Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Charles David Isbell" <cisbell AT cox.net>]

Hi Peter,
I did not take your message as an attack.  I thought it humorous to use the
word elitist when arguing that the alphabet WE find easy should replace the
alphabet the language itself uses to express itself.  I hope you saw my
attempts at a little humor in what I was saying.  I do feel strongly that a
transliteration system is more difficult to learn than the simple alphabet,
and the vowels can be taught easily.  a with a macron, with a circumflex, h
or t with a sublinear dot, forward or backward apostrophe, dh for Dalet or
th for Tav without daghesh, etc., ad naseum.  Do you really think these are
easy for English students?
Here is a trick I use.  Any vowel with dots is in the EE, EH, class.  If
there is a line, it is in the AH class.  If it is over or in the letter, it
is in the OO, UH class.  OK, I save Qibbutz and Hateph Qamatz--hey I have to
make a living!  But you would be surprised how quickly this simplification
works to get students started reading.
Now the te'amim.  We do not ignore them.  We note their physical shape [are
you aware that in some traditions a Gabbai gave hand signals to the Ba'al
Qore' to indicate the points?] and show how they are generally indicative of
connectors [mehaberim] or separators [mafsikim], rather easily ascertained
by the SHAPEs they take.  Incidentally, my classes, 90% non-Jewish SING
Jonah by the end of the first twelve weeks, and find that it helps their
learning.
Now I don't want to sound arrogant, but I believe the function of a teacher
is to demystify the language for his students.  If I am not afraid of them,
why should they be?  For me, Hebrew is more than merely a language or a tool
to use for exegesis.  It is the conveyor of my culture, the medium of
expression of hope and grief and joy and faith,  for thousands of years.  I
pray in it, study in it, think in it, read it as part of the act of worship.
If the goal of a class is merely to achieve minimal proficiency in order to
buttress what one already believed before the course began, that goal can
almost never be achieved, I feel.  If the goal is to wrestle the demon
grammar into submission and achieve mastery, to enter into and swim in
[i.e., become a part of] the stream of tradition that has flowed through the
medium of Hebrew since long ago, even when falling short, one is likely to
progress farther than the other way.
Just some thoughts,
Be well,
Charles