Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Joshua Luna" <joshua AT can-do.net>]

Hello,

 

I am building a flash card program for my website for Hebrew vocabulary
practice (and eventually Greek). The goal is to offer a free online training
tool that teaches every word that appears 50x or more in the Hebrew Bible,
therefore making learning/reading tools like, "A Reader's Hebrew-English
Lexicon of the Old Testament" by Armstrong-Busby-Carr more useful.

 

My "problems" are:

 

1. Frequencies.

The vocabulary lists in the rear of, "A Reader's Hebrew-English Lexicon of
the Old Testament" are Alphabetical and not listed based on frequency. For
practical purposes I want to start with the most frequent words and work
down.

 

So how do I obtain these frequency lists, legally, for my use? I have the
vocabulary guides by Mitchel, Landes, Pennington, and Van Pelt & Practico.
For obvious reasons I do not wish to use their information (unless
permitted) because it could be viewed as "competition" and detract from the
sales of their hard labor.

 

I have Bibleworks but seem to be unable to generate very accurate lists (you
cannot sort by lexical entry, so all words with the same 3 root are grouped
together). What tool do I need to use to get the frequency information of
Hebrew words found in the Hebrew Bible?

 

2. Word list / definitions.

I was planning to use the word list in the "Reader's Lexicon" because the
original intent was to build up someone's vocabulary so a book like such
would become infinitely more usable and thus facilitate reading. BUT...

 

The copyright prohibits any reproduction, in any form, of any part of the
book. Now the word definitions themselves are taken from BDB, but I don't
think that helps my cause! Does this copyright pretty much make the use of
that list a no-no, even though it facilitates the use of the book by others?

 

3. Other vocabulary lists.

There are about 700 words that appear 50x or more, so the basic idea is to
have ~35 twenty word vocabulary quizes (and 7 one-hundred word review
quizzes). I also plan to offer quizzes that focus on verbal stems,
pronominal suffixes, adjectives, numbers, prepositions, and so forth. One of
the great things about the vocabulary guide by Van Pelt & Practico is they
have some good adjective and preposition lists.

 

 

So I am at a roadblock and need some suggestions on how to proceed! Either
generating accurate definitions and frequencies with Bibleworks (preferable)
or a book where I can freely use the frequency information and/or definition
information without violating any author rights, etc...

 

Thanks for your time.

 

Joshua Luna

fof AT pluswebdesign.com