Lessons 1+2 Shalom!

   Lessons 1+2  

 

Shalom

 

 Hello

 

 Welcome to this blog
 

 

שלום

Hi, my name is Anna

I've been learning Hebrew for quite a while now and this blog is my way to organise it all and get a picture of what I already know. It serves as an in depth repetition for me and perhaps as a good starting point for others. It works in conjunction with the course I am developing on memrise:

http://www.memrise.com/course/78569/modern-hebrew-for-beginners-2/

The blog explains words and sentences, grammar and other things. The memrise course is great for repeating all the words, expressions and sentences from the blog and fixing them in the long term memory.

I am not going to teach the Hebrew alphabet, there are great resources on memrise and other internet sites who do this really well. 

In the beginning my approach allows everybody to get the letters sorted at their own pace: The lessons on memrise are organised in pairs: The first repeats the vocabulary with the English transcription and the second with the Hebrew alphabet.

It is thus possible to do the entire course without the Hebrew alphabet if someone wishes to avoid it. Just skip every second lesson. (The odd numbered lessons work without and the even numbered lessons with the Hebrew alphabet.)

OK lets get started:

 

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Shalom ! Anee Channah.

Shalom ! Anee Moshe.

                                 

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This picture was added in August 2013

 

This blog started in March 2013 just to support the memrise lessons. Somewhere along the way the blog changed into a course in its own right with dialogues and drawings and information about learning techniques and posts about Israeli films and TV series and all sorts of things. It became more fun and more interesting and more and more people started to read it. So now I am adding dialogues and sketches to the first part of the blog to make it catch up with the rest. And yes, I know, I can't draw and I am working on it, but I think it adds a bit of colour and fun to all the grammar we have to work through.

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vocabulary for lessons 1+2 (corresponding to the memrise course)


http://www.memrise.com/course/78569/modern-hebrew-for-beginners-2/

שלום    shalom     Hi !                  

אני        anee        I

משה     Moshe      (Moses)                   anee Moshe      אני משה       I am Moshe

חנה      Chana*     (Hannah)                 anee  Chana      אני  חנה       I am Chana

דוד       David

מי         mee        who

את        at           you (fem.)                  me at?              מי את           who are you? (fem.)

 

אתה      ata         you (masc.)               me ata?           מי אתה          who are you? (masc.) 

 

                                                            ata Moshe?    ? אתה משה     are you Moshe?

                        

                                                            ata Moshe.        אתה משה.     you are Moshe.

 

*   'ch' stands for the Hebrew letter 'ח' as in the Scottish 'loch Ness' or the German 'ach'

 

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How to say 'I am' in Hebrew:

That's really easy, you simply forget the 'am'.

In the present tense Hebrew doesn't use the verb to be.

I am Chana = I Chana

Are you David? = You David?

You are Moshe. = You Moshe.
 

 

Personal pronouns:

Hebrew has an interesting twist regarding gender, there are two words for 'you' (second person singular personal pronoun) a masculine and a feminine one. So when talking to a man one uses 'ata' and when talking to a woman 'at'.
Luckily, 'anee' meaning 'I' is the same for both.

 
 

Sentence structure:

Simple Questions and simple sentences have the same structure:

Ata Moshe? Are you Moshe?

Ata Moshe. You are Moshe.
 

 

Shalom:

Everybody has heard Shalom and it has quite a few meanings: 'peace' and 'hi' and 'bye'. 


About the structure and the content of this blog
as you will soon notice, this course focuses on verbs. I have chosen the following 20 verbs as a starting point:


to learn, to love, to understand, to say, to want, to go/walk, to do, to read, to eat, to drink, to write, to work, to speak, to live/reside, to need, to be able to, to hear, to see, to happen and to be.


(to have is not really a verb in the Hebrew language. In the present tense it is expressed with yesh+possessive particle (see lessons 25+26) and in the past it's constructed with the verb to be+possesive particle and an interesting twist as to the conjugation of to be (it'll be discussed around lesson 60).


What I really wanted to achieve with this course is to keep the grammatical progression low for a really long time. What I find most difficult about all the course books and other sources I have been using so far, is that the progression is always skyrocketing and huge amounts of grammatical transfer are required at a stage where I am still totally overwhelmed by all the new stuff. That's why I will provide a least one example sentence for each and every one of my 20 verbs in each form (tense, gender, number) before introducing more verbs. And of course, there will be a fair share of nouns and other parts of speech as well, but the general focus is on verb conjugation.