Biblical Hebrew Forum

["particle wave" <particle.wave AT gmail.com>]

Greetings all,

First, since I'm fairly new to the list, a little bit of introduction.
I grew up a moderately religious Jew and while I studied the Tanakh
and Talmud in their Hebrew and Aramaic forms, respectively, I was
never really taught anything about the grammar of Biblical Hebrew or
Talmudic Aramaic. I did learn Modern Hebrew grammar, though it took a
semester and a half of Classical Arabic in college to make the Hebrew
grammar gel (thank you Arabic pronunciations of ayin, tet and qof).
My interest in semitic linguistics started when I spent a semester
simultaneously taking classes on Modern Hebrew Grammar, Classical
Arabic and some text study of both the Talmud and some Dead Sea
Scrolls material. This interest has been largely dormant for the last
dozen plus years but was recently rekindled by a debate with a friend
over Ashkenazi Hebrew pronunciation that led to binge-reading on
linguistics in general. I'm now looking at applying to school to
formally study linguistics with a focus on Semitic languages.

So, in the meantime, I'm taking a stab at Ugaritic. I just got my copy
of Segert's book and have been digging in.  My Hebrew is pretty much
shot at this point (though more use of it will bring a lot back pretty
quickly) and what little Arabic and Aramaic I learned in school is
long gone now. I'm meeting later this week with a friend who's a
speech pathologist to walk through the phonology as described in the
book. I'm wondering what other resources people on the list might be
able to recommend. I've poked around on the net a bit and found an
online course at the Quartz Hill School of Theology
[http://www.theology.edu/ugraintr.htm] but it doesn't seem to add much
other than lists of words to memorize and some reading comprehension
tests. These both seem like good ideas and I'll use them but I'm
wondering what other books and resources people might recommend.

Thanks,
    Amir Rosenblatt
    Seattle, WA