Biblical Hebrew Forum

[yochanan bitan-buth <ButhFam AT compuserve.com>]

Didn't I say "NOT modern" loud enough?
You are talking about modern, not I.

>but I will strongly dispute your model of learning
>biblical Hebrew through modern Hebrew "the natural way". 

I was talking about biblical Hebrew. 
Did I mention that biblical means biblical, not modern? NO? 
Tov. sfat Kena`an, sfat bereshit, sfat yeshayahu.

...
(teacher to student:) bo, qaH et ha-kos veshafaxtA et ha-mayim.
(to the others after obedient compliance:)
ha-ish ba el ha-shulHan vayyiqaH et ha-kos vayyishpox et ha-mayim `al
ha-qarqa`.
...
Biblical Hebrew sentences matched to real situations. Not modern Hebrew.
Asking students to pour water and describing to students what they did. 
The nice thing about inductive introductions is that there is no
terminology to use. 

No one else is currently doing this because of an interesting 'catch 22'.
The people that need it most are afraid of it or incapable of it, as though
thinking in English or other lo`azit will help them. The people best
capable of doing this, the very few who speak modern Hebrew AND have
immersed themselves in Biblical literature, arn't interested for three
reasons. They know the biblical language is full of holes that need to be
filled in according to the history of the language. They certainly don't
want to invent something different/new for those holes. Serious students
will learn the whole language anyway. 

... Which is what I recommend, paradoxically. One year students should
start with an efficient BIBLICAL hebrew course, taught with as much living
Biblical Hebrew as the teacher is capable of. 
Long term Biblical students are best served becoming fluent in modern
dialect and immersing themselves in the primary Biblical literature. This
last is the recommendation at Hebrew U.

The nice thing about running immersion modules of biblical Hebrew is the
rediscovery of what little kids would have heard around the campfire and in
daily conversations in their absorption of the material. 

The same process happens in old Greek, too. The best way to become aware of
Greek aspect is to need to give a few hundred commands to students in a
class where most of them require 'aorist' imperatives -- and then comes the
realization that one's whole life has been spent in orientation around
'present' stems because of modern dictionary practice. Well, that gets
undone by being forced to do the right thing. It is quite a wake-up call to
a teacher.

yisge shlamxon,
Randall Buth