Hebrew Language Basics

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Reading Hebrew

Now a few more rules, and we are well on the way:

1. The letter Aleph is a kind of silent letter in Hebrew. This is unless it has a vowel with it and then it is pronounced inthe manner of that vowel. For example in the word bud, the U is actually notpronounced, but more tells you how to pronounce the B. This is very much thesame in Hebrew.

2. The letter Vav has two sorts of pronounciations. One is hard and the otheris soft. 99% of the time, unless it has an 'o' or an 'oo' vowel with it, it ispronounced as a v sound. If it does have one of these vowels with it, then it ispronounced as an o or an oo, but once more more as a silent vowel than as aletter in itself.

3. If the letter Yod does not have a vowel on it, it acts like the letter Y would in English if after another letter. So for example, in the word "by", the 'y' is more telling you how to pronounce the letter 'b' than how to pronounce the 'y'. This is the same in Hebrew.

4. The letter Chet is not like a letter that we have in English. The soundmay be compared to went someone is getting ready to spit. However, I wouldn'tadvise you to practice too much!!

5. The letter Ayin is also not like a letter that we have in English. It issimilar to a hard A coming more from the back of the throat with a slight click.

6. The final letters from the above alphabet are written as such when theyare at the end of words. There is no difference in the pronounciation.

So far we have done our letters, we have done our vowels, so let's tryand understand how words are formed. Luckily in Hebrew this is easier than inother languages. Firstly because there are no real exceptions to pronounciation.Also because the way that you read Hebrew means that you can take each letter asit comes without depending on later letters for pronounciation. Once you do knowthe letters and vowels, it is easy to read wordserror