Why Hebrew is Easy to Learn

“Learning Hebrew is difficult“—a phrase you’ll often hear if you’re interested in learning this dynamic, rich lingo. But we’re here to help you understand why learning Hebrew is easy, fun, and above all, extremely beneficial!

Before learning a new language, you must know why you’re doing it. Is it out of a hobby, interest, or maybe because you have a trip to Israel coming up? Or perhaps you’ve secured a job in an Israeli company where it’ll be important to understand and speak their national lingo.

Regardless, starting with a credence that Hebrew is tough to learn will hurt your confidence and drive. This generates confirmation bias that’ll hamper the learning process. Having a negative outlook will halt your learning, thereby stalling your improvement.

Hebrew Language: A Brief Intro

Hebrew is both primeval and modern. The dialect dates back to more than 3,000 years and is a leading and prominent example of an uninterrupted literary custom that’s still in its full glory.

Hebrew is a living language of one of the World’s most popular religions, communities, and countries, representing its customs, traditions, values, and daily lives.

Learning Hebrew provides a great way to interact with Israelis. It allows you to understand their culture, and everyday lives.

The inimitable historical spectacle of Hebrew’s renaissance, renewal, and transformation into a widely spoken and understood vernacular offers several opportunities to our young generation. It helps them explore the development of a language and its role in building and nourishing societies.

Who Speaks Hebrew?

Israel has two official languages, and of one them is Hebrew. It’s the primary dialect of over 6 million people and is spoken by around nine million people worldwide. Before its renewal, the language served as a connective joint between communities, societies, and individuals, exemplifying its role in uniting people across space and time.

What people speak today is known as Modern Hebrew—an evolved version of the language that surfaced by the end of the 19^th century.

Pretty impressive, right? Let’s dig deeper and understand why learning Hebrew isn’t as tricky and challenging as you might think!

Why Learning Hebrew Is Easy

1.    Hebrew Alphabets: Aleph Bets

Learning alphabets is the first step toward mastering a new language.

Alphabets are often considered a barrier to learning Hebrew; however, that’s not entirely true. Here’s why:

• As compared to other languages like English and Arabic, Hebrew has fewer (22) alphabets, which means fast and easy learning!
• The difficulty of Hebrew letters fades in front of other complex writing systems like the thousands of characters in Chinese, the four, complicated Abjad incarnation of Arabic, the struggles of comprehending and deciphering Georgian scripts, etc.

2.   Similarities in Cursive and Print Forms

When learning the Hebrew language, you won’t find a stark difference between its cursive and printed script, which is especially beneficial if you’re a beginner.

The language is relatively easy and well-structured compared to Russian language’s printed and cursive scripts that are poles apart.

3.   You Don’t Really Need Vowels

Although beginner Hebrew contains vowels, you won’t need them to speak or write the dialect fluently. The dots and dashes, AKA Nikkuds sprinkled above or below Hebrew letters, indicate their sounds and consonants. You’ll still notice that informal writings on billboards, store signs, and banners don’t have any vowels.

However, if you’re interested in learning Biblical Hebrew, you’ll have to understand vowel usage and vocalization, and those rules might seem a bit intricate—but nothing our experts Ulpan-Or can’t handle.

4.   Clues to Meanings

The base or root of Hebrew words helps you identify their meanings. They familiarize you with words akin to their roots and ease the guesswork.

For example:

• Sepher (ספר) means book
• Soophar (סופר) means writer
• Seephria (ספריה) means library

All these words contain the same three root letters, Sadeech (ס), Pei (פ), and Resh (ר).

Learning Hebrew is akin to pattern recognition because it’s a sematic language, and all the words are constructed from a family of three to four root letters.

Therefore, you can make several words with new meanings by using different suffixes, prefixes, and vowels.

5.   Hebrew has Only One Article and One Case

Spanish is considered one of the easiest languages to learn and comprehend but, have you gone through the list of its article categories? Definite, indefinite, singular, plural, masculine, feminine—and the list goes on

In contrast, Hebrew is a piece of cake, topped with only one article! Regardless of the gender, amount, number, or definiteness of a word, there’s only one definite article marker in Hebrew. In practice, you won’t have to remember a long list of rules that specifies when, where, how, and why to use a particular article.

And if you already speak English, cracking the code of a definite article isn’t difficult.

Unlike many other languages that involve multiple noun forms, Hebrew only requires you to use one case, “et” (את), before the noun.

6.   Few Rare Irregularities

Here are some of the irregularities that you might encounter when learning Hebrew. However, before you start fretting, remember that with professional guidance, all of these are easy to remember and perfect:

• After learning and perfecting alphabets and their phonic sounds, you’ll be introduced to the different conjugation patterns—each belonging to a unique root family.
  
  
• You’ll have to learn a few verb culminations that are fairly regular across all verb types in order to study the present tense conjugation in Modern Hebrew.
  
  
• The default form is masculine, and there are unique endings to feminine singular, plural, and masculine plural forms. Conjugation rules remain intact whether the plural is ‘us,’ ‘you,’ or ‘them.’
• In Modern Hebrew, present tense usage depends on the number and gender.

7.   An abundance of Shared Words

Modern Hebrew has spanned across several countries and, therefore, has shared many words from different languages.

Hebrew’s development and evolvement periods have significantly influenced its vocabulary. Many primary and first layer words in biblical Hebrew are shared with the ancient Canaanite language, while several words in the Aramaic-layer are from the Rabbinical and Medieval Hebrew.

A significant lexical impact on the language occurred during the Hebrew enlightenment around the 17th century. When people started learning and adopting Hebrew for everyday usage, they were forced to borrow and create newer, more comfortable, and dynamic words to enrich the vocab.

Reassembled chiefly by speakers of Slavic and Germanic dialects, Modern Hebrew inhibits many words from widely-spoken European languages. The existing effects of English and Arabic make learning and understanding Hebrew more convenient and easier.

8.   Logical Patterns

Many students hesitate to read Hebrew scripts without vowels. Hebrew is one of the most phonetic dialects without any exception to the rules surrounding it, and once you get the hang of Hebrew, you’ll stay with it forever!

9.   Perfecting the Accent isn’t a Headache

The best part about learning Hebrew is that you don’t have to master its accent. What matters more is the correct word and consonant usage. Modern Hebrew is far less complicated and intricate than its older version.

Hebrew’s transformation’s primary objective is to allow immigrants, visitors, and travelers to communicate with the locals efficiently. It’s one of the most ancient languages and is intriguing and fun to learn.

So best of luck, and mazel tov for making it to the end of this blog!

Learn Hebrew Online with Native Teachers in USA, UK, or Australia

Your institution contributes significantly to your learning progress and pace, and its learning material plays a key role in polishing your end result.

You can put in all the time and effort you need, but if the resources fail to markedly cover the nitty-gritties, you’ll be stressed every day with your quest to learn the semantics of the Hebrew lingo.

Amidst the pandemic, attending physical classes isn’t an option. But that doesn’t mean you can’t learn Hebrew sitting in the comfort of your home! Start learning Hebrew online by getting in touch with us at Ulpan-Or. We offer Hebrew language learning from expert Israeli teachers who can give you the most accurate and bespoke learning experience.

We’re also offering a 25% discount on our online courses for beginners till the end of January! Contact us today for more information regarding registration and payment.

Our beginner-friendly Hebrew language lessons online are taught by licensed teachers who polish your skills and help you learn Hebrew.