Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Eric Inman" <eric-inman AT comcast.net>]

I would hesitate to take a such class for reasons similar to your number 3.
I'm not sure that it's possible to have conversations today in authentic BH,
and it's not entirely due to vocabulary issues. I think there are
differences between a conversational language and a written one, even when
conversations are represented in writing, especially in a literary work.
Therefore I'm not sure we know what conversational BH is, and, at the level
of marking nuances, emphasis, etc., I would feel I was learning an
artificial language. I feel that conversational language tends to evolve
fairly quickly, so I would be concerned about developing the wrong reflexes
to the language.

This is pretty much the same issue I recently asked about on the B-Greek
list.

I'm not saying these problems would outweigh the benefits of such a class.
Rather they are concerns which make me hesitant about the idea.

Reason 2 might also hold, but I haven't checked to find out.

Eric Inman

-----Original Message-----
From: b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Randall Buth
Sent: Sunday, June 14, 2009 7:19 AM
To: Hebrew
Subject: [b-hebrew] Survey Question about use of Biblical Hebrew in class

A survey question.

How many on this list are learning Biblical Hebrew in a spoken BH classroom?

If not, is this because

1. a belief that non-spoken methods are more efficient.

2. for practical reasons, a spoken BH class is not available for you.

3. a belief that BH is special/dead and shouldn't be spoken as a class
language.

Thank you for your responses.
Randall

-- 
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
randallbuth AT gmail.com
Biblical Language Center
Learn Easily - Progress Further - Remember for Life
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