8 people. With this composition, the teacher manages to devote a lot of time to each student. By the way, competition in a group turns out to be very useful for many students; it pushes them to achieve better results and forces them to try harder. And what’s very nice is that a lesson in a Hebrew group, even from a good one, is cheaper than individual lessons.
However, this method of learning Hebrew has its drawbacks: in large cities, travel time can be significant. Traveling in public transport won't be much fun either. As a result, it may happen that you have to study tired, hungry and overwhelmed, which of course does not contribute to the effective absorption of the material.
Learn Hebrewonline in a group
Modern technologies make it possible to learn Hebrew in an even more convenient way - in an online group, without leaving home in a familiar and comfortable environment. This is a colossal saving of time that we usually spend on the road. But it can be directed in a much more useful direction - to watch it or have time to do homework. In an online lesson (if you study on a modern platform), all the teacher’s explanations are accompanied by diagrams and images that help to better visualize what is being studied. The online lesson is held in the same way as a regular face-to-face lesson, and it is possible to view video excerpts and listen to audio recordings. A professional online platform allows the teacher to pair students for dialogues in separate rooms and enter these rooms to help when necessary. Another big advantage is that if you go on a business trip or vacation, you can view the recorded classes and work through everything yourself to keep up with the group. Thus, online Hebrew classes have even more options and convenience for successful learning. Everyone who has tried it talks about the extraordinary feeling of delight from the fact that after the lesson you don’t need to go anywhere - we just close the window with the online class on the computer and instantly “come home”.
So, let's summarize:
Learning Hebrew on your own is the most labor-intensive and slow process, requiring great willpower. Individual lessons with a teacher are very effective, but the cost of lessons from a good and experienced specialist is quite high.
The most effective and at the same time quite economical way is, and learning Hebrew in online courses allows you to save travel time and take advantage of modern Internet technologies.
Dear friends! We are starting to publish Hebrew lessons for those who, for one reason or another, cannot attend the ICC ulpan.
Lesson #1 – Differences and similarities between Hebrew and Russian
Hebrew is written from right to left. The covers of books and magazines are on the reverse side for us. Page numbering goes from right to left. The exception is numbers and figures - they are written and read in the way that is familiar to us.
The Hebrew alphabet has 22 letters and the Russian alphabet has 33. This is one of the reasons why Hebrew is an easier language to learn.
Hebrew does not have capital letters at the beginning of sentences or at the beginning of proper names. For this reason, it is a little harder to read the text at first - it is more difficult for the eye to catch on to the place where a new sentence begins, but you quickly get used to it.
The Hebrew alphabet has virtually no vowels. Vowel sounds are expressed by special symbols: dots and dashes, which are called vowels or “nekudot”.
In neither written nor printed font, letters are connected to each other. In rare cases, due to the speed of writing, they do touch.
Five letters have double graphics, i.e. at the beginning and in the middle of a word they are written in the same way, and at the end of the word they change their appearance.
Each letter in Hebrew stands for a specific number. An entire science is based on this - gematria (discovering the secret meaning of all words).
For many centuries, Hebrew was a dead language. This is an isolated case when, after so many years, a language is revived and begins to actively develop. For this reason, most modern words that did not exist two thousand years ago were invented or borrowed from other languages.
In Hebrew, dull and hissing sounds predominate, so some may think that the Russian language sounds more sonorous, but Hebrew, like any Mediterranean language, can sound very soft.
Two different letters of the Hebrew alphabet can represent the same sound.
Hebrew lacks the sounds [ы], [ш]. But there are several unfamiliar to our ears:
ה (similar to the Ukrainian letter "g" or Latin "h")
ע (glottal sound "a")
ח (glottal “x”, rustling sound coming from the larynx)
In modern Israeli society, it is common to burr. However, scientists claim that “R” in Hebrew should sound exactly the same as the Russian “R”
The letters “א”, “ה”, “ח”, and “ע” convey a guttural sound unusual for Russian. In order to pronounce it correctly, it is necessary to activate the larynx, to raise its tone, since for Russian speakers it is more relaxed.
In Hebrew, the sound “l” is softer than in Russian, but not entirely hard. The correct “l” is something between “le” and “le”, “la” and “la”, “lo” and “le”, “lyu” and “lu”.
One of the rules of Hebrew grammar is that a noun always comes before an adjective. In Israel they say: “the house is beautiful”, “the person is smart”, “the car is fast”, etc.
In every language, stress (meaning emphasis) sets the tone for the entire sentence. In Russian, such stress falls on the first part of the sentences, and in Hebrew on the last.
The arrangement of words in sentences differs from the Russian language, for example in Hebrew they say: “He is happy because he has a family”, “His sons wanted to congratulate him”, “They were born in the year 1985”
In Hebrew, the literary and spoken language is like the earth and the sky. For example, if someone on the street tries to communicate in high Hebrew, others will think that he is a writer, a poet, or an alien.
Some prepositions in Hebrew are written together with the words that follow them.
In the Russian language, most words are formed using suffixes and prefixes. In the Hebrew language, the main method of word formation is the change of vowels within the root.
In Hebrew there are word-formation models unusual for the Russian language:
1. Mishkali (for nouns and adjectives)
2. Binyans (for verbs)
Knowing them, you can easily conjugate verbs and determine the semantic connotation of a word by its root.
In Hebrew there is such a thing as “smichut” (a conjugate combination of two nouns). For example, the word "cafe" (beit-kafe) in Hebrew consists of two nouns: "house" (bayt) and "coffee" (cafe).
Unlike many languages, Hebrew has pronominal suffixes. For example, with the help of such a suffix, the phrase “my house” can be said in one single word.
Unlike Russian, in Hebrew the same adjective or verb, even in the plural, has both feminine and masculine forms. For example: the adjective “beautiful” - yafot (f.r.), yafim - (m.r.). The verb “we speak” is madabrim (m.r.), medabrot (f.r.).
There is no respectful form of “you” in Hebrew, so even complete strangers address each other as “you” from the first meeting.
All pronouns except “I” and “we” are gender related. For example, “you” in the masculine gender will be different from “you” in the feminine. When addressing a female group (“they/you”), feminine pronouns are used, but if there is at least one man among them, then the masculine gender is used when addressing.
A masculine word in Russian can be a feminine word in Hebrew, and vice versa.
In the Russian language there are only two numerals that take masculine or feminine gender: one/one, two/two. In Hebrew, all numbers can be either masculine or feminine. The gender of a numeral depends on the gender of the noun with which it is used.
There is no neuter gender in Hebrew. Russian neuter words in Hebrew can be feminine or masculine.
When writing this article, materials were used from the site http://speak-hebrew.ru/
