Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Polycarp66 AT aol.com]

In a message dated 12/30/99 8:40:06 PM Central Daylight Time, 
data7201 AT aol.com writes:

<< Greetings to all on the B-Hebrew List.
  Looking back, if you had to learn hebrew again and had to learn it on your 
 own, how would you proceed? What would you do to reach what you would call 
 competence in the language? What about Grammatical/Exegetical skills? Just 
 how would you proceed-- Looking Back.
  >>

I think there is a problem in learning a language such as Hebrew which we 
don't have with modern languages (that's leaving out modern Hebrew for the 
moment).  That being that it's not easy to learn in the optimal way.  When I 
learned French, German, Dutch, Spanish, I could sit down and read passages 
and simply try to make sense out of them without looking up every word to be 
certain I was absolutely correct.  I got an anthology and just read. This 
stood me in good stead on the GSFLT exam.  If modern Hebrew is sufficiently 
close to Biblical Hebrew (and I don't know if it is or not), this could be an 
approach to follow.  

How about it, you guys who know modern Hebrew.  Is it close enough? 
gfsomsel