Rabbi Binyamin Yuhanan - Biblical Hebrew Part 2

good evening today we are continuing to learn the hebrew grammar last week we had our first class we had introduction into the hebrew language and we explained why in hebrew we only have consonants and not vowels and why we don't have punctuation um we also explained why we don't have capital letters only the regular block letters no capital no difference between capital and and small letters and last week we started learning the alphabet and practicing with it and we learned the first six letters and two vowels we learned letters from aleph until vav alev bedvid hey vav and we also learned the two vowels kamats and pata and in this class we are going to pronounce both of them as a i mentioned that in reality there is a difference between the kamats and pata that's for more advanced um students now we are on page four of this book this is the first hebrew primer and this is class number two we are in chapter one page four the next five letters and one new vowel again for those that just joined we are on page four of the book the next five letters sein head ted you'd cuff and half and one new vowel the e sound so look on page four z is in zebra that stands for zion and the letter hat we spoke about last time that uh there are three letters that sound similar and that is last week we covered the letter hey and that is just breath hey the next letter is uh hat and that has a sound the guttural sound high it's it's uh stronger than hey but it's softer than half the next let is tet which has the sound of t as in tall tall you'd as in yes you'd is the smallest letter is it's just a little um comma and it's uh above the line and the last letter it can be written in two different ways either with a dot inside the dot is called dagesh and that would be kaf or khaf that's the strongest out of the three letters is the strongest it's like the russian hey we said is like the english h hey and the hat is something in between and again it's guttural head now if it's difficult for you in the meantime you can pronounce as the same and in fact most ashkenazi jews pronounce the same way but sephardim generally differentiate between hat and half but letter hey everyone pronounces differently now um let's see the notes on the bottom of the page uh note one tells you that letter half and cuff are written the same and in sephiroth there is no difference between them as we said the dots and lines below and next to the letter are of oral tradition origin and therefore the sephir torah only has the letter so you see the letter written the same way but it's pronounced differently either half without the dagesh without the dot or cuff with the dot number two letters hat and half are both for for beginners they're both pronounced uh the same with a rasping sound as in the german pronunciation of the word bach okay three the new vowel which is written as a dot under a letter is pronounced as e and it can be written two ways either just a simple dot under the letter or a dot followed by a you'd but that used would not be pronounced the addition of you does not change the sound of the vowel there is no difference in the pronunciation between for example be with a huge or b without a u both sound like the english word b now we go to uh page five look alike letters this is very useful because some letters do look similar and you have to pay attention to the differences for example and hey i'm going from left to right like in english for now and hey they look similar except that the hay has a break in its leg but the pronunciation is different hey and the meaning of the word of course is going to be different different now next set of uh letters is cuff as opposed to bet they both look similar except that the bed has a tail on the bottom and similarly without the dagesh vet or half look similar again pay attention to the tail on the bed and the last set of letters you'd sein and vav if you'd by mistake is written a little bit longer it may look like a valve and in some cases it may look like a zion and vav and zion themselves look very similar they're the same height and similar shape except that uh vav has a head that is that is tilted only one way and zion has a head that goes both ways right and left it looks more like a hat on top of a stick so vav zein and jude be careful practice those letters check up words in many examples in this book hebrew letter and vowel combinations are shown with english words that have the same sound to help you to check yourself whether you're reading correctly or not this will make it easier for you to check your pronunciation of new hebrew letters and vowels as you learn them for example and now we're going to learn from right to left like hebrew is supposed to be read bug bug odd odd bob now second line heat key aha eat that's the third line eat yat easy so they all sound like english words but they're written with hebrew letters practice them as i read you can read along or on your own time and now let's do the exercises every chapter ends with exercises again we're on page five at the bottom of the page with exercises it may seem that we have included too many but we urge you to do them all in learning a language it is as in learning to drive a car practice is the most important part it's better to say an extra time and know it well than to say not enough times and then in the future your learning of hebrew is going to fail because you don't have a good foundation just like in elementary school the first grade is the most important because you learn the foundations how to pronounce the the olive bed now i'm in uh line one and i'm reading from right to left first just the sound to recognize the letters vav has the sound it's the same as vet the same sound v so i'm starting again line one from right to left now the same thing with other letters line two just the sound that the letter makes and now line three additional letters when i say hey you might not hear it but i'm just basically breathing out now we go to line four okay okay now line five the first light is silent so we don't pronounce it again aleph is silent and line seven