Learn Hebrew quickly. How to quickly learn a new language from scratch

Hebrew is the oldest language in the world, having preserved its original appearance and composition for many centuries. Currently, its written and spoken language has not changed. Many researchers claim that the Bible was written in a very similar language, since the composition, stylistic features And catchphrases, used today in Israeli literature and journalism, closely resemble biblical language.

Israel is a modern, powerful country with active political, cultural and friendly ties with Russia. Therefore, nowadays many schools and courses are opening where you can learn Hebrew.

There are various ways how to learn Hebrew. Many students do this using the Internet. In the capital and others major cities Beginners can learn Hebrew through specialized courses led by experienced teachers. You can also purchase the necessary tutorials, which contain all required material for purchase basic knowledge and to replenish your vocabulary.

How quickly can you learn Hebrew? Naturally, communicating directly with native speakers contributes to better learning linguistic features and pronunciation. Needed with social networks find friends who are fluent in Hebrew, they will be able to “train” in the spoken language. IN lately Video lessons that take place online with a teacher are in great demand, but they are quite expensive.

Is it easy to learn Hebrew on your own?

Those who believe that you can easily learn Hebrew at home are mistaken. In addition to applying the necessary educational materials, audio books and video courses, practice of conducting dialogues with direct native speakers is necessary.

Many people ask where to learn Hebrew while having the opportunity for real communication. At the same time, you should not go to Israel, since classes in specialized schools provide such an opportunity for communication, albeit within study group. Simple memorization does not contribute to the development of free speech skills, but is perfect for expanding your vocabulary and correctly constructing phrases in Hebrew.

Many beginners are interested in how long it takes to learn Hebrew. Everything here is individual. Agreed texts in Hebrew can be quickly understood and mastered by many, since all the subtleties of grammar are reflected in the rules, and dictionaries have necessary words. However, inconsistent texts will certainly cause a number of difficulties, since not every tutorial has information about some linguistic nuances - the rearrangement of root consonants or the subjunctive mood. Similar texts have words whose spelling is similar, but they are read differently depending on certain conditions.

How to learn Hebrew in a few months. Mikhail Osherov

Hebrew is a language from the group of Semitic languages, a language that has complex rules pronunciations and word formations that are very different from the corresponding rules of the Russian language. Here in Israel I have seen and met large number people who immigrated to Israel at the age of 40 - 45 years old, who never learned Hebrew at a sufficiently good level. Enough good level Language proficiency includes, among other things, the ability to read newspapers, books, solve crossword puzzles, watch and listen to television and radio programs, the ability to speak freely and understand the interlocutor freely, the ability to speak on the phone without seeing the interlocutor, and the ability to write in Hebrew. Personally, I, having arrived in Israel without knowing Hebrew at the age of 46 due to illness close relative, now, 6 years later, I don’t experience any particular difficulties in all these issues.

Unlike many current Russian-speaking Israelis, who have the opportunity to receive benefits for six months and study Hebrew during the day, I was forced to work from the very beginning. I could only learn Hebrew in the evenings in the Israeli educational institution, which is called “ulpan”.

Ulpan is a language course for foreigners and emigrants. I chose the most intense of them - almost every night, 4 evenings a week. I studied first in entry-level courses (“alef” - named after the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet), then, after some time, in courses at the next level “bet”. Of course, ulpan helped me, but if I, like many other emigrants from Russia, had limited myself to only ulpan, I would never have learned Hebrew.

The main problem with these courses, especially at the entry level, is that the teachers do not speak the languages of the countries from which the emigrants came. You are bombarded with a huge number of new words, all of which are incomprehensible. You need extreme concentration to understand anything. The teacher usually speaks other than Hebrew only English. She tries to explain one Hebrew word with other words or other phrases, dramatizes something, and so on. In our group in ulpan “alef” and in ulpan “bet” there were emigrants from Russia, from Ukraine, from Argentina, from Brazil, from Sudan, from Eritrea, from France. Many of them also did not know English.

As a result, learning Hebrew in the ulpan proceeded extremely slowly. If the group included only Russian-speaking students, and the teacher also spoke Russian, the six-month ulpan program could be studied in two to three months.

