imputerate@puteracy.com

[Jason Hare]

Jason,
I imagine Deaf people who want to learn Biblical Hebrew as a written language and not signed somehow have no choice but to learn it without sounds, if they have never heard sounds, I assume. If someone goes deaf later in life, then they can imagine sounds to the words.
I do study grammar and words that I look up, but I don't try to pronounce the words, and I don't try to memorize them. I just visually recognize them and if I see them enough, I might accidentally memorize them. Usually, I only redivide the letters in a small way that moves one or two letters over. I don't change every word. I just don't try to say words or memorize words because I don't have to for what I am doing. I just see them as letters put together as words. I can just look at "bayit' in Hebrew and read it as "house" in English without actually pronouncing the Hebrew word. It is like reading Hebrew in English translation and ignoring the Hebrew word sort of.

Now that I think of it, I guess you look at the Hebrew text immediately next to the English text or in an interlinear and just pair the Hebrew letter shapes to English words. Is that what you’re doing?

[Kenneth Greifer]

Imagine if you had a book that taught the words of a language and the grammar of the language, but not the pronunciation of the letters. You could still learn to read the language by translating it into your own language as a silent language. It is not as good as learning the language fully, but it can get the job done. You can do it with any language. The words are like pictograms like in a language with pictures and that you did not know how to pronounce the words, so what, you can still translate it into your own language. I am sure that a Deaf person who wanted to study any language in the world and who has never heard a sound would still be able to learn to read any language as pictograms or whatever you call it. Words are words no matter how you pronounce them. They can still have meanings without pronunciation. I am not learning the language exactly, but I am studying individual verses in the way I want to. I can look at a translation or do my own. I can look up the words and if I know the grammar rules, I can recognize what the little symbols stand for. Letters are symbols that make up words that are also symbols. I have never studied linguistics, but if you ask a linguist if you can study a language as a silent language, I am sure a linguist would say yes. They used to have a site called something like askalinguist. I actually asked a question there years ago, and a linguist answered me.

[Jason Hare]

About the dagesh, though: If the letter containing dagesh is at the beginning of a word or after sheva (םְ), the dagesh is dagesh lene. If, however, the dagesh follows a vowel, it is dagesh forte and doubles the letter.

בֶּ֫גֶד — The בּ is at the beginning of the word and exhibits dagesh lene. It is not doubled (béḡeḏ).

מִדְבָּר — The בּ follows a silent sheva and exhibits dagesh lene. It is not doubled (midbār).

דִּבֶּר — The בּ follows the vowel ḥirik, so it exhibits dagesh forte. It is doubled and serves to close the first syllable and to open the second (dibber [dib-ber]).

When a begedkefet letter contains the dagesh, it is always hard. You cannot double the soft version of the letter.

[Jason Hare]

By “whose flood?”, I assume that you’re talking about the Flood of Noah. The question is kinda vague. Do you think that the flood as recounted in the Book of Genesis belonged to someone?

[imputerate]

> jason,
thank you for your spirited response to my self-introduction;

as for my re-invented wheel: "learning hebrew," in the full sense of the
word is not an option for me (i turn 85 soon); to embrace the texture (if
only graphic) of the biblical text requires that i have a transliteration,
as well as an audible equivalent (for exercising cantillation) which matches
the text. i find your term "self-consistent system" intriguing; would you
expand a little?

as for my name in my signature: i "signed" my introduction by writing my
legal name at the end of the text; should i have used my forum sign-in ID
("imputerate") or maybe "name in your signature" refers to some other data
cache?

this is my first reply; i clicked on the quotation marks, upper right;
that quoted text is here, below; please advise me about the exchange
protocol;
this is my first reply; i clicked on the quotation marks, upper right;
that quoted text is here, below; please advise me about the exchange
protocol;

this is my first reply; i clicked on the quotation marks, upper right;
that quoted text is here, below; please advise me about the exchange protocol;

peter

Peter Hodgson, imputerate@puteracy.com
this is my first reply; i clicked on the quotation marks, upper right;
that quoted text is here, below; please advise me about the exchange
protocol;

(here's a copy of my post and jason's reply
this is my first reply; i clicked on the quotation marks, upper right;
that quoted text is here, below; please advise me about the exchange
protocol;

Hello. I taught Russian literature for a third of a century at UCLA.
I'm out to pasture now, completely submerged in the study of biblical Hebrew and the Pentateuch. I'm easy in a few languages, but find the Masoretic version daunting. Since I can't imagine anybody will ever care how it sounds when I read the bible aloud (which I intend to do at length), I am working on a transliteration, a phonemic system, and a cursive which will correspond exactly to the printed version of the text.
Once I get to navigate this forum, I'll be posting questions like, "How do you know if a dotted BGDKPT is "hard" or doubled?" and then on to matters like "whose flood?"
Peter Hodgson

