Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Polycarp66 AT aol.com]

In a message dated 1/19/2003 6:20:14 AM Eastern Standard Time, peterkirk AT ozemail.com.au writes:

> Trevor, your long contribution should be helpful in general, but it
> seems to miss out one important category which is the one Al puts
> himself in: those learning Hebrew. I am thinking mostly of those
> learning biblical Hebrew. I would also put myself in this category,
> though perhaps more advanced than Al. But I still find that the major
> difficulty which I have with Hebrew is the script, more so than the
> grammar or the vocabulary. Indeed for some time I was regularly using a
> transliterated Hebrew Bible text (in my computer) for my studies and
> translation work. To put it simply, it is much easier (for English
> speakers) to learn Hebrew using transliteration than using Hebrew
> (rather, Aramaic square) script. And for many purposes this is adequate;
> also if one has mastered the basics of grammar etc in transliteration it
> may then be easier to transfer to Hebrew script.


I would disagree heartily with this.  From the beginning I used the Aramaic script and I have found it necessary to look up passages or retransliterate the transliteration into the Aramaic script when I didn't have BHS handy.  I don't like doing Greek in transliteration either.

gfsomsel