um i may have skipped a line but let's therefore let's do line six again the silent letter alef get now in the instructions it also asks you to circle the letters in each line that are the same as the letters in the box in order to recognize the letters and differentiate them from similar letters you can do that on your own and now let us go to page six and here we have combinations of letters with vowels this is exercise number two page six i'm on line one z z z note the difference between vav and zion va it's a vet but has the same sound as vav va [Music] as we explained last uh class if a letter at the end of the word does not have any vowels you pronounce just the the sound of the letter as if there is a schwa later we're going to learn about schwa just two dots which means just the sound of the letter itself zag now we go to line two he now this is a funny combination whenever we have a letter head or a letter hey instead of pronouncing the letter uh and then and it's at the end of the word we pronounce the vowel first and then the letter for example if there would be a hat with a patah with a line underneath we would pronounce it as ah instead of ha so whereas here in english you might say ha but the proper pronunciation would be in modern he in a biblical hebrew you would usually not find that but rather you would find the hey at the end of the word with a dot in it and then you would pronounce it with uh ah and you would stress it more okay now let's go to line three t ta t there is no letter sound so we just pronounce the vowel v ha v d ye is a hebrew word that means a hand the hand is yad now interestingly we say that a hebrew word has within its letters its meaning so they say that within the word yad you have a definition of what yad is and that is by taking the numerical value jude is 10 and dalit is 4 so to guess together is 14 and 14 is the number of parts of your fingers you have 1 two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen so the yard a hand has 14 different uh steps in it that we use that's what makes the hand functional okay um now let's go to line five ki ka ka ba ba now we go to line six da and again if it's at the end of the word it would be ah line seven again this is exercise two page six line seven v d d the last word does not have a meaning there is a word that has a similar um root but that's a more advanced word okay again line eight va ha [Music] in hebrew means embarrassment okay now line nine e e in hebrew means if b be in hebrew means myself or in me now next word third word god whenever hey appears at the end of the word it is silent b the fourth word is and finally line 10 cut for those that want to know means a hook means a brother and keys okay now we finished exercise two exercise three is a writing exercise every person should ideally do it on their own using either block or script style write each of the letters that you have learned so far we have we learned um 11 letters so write each letter 10 times first without vowels and then with various vowels as you write say the sounds out loud and remember that hebrew is written from right to left okay now go to exercise 4 together read the following combinations of letters allowed and we start with line one but again remember we read from right to left line 2 hit be the last word in line three in hebrew means a fisher man now we go to line 4 third word in uh line five zev means so like this okay now we'll go to line six z and last line seven god god is the name of a person god one of the twelve tribes beat hatta okay now we go to page seven and uh here again it's a written exercise every person should do it on their own using either block or script style write out exercise 4 and say the sounds as you write so it's a review of exercise 4 but here you write every letter yourself now exercise 6 is a very um useful exercise gives you a very interesting practice you take an english word and you try to write it with hebrew letters we can uh go through them and i'll just tell you what letters uh it would have but you would have to write them on your own so number one heave you would be spelled hey jude vet heave beat beat that jude tet hey ted and again the vowels um depending on the sound you would have to add on your own word number four viva vav ud vav hey cut yes someone is saying that instead of writing a huge you can just write a vowel underneath just a dot that's true just to make it easier i'm pronouncing the extra you'd rather half with a dot inside cut cuff and tet ease aleph with a dot underneath or ud next to it and zion seven dot dalid tet with a patah underneath the line heat hey ted or hey you ted oz got depending how you pronounce it or bach you'll either spell it with a bet half or bet you'd tet eat aleph with a dot underneath and tet or aleph you'd tend t that you'd with a dot on the knee on the ted uh [Music] with a a line under the first tent bead now the following exercise 7 gives us real hebrew words and this is a reading exercise so we'll do it together again we're on page seven exercise seven line one reading from right to left avi means my father as means then ah means brother ahad means one of again father ahav means he loved aviv means spring avad he lost second line ava means he wanted of a father name of a country or a town ahaz he held you don't have to remember this i'm just saying for those that are familiar or want to write it down with a pencil quickly but it's not necessary right now we're just practicing reading ahaz a he embarrassed line three buzz embarrassment it also has a different name meaning next baazad not sure what it means bud means cloth specifically linen cloth means to make up a story false story alone different spelling of vowels not sure if it changes the meaning not sure of the meaning now line four bazza bazzas similar words bazaar means he embarrassed bazaz means he took spoils of war b he was not sure gov back he collected god dad he cut line five god name of a person goddee my person and notice that in the word gizab both gimel and zion have a dot now uh we mentioned already that some letters don't change their pronunciation but