Step Talk #1

📖 Your Assignment

Listen to the dialog all the way through, paying special attention to how the voice models pronounce the chet and resh. There are two useful Hebrew expressions at the end: todah rabbah (תּוֹדָה רַבָּה) means “thanks a lot” and lehitra’ot (לְהִתְרָאוֹת) means “see you later.” Lehitra’ot!

Phase 1: The Alefbet Song

This version of the Alefbet Song has been adopted from the Hebrew Tutor program from Parsons Technology.

🔊 The Alphabet Song (normal speed)

🔊 The Alphabet Song (slower speed)

Here are the names of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet as they appear in the song, so that you can sing along:

alef, bet, gimel, dalet, heh, vav, zayin, chet, tet, yud, kaf, lamed, mem, nun, samech, ayin, peh, tsadi, kuf, resh, shin, sin, tav

📖 Your Assignment

If you are at all able to sing (even the slightest bit!), your first assignment is simply to follow along with the audio recording until you easily recite the names of the letters of the alefbet in order from alef to tav. If you cannot sing, at least recite them by name as you hear them. The names of the letters must be committed to memory as quickly as possible.

Phase 2: Why Hebrew is Hard

1. It’s written backwards!

Those who use this site to learn Hebrew might start out thinking that Hebrew is written backwards. Whereas English, Spanish, Latin, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, French, Finnish and a whole bunch of other languages start their writing on the left and work to the right, that is not the case for Hebrew. In fact, there is nothing that declares that we have to write a certain way except convention. It’s by complete accident that English ended up being written from left to right. Semitic languages (like Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaic) are generally written from right to left. Chinese was classically written from top to bottom. As a new student of Hebrew, you will have to get used to reading Hebrew from the right side.

2. It doesn’t have any vowels.

In writing, the Hebrew language (like Arabic and Aramaic) does not represent vowels most of the time. Are there vowels? Of course! It would be impossible to pronounce words without vowels. Vowels represent the movement of air out of the lungs through the voice box. Just try to pronounce nvrlnd as written. It’s simply impossible. But, if you add vowels to it – Neverland – becomes easy enough to pronounce.

The problem is not that Hebrew doesn’t have vowels, but that it doesn’t represent vowels in writing – well, most of the time. Hebrew does represent vowels some of the time. For example, in the word “cat” חָתוּל (ḥāṯûl) all of the small dots and lines under the letters (and inside the letter וּ) are vowels. To anyone who knows the word “cat” or even the pattern into which it falls, it is enough to see it as חתול to recognize and read the word.

What this means is that people who speak and read Hebrew can easily understand the language (because of its structure) without using vowels in writing. What is also means is that it is difficult for beginners to learn to read Hebrew. Therefore, we have a set of marks added to Hebrew words to indicate the vowels in order to help beginners learn to read the language. The vowels will be used on this site to help you learn, but as quickly as possible, we will be dropping both the vowels and our transcription system.

3. It doesn’t use the English alphabet.

It’s common to hear people say that Hebrew is too difficult because it is not written in the same alphabet as English. Those who study Spanish, Latin, Portuguese, Italian, French, Romanian, etc. have it easy – because they don’t have to learn a new alphabet. This is certainly something that makes Hebrew a bit more difficult, but once the alphabet (or, as we call it, the ‘Alefbet’) is learned, Hebrew is actually easier to read than English!

4. It has weird sounds.

Part 2: The Sound of ח [ḥ]

Should we spell it Chanukkah or Hannukah or some other combination of letters? The confusion in the word really comes from the fact that Hebrew has one weird sound that English speakers never really get right. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try, though. Right?

It’s quite obvious that the ch sound that we hear above in chet and samech are not sounds that we’re used to hearing in modern English (though it existed in earlier versions of English – compare English night with the German Nacht, for example). This is a rough sound heard in the back of the throat that does exist in the Scottish word loch (as in the Loch Ness Monster) and the German Bach (if you’ve ever heard his name pronounced correctly). It is not a k or ck sound as in English, and it will not be enough to pronounce it that way. Click on the play button below to hear how it should sound when isolated and when connected with a vowel.

