Biblical Hebrew Forum

[James Christian <jc.bhebrew AT googlemail.com>]

Hi,

2009/10/15 K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>

> James and Randall:
> In this message, I use “dialect” to refer to the different periods of
> Hebrew
> usage that have been more or less codified: the three main ones being
> Biblical, Mishnaic and modern Hebrews.
>
> On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 3:10 AM, James Christian
> <jc.bhebrew AT googlemail.com>wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > with regard to the differences and similarities and their effect on the
> > learner I'm not sure you are justified in making such a broad
> > generalisation
> >
>
> There is also the question of why one wants to learn Hebrew, which dialect
> he should learn and master first. I will emphasize “master” as in really
> learning it well.
>
> If his purpose is to read Tanakh, learning modern Hebrew before he has
> mastered Biblical Hebrew may actually detract from his understanding of the
> text.
>
>
>
>

I agree wholeheartedly with Karl here. Randall, in summary, you are making
sweeping statements about the best way to learn solely on the basis of
introspection which by any kind of psycholinguistic scoring system are far
too generic to be universally useful.

James Christian