rather you read it with more emphasis on on these letters as if there are doubled um and as in english if you have two m's or two p's you pronounce it with more emphasis uh however yemenite jews do pronounce gimel with a dagesh or without the gish differently one they pronounce as ge and one they pronounce as ji but we will pronounce ge the same thing giza now line six means a sinew like a tendon or a ligament means line seven david that's the name of david hamelech king david david second word is the same pronunciation with the yoon david dava line eight have the difference between two is that in one word is without the the the dot and the second word it has so you would emphasize vav more hava [Music] line 13 [Music] and again you notice you has a dot inside so you would emphasize it more haiya yad line 15. cover we finished exercise seven on page seven and with that we finished chapter one mazel tov and now we continue to chapter two and we have the last half of the alphabet we did already 11 letters and now we have the next six letters that we will learn plus two more vowels and the letters are lamid noon and the two um vowels that we're going to learn one is segol the three dots on their letter and one is two dots under the letter they are both pronounced pronounced similarly as e um but ashkenazim add a you'd to the ending of the sere the two dots so they would say there's a and the regular and the three that they will pronounce as e but for sephardim we pronounce both of them the same e okay now let's go through the letters lamin as in look and as i mentioned before laminate can either be soft like russian or hard like in the land in a word look as opposed to a russian word legoti okay now as in moon noon iron is silent but when it has a vowel you pronounce the vowel with a guttural input ah instead of ah for aleph you say ah okay at the beginning stages you if it's hard for you you don't have to do it but ideally especially for prayer one should pronounce iron properly and the last two letters are pay and fee as in park and fe as in food okay and the two vowels sere as in hey and it's segol as in bed and but again according to safari we pronounce both of them the same way so in this class also we will pronounce the safari way um now let's read the notes number one the letter iron like the letter aleph is silent pronounce the vowel following the iron but not the iron itself and again for sephardium we have a custom to pronounce i incorrectly with the guttural sound number two pay and fe are the same letter although pay is pronounced as p in people and fe is pronounced as f in food now three the new vowel sere with two dots onto the letter may be written in two ways as two dots under a consonant or as two dots under constant followed by a hud in both of these it's pronounced the same way fascinating we don't add the sound at the end there is no difference if in the pronunciation of hai and hey both sound like the english word hey again uh if this is foreign hey we would pronounce it as he and uh line four the new vowel segol the three dots is pronounced as a in a bed and is infrequently followed by a jew that is less common now we go to page nine and again we look at letters that are similar in their shape um going from left to right looks like half except that the two side lines are shorter half has longer side lines and noon has shorter sidelines next the middle set is very similar if the font in the book is uh not laser print then the the indent in the gimbal may look like a straight line and then you may confuse it with the noon so gimmel has a has an empty space in its leg and noon has a flat bottom noon and gimmel and mam and ted they look very similar but one is almost inverted version of the other mem has a split on the bottom and that has a split on top okay check up words again we have uh english words spelled in hebrew safety safety safety eight it less second line meal meal say bed and the third line may be peg okay now reading practice it may be difficult because now you have 16 letters to keep in your mind and that's why we have a lot of practice you can do it slowly i'm going to read it a little bit faster but try to follow along and later review it as well yes sure on the checkup words so for example uh we just learned that the the two dots should be pronounced as shape for at the end of the vowel and we don't so ashkenazim would read that first word as say safety but sephardium would read it as safety but other pronunciations are sephardi for example they would use a tough and not soft okay so i'm reading the exercises the safari way so you will not hear the difference between and a segol in the pronunciation of iron they also say say the same as aleph silent and as i mentioned for sephardim we pronounce it iron and similarly for half and hat this book says pronounced the same way and again for beginners if you follow the book is okay but for more advanced students sephardi pronounce [Music] and differently so there are some differences and again i am pointing out the differences uh in uh safari pronunciation okay so we are doing um exercise reading practice line one lel let all line three need line four 4. sacha a would pronounce this last word as a nay we pronounce it as an a line six pa pav line seven key yet tests i'm sorry tet bit set less less let i'm sorry line nine c c c all three for words are the same the fourth word med is piss tease line ten meet met means bold courageous and finally line 12 gel with this we finish line nine and now we have the last five letters the last five letters on page 10 listed below are the last five letters of the hebrew alphabet and two new vowels the letters are sadiq and the two vowels are or holla either dot on top or now someone is suggesting that we should split our class and leave it for next time and that is a good idea because it is getting overwhelming there is a lot of practice that needs to be done please review everything we've done and do the written exercises and review the reading exercises as well if you have any questions you may ask otherwise we will stop our class now you're welcome have a good night you