Biblical Hebrew Forum

[George F Somsel <gfsomsel AT juno.com>]

On Thu, 25 Aug 2005 21:25:48 -0500 "Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>
writes:
> 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.
> 
> 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.
____________

Karl,

I would say that you need to relearn languages.  I know a few myself and
I would say that your concept of one lexeme, one meaning is definitely
wrong. 

Much reading does not indicate much understanding.  I remember puzzling
over the beginning of Kierkegaard's "Fear and Trembling" in college.  I
would repeat the paragraph over and over and would still not comprehend. 
Get yourself a good lexicon and use it.

george
gfsomsel
___________