During the first years of my life in Israel, I worked and studied at the same time. I studied Hebrew constantly. At work. I worked in companies where only Hebrew was spoken. Some companies did not have Russian-speaking employees, and there was simply no one to help me with translation. I spoke Hebrew, terrible Hebrew, with a terrible accent, with mistakes. Wrong, but he said it. A huge number of Russian-speaking emigrants are simply afraid to speak with mistakes. As a result, they were never able to learn to speak Hebrew. In order to learn foreign language, it takes practice. And communication at work is a huge practice, and you need to use it. You must not be afraid to speak and not be afraid to ask about what you do not understand.

First tip - “You must not be afraid to speak and not be afraid to ask about what you do not understand.”

I spoke quickly, trying not to think. After a while, I realized that during conversations at work, I think in Hebrew. It was a very important feeling. U different people different type memory. There are people who have the most pronounced auditory memory, and there are people with a predominant visual memory. My personal memory is auditory. Accordingly, I learn something new by talking to myself. Therefore, during the first months and first years in Israel, I tried to repeat to myself the phrases I heard from other people, on the radio, on television. Repeat and, if possible, say out loud. People who have a more developed visual memory need to use it - both write and read as much as possible.

The second tip is “Use strengths your memory. Say phrases and words to yourself. Write. Try to think in Hebrew."

My wife’s acquaintances, who came to Israel 10 years ago, learned Hebrew at work, in the evening in ulpan, and at home. At home, in the evening, they spoke to each other only in Hebrew. For the first years of their life in Israel, they watched TV only in Hebrew. They watched what they liked - films, cartoons for children. I personally watch Hebrew football all the time. Constantly. Israeli sports commentators terrible, but they speak very simple Hebrew.

Tip three - “At home, speak and listen only to Hebrew. Forget all other languages."

At work you will find yourself in the same situations. Israelis will speak approximately the same words when talking to you in these situations. Remember situations, scenes, meaning.

Tip four - “Remember standard situations and standard words.”

I learned Hebrew everywhere, always - at any time free time. I always had either a textbook or a Hebrew phrasebook in my bag. I downloaded a huge number of textbooks and phrasebooks from the Internet, including not only texts, but also a huge number of sound files. I wrote them down on my phone. On the way from home to work in the morning and in the evening, returning from ulpan, I put on headphones and listened to either Israeli radio programs or sound examples from textbooks. There are a huge number of videos on the Internet in Hebrew with Russian subtitles. Israeli television sometimes shows theatrical productions.

Tip five - “In any free time, listen to the language, watch TV shows and videos.”

Very often you will come across unfamiliar words. Every unfamiliar word that you consider important, that you encounter frequently, and that is contained in a phrase that you generally understand should be translated immediately, as long as you remember the meaning of that phrase. For this I downloaded mobile phone dictionary, and always, having heard a new word that was unfamiliar to me, but often encountered, I immediately tried to immediately translate it and write it down in notebook. At home in the evening, I always opened my notebook and wrote down frequently occurring words that were new to me, with their translation and their pronunciation, in special text files. In fact, now it is a kind of frequency dictionary of Hebrew - a dictionary of the most frequently used words. When I wrote them down with translation, transcription and all grammatical forms, I made sure to pronounce them several times. On weekends, I returned to the dictionary and pronounced and read several times all the words I had written down during the week. As a result, after I wrote down and learned all the frequently used words that were unfamiliar to me for a long time, I had quite a large vocabulary, which was enough for everything - after all, there were almost no words left that were completely unfamiliar to me and were often found in Hebrew.

Tip six - “Write down and translate new, unfamiliar and frequently occurring words.”

Learning a non-native language is, in fact, a very boring activity. You need to find something very interesting to do it. For me, football and songs were very interesting in Hebrew. I liked about two dozen songs in Hebrew. I, almost not knowing the language, was able to find the sound of these songs and their lyrics on the Internet. I liked the songs, I listened to them at home or on the way to work and at the same time read the printed lyrics. I ended up translating some songs almost completely. We must remember and understand that in songs, the authors of the lyrics, for the sake of rhyme and rhythm, could deviate from the exact spelling and sound of individual words.

Advice seventh - “Listen to Hebrew songs and read the lyrics at the same time.”

I followed these rules for the first years of my life in Israel. This allowed me to read Hebrew, understand Hebrew by ear, learn to think in Hebrew, learn to speak Hebrew.

