Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Julie Devall" <krena_li_mara AT hotmail.com>]

Dear Jonathan,

The short of it is, if you have mastery over at least Hebrew via Gesenius, 
Jouon, or other traditional grammars, then you will be able to learn with 
these grammars.  There may be better grammars than Gordon's nowadays...

The good thing about Thackston is that once you master his format of 
grammar, it is easier to progress to his other grammars.  So, after you 
learn Syriac, you can access his Arabic or Persian grammars.  I'm studying 
Arabic right now, and the problem I've found with Thackston's grammar is 
that it doesn't provide the vowels that you need as a beginner/self-learner, 
to be able to generate the language.  He provides them in transliteration, 
but without tutelage, I've gotten to lesson 8 then stopped about 3 times 
over the years.  I'm now under the tutelage of an Islamic teacher who says 
that this grammar would be hard even for native Arabic speakers.

We need more grammars that are are intuitive, organic to the texts to which 
they are representing, and that are student friendly, allowing students to 
work actual texts before they get too bored or lost... ;)

Shalom,

Julie

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