The Hebrew Café Textbook: Cook & Holmstedt s Biblical Hebrew: A Student Grammar (2009) Found here online: http://individual.utoronto.ca/holmstedt/textbook.html
The Hebrew Café
The only vocabulary word in this lesson is the four-letter name of God, also called the Tetragrammaton (from Greek τετραγράμματον, meaning a word with four letters). The four letters of the name of God as represented in the.יהוה Tanach (the Bible) are The Tanach was originally written, as was all Hebrew at the time, without vowels (nikkud small dots and dashes that appear above and below letters to represent the vowel sounds). When the Massoretes, the traditionalists who wanted to preserve the pronunciation of the words in the Tanach, added their vowel system to the consonants, they added the vowels of א ד נ י (adonai, my lord ) to the letters of God s name. This produced י הו ה or ה.י הו You should not pronounce י הו ה according to the vowels that are written on it. The Jewish tradition is to read Adonai when praying and HaShem when not. There is a religious prohibition against Jews pronouncing the name. The Hebrew Café
The Hebrew Café
Review The book states that there are twenty-three consonants in the alphabet. We should think of ש and ש as the same letter of the alphabet and count only twenty-two. The letters of the alphabet are found on page 1. There are five letters that have a final form. We call these forms sofit ( final ) in Hebrew. (Similar to final sigma [ς] in Greek.) צ ץ פ ף נ ן מ ם כ ך Review dagesh qal. It only makes a difference with the letters ב bet, כ kaf and פ peh. The full chart of the letters is on page 2. In English, we have c and k with the same sound, ph and f with the same sound, and s and z often have the same sound. There are some groups of letters in Hebrew with the same or similar sounds (page 3). The Hebrew Café
Pointers There are several different systems of pronunciation for the Hebrew language. The one used in this book is that which is used in Israel. Instruction in this course will be given with the Israeli pronunciation. It is a good idea to memorize the Hebrew alphabet in the same way that you memorized the English alphabet through song and in order. Once you have it memorized in order and committed it to memory, then it will be easier to assign the shapes of the letters to your memory. The teacher will give you an example of an alphabet song for Hebrew. We have ready-made alphabet cards for those who do not know the alphabet and need some review. You can just print them, cut them out and carry them with you for review. The Hebrew Café
Writing the Letters On page 4, the author gives a nice set of examples of how to write the letters in the square shape. Hebrew also has a more flowing cursive shape to the letters, which is used in all handwritten correspondence in Israel. One example of how to write Hebrew in cursive can be found in Wikipedia s discussion of cursive Hebrew here. 1 Here are some more examples: שלום שלום שלום שלום.שלום As you can see, the flowing shapes of the cursive letters lend themselves easily to creativity. Standard cursive shapes (the font Motek ): א ב ג ד ה ו ז ח ט י כ ך ל מ ם נ ן ס ע פ ף צ ץ ק ר ש ת The Hebrew Café
The Hebrew Café
The first lesson s goals are basically as follows: Learn the letters of the alphabet. It s important that you know their names, sounds and shapes. Learn the final forms of kaf, mem, nun, peh and tsadi. Understand that the dagesh qal represents a change in three letters (bet, kaf and peh), but that it appears in three more (gimel, dalet and tav). The final three used to have two sounds but now have only one each. Learn the spelling of the name of God in the Bible. 2 The Hebrew Café
The Hebrew Café
1. The link to the Hebrew cursive article on Wikipedia can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/cursive_hebrew#contemporary_forms. 2. Technically, we are not allowed to write out the name of God in Hebrew letters by pen or print it on paper. The reason? You are likely to throw it away, which would mean the destruction of God s name. Recently, the discussion has come up in halachic (religious legal) dialogue regarding the permissibility of typing God s name on a computer screen, which might lead to erasure. It is generally agreed that it is fine to type the name, so long as it doesn t get printed and destroyed. Consequently, anything that you print with the name should be preserved including the textbook for this class. The Hebrew Café
The Hebrew Café Textbook: Cook & Holmstedt s Biblical Hebrew: A Student Grammar (2009) Found here online: http://individual.utoronto.ca/holmstedt/textbook.html