Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>]

Bill:

What I present now is a maturing of ideas I got, at least 
in embroyonic form, while yet a teenager. At 19, Hebrew was 
the fifth foreign language I studied and by that time I had 
developed certain ideas as to how to learn foreign languages. 
After learning basic grammar, start filling it in with 
vocabulary.

First, the hardest part of learning a language is learning 
vocabulary. If one wants to be able to speak a language 
fluently, he needs to learn the vocabulary with its 
ideosyncrecies as a native speaker would, not as terms are 
described in dictionaries. It was from learning modern 
languages such as German that I developed the concept that 
each lexeme has one basic meaning, the meanings for some 
lexemes are quite broad, those for others quite narrow. Of 
course, like any other social science, there are exceptions, 
they tend to be few enough not to upset the apple cart, 
fewer than the lists of irregular verbs.

Second, connected with the first, learn vocabulary rules 
as to how lexemes interact with other lexemes within the 
language being studied, not how to translate them to 
English. That way, when I try to speak the language, I 
will be reacting in the same way as a native speaker would, 
not as one who is translating from English.

I found that these two rules were consistant across all 
languages I studied.

Then I studied Hebrew. The dictionaries widely available 
and in use at that time were BDB and an English translation 
of Gesenius. Immediately I started trying to reconcile 
these dictionaries with the rules I had learned for 
studying other languages, as I figured that Biblical Hebrew 
followed the same basic rules that all other spoken 
languages follow. I also got Davidson's analytical lexicon 
which, by listing all derivitives under their roots, 
really helped me learn to recognize how lexemes are formed 
from their roots in Biblical Hebrew. The notes in the 
margins that later became my dictionary started when I was 
a first year student of the language, when at the time and 
for years following, they were there merely to help me 
understand the language. I also just read, read and read 
some more in Tanakh.

To show how much I read, I had two copies of Qoren Tanakh 
fall apart from use, my copy of Davidson's lexicon was 
history long ago, as well as my copy of Gessenius. I 
rebound my copy of Lisowski's concordance and for the last 
several years have been reading on computers where pages 
falling out are not a problem.

While you see a matured work in what I write now, they are 
based on ideas I already had by the time I was 19 years old.

Karl W. Randolph.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bill Rea" <bsr15 AT cantsl.it.canterbury.ac.nz>

> 
> Karl wrote:-
> 
> > Already, when I was in college longer ago than I care to
> > admit, it was a common belief that most significant new
> > discoveries were made by new comers to a field: either
> > those who were just graduating and/or transferring from
> > another field.
> 
> Perhaps you should question this recieved wisdom as it is certainly
> wrong. It is a romantic view of how knowledge is advanced.
> In Hebrew studies major discoveries, if that's the right term,
> will come from long periods of hard work and analysis. If you
> learn Hebrew as an adult, and that's what most non-Jews have to
> do, it will take several years to become moderately fluent in
> the language. Take a look at the path which has brought you to
> your current, very non-standard, understanding of how the Hebrew
> language works. You had to learn from Hebrew scholars who wrote
> the texts and lexicons. Only after you mastered that material
> were you in a position to start to question whether the lexicons
> were right. You are not a case of someone popping in from another
> discipline and coming up with a new discovery which the old hands
> missed. You are an old hand. I dare say all on this list who have
> advanced new ideas on this list about the Hebrew verbal system
> are old hands in Hebrew. I don't see how it could be otherwise.
> 
> If I may digress to another field. Usually mathematics is cited as
> the science which is most dominated by young people making radical
> discoveries. That's not the case now if ever it was. In the last
> 15 years the two greatest single steps forward were made by Andrew
> Wiles at age 41 and Grigori Perelmann at age 40. They weren't young
> whipper-snappers working in isolation.
> 
> Bill Rea, IT Services, University of Canterbury \_
> E-Mail bill.rea AT canterbury.ac.nz               </   New
> Phone 64-3-364-2331, Fax  64-3-364-2332       /)  Zealand
> Unix Systems Administrator                   (/'

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