Biblical Hebrew Forum

[dwashbur AT nyx.net]

To be brutally honest, unless you just enjoy learning obscure languages, 
Ugaritic probably 
isn't going to help you with Hebrew that much.  I learned it in seminary, in 
fact took an extra 
independent study course in it after the basics just because I'm crazy :-) 
but in the 25 years 
since I finished seminary, I have used my Ugaritic tools for my Hebrew 
research maybe 10 
times, and all those times it really didn't help me any.  I used Gordon's 
book set, but I 
wouldn't recommend it mainly because of his proprietary way of numbering the 
texts.  
Segert wasn't out at the time so resources were limited (1982-83), and I did 
enjoy playing 
with the language and figuring out what it said.  But again, I've never 
claimed to be 
completely sane...

On 21 May 2007 at 17:45, particle wave wrote:

> 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
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> 


Dave Washburn
But I can't say Sylvester, George!