I hope that my experience and some of my tips will help you too.

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. Based on this a whole science- gematria (opening secret meaning 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, which 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 Hebrew alphabet can convey the same sound.

Hebrew lacks the sounds [ы], [ш]. But there are several unfamiliar to our ears:

ה (similar to 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 literary and spoken language like earth and 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, Hebrew has the same adjective or verb, even in 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 completely strangers From the first meeting they address each other on a first name basis.

All pronouns except “I” and “we” are gender related. For example, "you" in masculine will be different from “you” in feminine. When contacting to the women's team(“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 Russian there are only two numerals that take masculine or feminine: 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/

Hello, dear subscribers and guests of my channel. Today I want to tell you about how I learned Hebrew. I was asked about this and therefore I fulfill this request.

So, learning Hebrew, but “learning” is a strong word; I started trying to learn Hebrew before I came to Israel. Let's start with the fact that about six months before moving to Israel, I first came here to visit. I had relatives living here, and at the end of 1989 there was an opportunity to get a visa and come - and I came. I did this because I was not sure of my decision and thought that I would come, see everything with my own eyes and be able to finally decide what to do. Then the “Iron Curtain” had just fallen, and people had just begun to be released abroad.

I flew to Israel for 3 weeks, met relatives and friends who had lived here for a long time. And of course, while in Israel, I heard speech in Hebrew, which in itself is good, because if you listen to speech in Hebrew and don’t even understand anything, you get used to the sounds of this language, and you don’t get shocked, no nothing unexpected anymore, the language sounds familiar to you.

Thanks to the fact that I was in Israel and heard speech in Hebrew, I learned some of the most everyday words: “shalom” - hello, “leitraot” - goodbye, “toda” - thank you, “beseder” - everything is fine. These, of course, were maybe some 10 words, but 10 words are also good.

About 3 months before moving to Israel, when permission had already been received, my husband and I began to learn Hebrew; or rather, my husband began to teach properly - he took courses from a very famous Hebrew teacher in Riga, who taught very well. And my husband brought me home some crumbs from the master’s table, that is, he told me the basics, simple things that were taught in the courses.

What did we decide to do? We understood that in this bustle we would not learn any Hebrew; but we can learn something, we can make further learning easier for ourselves, and so we started with something simple: we wrote in Russian letters the designation of the simplest Hebrew words and hung them up. For example, they wrote the word “ceiling” and hung it on the ceiling; they wrote “wall” and hung it on the wall; This is where we started; “floor”, “door”, “window” were written in Hebrew in Russian letters and hung in the appropriate places. And every time I came across a word, like “wall,” I said it out loud.

We started to teach simple words, and then moved on to furniture, studying the words: “refrigerator”, “cabinet”, “table”, “chair”, “bed”. Even later, my husband found a Hebrew tutorial somewhere, and an audio cassette was attached to it. What’s good is that this tape recorded the speech of the Sabrs, that is, people for whom Hebrew is their native language. They spoke correctly, and everything that was written in the tutorial was spoken out on the audio cassette. Thus, we heard the correct pronunciation from the very beginning - it is very important point. Of course, mistakes can be corrected later, but from the very beginning we knew how to pronounce the word correctly. Otherwise, how will you teach? If you are not sure that you pronounce words correctly, then how can you learn the language?

So, our goal was to collect as many basic words as possible. Then we moved on to names of products, clothes; but only the simplest things, nothing complicated. If clothing, then it should be “shirt”, “pants”, “skirt”, “dress” - and of course, not “lace”, “cuffs” - nor anything more complex was taken into account.

During this period, everyone learned Hebrew. I was once riding on a trolleybus and heard a woman sitting behind me with a girl who looked about six years old and asking her: “What will the sun be like?” - the girl says: “‘Shemesh’.” - “Like “tree”?” - the girl is silent. I turn back and say, 'Ets.' A lot of people left, and a lot of people learned Hebrew, and it was natural.

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. The basic grammar is given, simple dialogues. 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.
LanguageHeroes project - you can find a lot there useful materials and in 12 weeks of intensive classes, take your Hebrew independently to a whole new level.
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 - Contemporary Hebrew Poetry course from Coursera
Our friends - online Hebrew school IVRIKA http://ivrika.ru Hebrew for beginners from scratch, free videos, articles and courses + online lessons.