🔊 The Hebrew ch Sound
🔊 The Hebrew cha Sound
🔊 The Hebrew ach Sound

This will take some getting used to, so practice it several times. Once you have it mostly under control, go over the alphabet song again and learn all the names of the letters in order. You’ll then be ready for the next step: learning the shapes of the letters and how to write them!

That said, the word Chanukkah or Hannukah actually represents the Hebrew word חֲנֻכָּה, which sounds like:

🔊 חֲנֻכָּה [ḥănuqqâ(h)]

Chanukah (another spelling!) is the festival of lights, and the word literally means “dedication,” referring to the dedication of the Temple in Jerusalem when the people returned from exile in the country of Babylon/Shinar. The word “dedicate” is חָנַךְ chanach, and the word “educate” in Hebrew also comes from this root (חִנֵּךְ chinech).

Later, we will see that there are actually two letters in Hebrew that can represent the sound of ḥ – and both of them are in the word חִנֵּךְ chinech: namely, chet (ח) and chaf (כ). The latter is an alternative sound of the letter kaf (כּ) that you hear in the Alefbet Song above.

Ach! There are so many awesome things to learn about the Hebrew language!

Part 3: The Sound of r

The Hebrew r, called resh, doesn’t sound like the English r. In fact, it sounds more like the French r. Listen to the following examples being read aloud.

Words being read: radaf, rises, larédet, morah, atar, sagar

🔊 רָדַף, רִסֵּס, לָרֶדֶת, מוֹרָה, אֲתָר, סָגַר

This sound certainly feels weird to an English speaker, as it comes from the throat instead of the tongue. If you cannot succeed in making this sound, know that Americans, Brits, Canadians, Australians, South Africans... we all live in Israel for years, and the vast majority never overcome the sound of the American r. If you pronounce it like in English, it isn’t the end of the world.

Part 4: The Gutturals

Hebrew has five guttural letters. These are sounds that are formed in the throat. You met ḥ above. Right now, we are only dealing with the sounds of the alefbet and not with how the letters look, so let’s stick with it.

The letter chet (represented by ḥ) is obviously guttural. We mentioned before that there is another letter with the same sound. It is kaf that we learned the alphabet song. The thing is that ḥ didn’t originally sound the same as kaf (which we will represent with k). It originally sounded something more like this:

🔊 חָלָב, אַחְוָה, סוֹלֵחַ

🔊 חָלָב, אַחְוָה, סוֹלֵחַ

Besides this ḥ sound, we have three other gutturals. The first is alef, the next heh and the last ayin.

We generally say that alef is “silent,” but this is not technically correct. Technically, alef serves to stop the flow of breath. It’s called the “glottal stop” in linguistic terms. Think in terms of how Pauly Shore used to break words in half. That is the essential use of alef.

🔊 Alef: think Pauly Shore “co-ool” or “ni-ice”

Ayin originally had a different sound (and, like chet, still does in some communities), but the majority of Israelis today pronounce ayin just like alef. That is, it is “silent,” serving to break up vowels.

Heh is like the standard English h in hello. Many Israelis today do not pronounce it, and it comes across sounding like an alef.

🔊 לְהִכָּנֵס (lehicanes or le-icanes) מַהֵר (maher or ma-er)

Overall, the gutturals have simplified in Hebrew, the sounds merging to make for easier pronunciation. You’ll need to get used to the chet/kaf and alef/ayin/heh overlap, but it will get easier – especially once we start learning letter forms and transcription. Then we will look at the gutturals separately again.

For now, the important thing is to remember how the names and sounds of the letters covered (even though you don’t yet know how they look!).

Your First Letters

Let’s begin looking at the letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

Go to Step 2