Well, by all means, re-invent the wheel. You do know that this is a language that is tied to a culture, and that we speak this language today? Why not just learn it as you would any other language instead of making up your own way? :sigh:

Can you imagine if I decided to learn Russian but then said, “Well, I don’t care how Russians speak this language or how anyone else in the world pronounces it. I’m just going to make up my own way and start writing the language in transliteration, not bothering with learning the Cyrillic letters or how they should be pronounced. It doesn’t really matter, anyway.” That’s how this sounds. Why not just learn the language as a real language and not make things up? We have enough invented individual systems floating around. If you don’t want to learn to pronounce the language for th this is my first reply; i clicked on the quotation marks, upper right;
that quoted text is here, below; please advise me about the exchange
protocol;
e sake of other speakers, what does it matter if you’re looking at one type of dagesh or another? We have a member here who thinks that dagesh never doubles letters. Does it matter what the majority of grammarians have to say? Can’t you just invent your own self-consistent system of transcription and pronunciation?

Oh well... Just one thing I’d ask: please put your name in your signature so that it shows up on any posts that you make in the future. Welcome to B-Hebrew. I hope you’ll reconsider just learning the language in a way that can be communicated to other people. There are plenty of resources, including full recordings of the Bible being read in Hebrew (like these ones), that will help you learn to read correctly and consistently.

[imputerate]

Peter,
I read the Hebrew Bible silently, without pronouncing any words at all because I just look at it as letters that make up words like a silent language. The people here got very mad at me when I told them that. You already broke the most important unwritten rule on language discussion forums: Never tell people what you are really doing. Just act like everybody else. Nobody needs to know if you have any ulterior motives that they won't like because they might decide not to answer you. Some people here told me I was wasting their time by asking questions about Biblical Hebrew because I admitted I am not trying to actually learn the language in the usual way. They said they won't answer any of my questions anymore. I just wanted to study Biblical Hebrew without trying to learn the language, which is a little diffUSER STATISTICSerent, but I am still studying the language anyway.
I am not sure I understand what you are trying to do, but I think you should not have told anybody.

kenneth, so glad to hear from you; when i clicked on "contact kenneth greifer, there was no response; here's my email address- imputerate@puteracy.com

[imputerate]

jason, thanks so much for taking me seriously; here's where i am; happy to take on any tasks you suggest;
peter

If I can offer a place to start, you should really check out the Alef with Beth YouTube channel.

> always happy to find new tut channels > i exploit the transliteration on https://biblehub.com/interlinear/genesis/1-14.htm;

but i need a tLt which i can type-

m".h*l.::% %+r+b ,t".,s%..r:b

no cantillation marks, ( ' ) occasionally for non-last-syl stress;

There are tons of places for learning the alphabet online.

> happy to report in that i can read, type, write and recite the alphabet;

If you want to learn standard academic transcription (as in bərēʾšîṯ bārāʾ ʾĕlōhîm), I can give you some links

> i exploit the transliteration on https://biblehub.com/interlinear/genesis/1-14.htm;
but i need a tLt which i can type-

m".h*l.::% %+r+b ,t".,s%..r:b

no cantillation marks,
( ' ) occasionally for non-last-syl stress;

We have a standard cursive writing form in Israel, which you can easily learn (as in part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4 of a YouTube series). You don’t need to create a cursive that no one in the world will recognize;

i have stuck pretty close to the cursives used on the many grammar tutorials i follow;

we already write in cursive Hebrew. You don’t need to create a transcription system; we already have one that is accepted for academic purposes. Why re-invent the wheel when the academic study of Hebrew is a vibrant field filled with people who have been on this journey for decades, and we have a long tradition of how to read, write, and understand the language. I just don’t know why someone who doesn’t know the language would want to create their own system of understanding it instead of just learning it from people who already know.

Peter Hodgson, imputerate

[Jason Hare]

Peter,

No one will remember what you wrote in your introductory thread. The signature is a part of your profile. Just click here and add your name and save it. It will add it to all of your posts in the future. You won’t need to put your name on your posts, since it will be automatic.

My signature appears below the following line:

[Jason Hare]

When you say that you “exploit” the website resources, do you mean that you “take advantage” of them? “Exploit” has a bad connotation. Maybe that’s a translation issue. What is your first language?, if I may ask.

At 85 years old, I hope that I’m still sitting in front of a computer screen trying to figure things out. Good on ya.

[Jason Hare]

m".h*l.::% %+r+b ,t".,s%..r:b

I don’t know what this is.