Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Camille Bessette" <carmel.de.lisieux AT wanadoo.fr>]

Bonjour Randall !

You wrote:
>does mitchell's frequency for that word include the
>one binyan or all binyanim together?
All binyanim together. Shmd reads 90 (nishmad 21and hishmid 69).

>what i remember from mitchell are occasional "verbs" vocalized as a
>qal/root that don't exist. this can be difficult and misleading for
>beginning students.
Yes : under the same *shmd* for example, Mitchel writes shamad, explaining
in the foreword that unpronounceable words are more difficult to learn and
for this reason, all verb roots have been provided with vowels.

>pedagogically, i wonder what the beginning student is supposed to learn
>from *naba'? from *shamad? good intermediate students may be able to
>correctly form the proposed binyan and discard fictitious words.
Well, I can tell you that for me it was OK and that I am very grateful
towards L. Mitchel.  His book have been a precious tool to expand my
vocabulary in an exponential way (on home-made flash cards). I have even
asked him, about ten years ago, for a publication of the next section of his
work, containing words occurring less than ten times.  He was not involved
then in teaching Hebrew any more,  so I had to do the job myself.
As he himself states, learning vocabulary and retaining it are probably the
most challenging aspects of learning Hebrew.

>i'd be happy to correct my memory of mitchell.
This nice bottom line has inspired me to do so !  I may add that this cheap
booklet is also carefully shaped, with attention on details: correct
spelling, syllable division, use of shewa, accentuation, furtive pataH and
phonetic rendition. The only problem for my classroom : it's not in French !

Shalom
Camille


Camille Bessette
M.A. / Carmel de Lisieux FRANCE