10 Ideas to help you learn Hebrew:
- Learn the alphabet and the proper pronunciation of each letter. Appreciating the nuances in pronunciation of different letters helps differentiate words that are spelled with similar sounding letters from one another, so you better understand what people are saying.
- Read books in Hebrew, starting with children’s books and making your way forward through the grade levels. Use a paper dictionary to look up words you don’t know (the act of flipping through pages manually helps improve your memory of the words) . If that’s too much, use a digital dictionary .
- Learn the conjugation forms in Hebrew. Countless Hebrew words are just conjugations based on a three-letter root. Once you recognize what the patterns are in conjugations, and the meaning of each pattern, you can find the root letters to determine the basic meaning, and then combine with the conjugation to get the precise meaning of the word.
- Get workbooks and do countless exercises. Pen and paper here are again better than computer, for the sake of remembering what you learn. The more you practice the better you get.
- Make a list of Hebrew prefixes and suffixes and “helper” words such as of, on, to, from, with, if . Look at the sheet and look away, repeat until you memorize.
- Join a group class – you can make friends with people who share a common interest, and find people to practice speaking with, and who can help you and vice versa.
- Hire a tutor or even just a teenager to practice speaking Hebrew with you.
- Find uplifting Hebrew content to watch. Many people recommend watching the news, but the skew of uplifting to depressing stories in news media (not just Hebrew language media, to be clear) is dramatically in favor of depressing news. Some directions for you to consider: Torah classes, professional content, sports, kids’ shows (e.g. Meir Kids), etc. You can also turn on closed captions to read what is being said and better understand both what is being said as well as improve your pronunciation.
- Take the English language version of this book and put it adjacent to the Hebrew language version and see what was translated literally, word for word, vs what was translated figuratively. Ask yourself how you would translate the text. Do the same for other books you enjoy.
- Visit Israel and do your best to speak only in Hebrew. Avoid speaking in English, even when Israelis hear your accent and address you in English.
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