Mike Atnip wrote:To get started I am considering between Kutz/Josberger and Pratico/Pelt.
I recently got Pratico-Pelt from the library, and it is really quite good. It's broken into (many) small chapters that are contained & digestible in the span of one sitting. Each chapter ends with either some kind of lexical abstract and/or a bit of "advanced" (I don't know why they call it that) morphosyntax, which is how I learned the extremely interesting word קְדֵשָׁה.
Mike Atnip wrote:My learning weakness is memorization of names. I could probably tell you, for example, the sounds of most of the vowel pointings, but their names are difficult for me to remember.
My advice to you, as someone who is rather familiar with this business, is not to get bogged down by foreign nomenclature: learn only so much as allows you to navigate reference works quickly, because it is not at all likely that you will have to (or even want to)
produce Biblical Hebrew.
Consider the fact that no editor in his right mind would subject you to the inscrutable cantillation marks when you haven't even learned the "alphabet", and the reason is simply that you have no use for them at this time. Or the fact that many students of Ancient (and of Koine/Biblical) Greek go months or even years without learning the 'native' name for what they refer to (after the Roman usage) as a 'circumflex' (the Greek is
perispōmenon); that is, they simply say the word 'that works'. As long as you have in your head a clear conception of 'this sign means such-and-such a vowel', you need go no further.
- Max S-R