Isaiah 56:10 construct question

[Jason Hare]

Out of curiosity, do you ever spend time reading Hebrew without translating it? I mean, just reading in Hebrew for as long as you can, letting the text flow?

Hi Jason:

this caught my eye and if I could ask a question on this - if you had to compare "reading" versus "listening" which one would you put a greater emphasis on? SO, for example, say I was gonna spend 30 min in the morning studying Hebrew, would you go "30 min all reading without translating" or "30 min all listening to Hebrew audio" or would you do a mix. If you can, take into account all reading and all listening would be without comprehension (if I read say Joshua I'm simply gonna be reading it but there will be no comprehension of what I'm reading). Same for listening to audio of Joshua - there will be no comprehension.

Glenn

Do it all together!

Spend one day just reading to yourself a passage.

The next time, play an audio recording and read along.

The next time, play the audio recording and don't read it on your page.

See how you improve in your comprehension of the text.

[Jason Hare]

I've never heard of a "silent language," though. Well, I guess the world's various sign languages are silent, but that isn't quite what we're talking about.

[Jason Hare]

This came up on B-Greek today:

Let's suppose someone can read English words, word by word, parse them, find them in a dictionary and find glosses for another language and then translate the result word by word into the other language. Would you say he can read English?

Those who write here regularly usually think that reading means fluent or at least semi-fluent reading, especially without an interlinear. Most people need a dictionary every now and then and at least I need some parsing help every now and then. Way too often, to be honest, and I'm far from fluent. But I recommend a Reader's Edition rather than an interlinear.

Your questions reveal that you handle Greek differently than you handle other human languages. You don't read and understand, you analyze bit by bit and then try to understand the bits you analyzed, then trying to draw the analysis together. That's not worthless and may be even necessary sometimes but it isn't reading or knowing Greek.

Gotta read to know the language. It's relevant for Greek, and it's relevant for Hebrew.

[Glenn Dean]

Do it all together!

Spend one day just reading to yourself a passage.

The next time, play an audio recording and read along.

The next time, play the audio recording and don't read it on your page.

See how you improve in your comprehension of the text.

Thanxs! That makes sense (to alternate listening and reading). So pick a passage and don't move on to another passage until you can fully read and hear (without looking at the text) the entire passage (i.e. learn one passage really-really well, and only then move on to another passage)

Glenn

[Jason Hare]

Thanxs! That makes sense (to alternate listening and reading). So pick a passage and don't move on to another passage until you can fully read and hear (without looking at the text) the entire passage (i.e. learn one passage really-really well, and only then move on to another passage)

Glenn

Seems like a great idea to me. You could spend a month in half the book of Genesis - like we did on the Joseph story. Just read the chapter several times, with and without audio, with and without the text. Let your ears and your eyes adjust to how the words sound, how they look... and let your heart attach itself to how they feel. Language is so connected to emotion, and when you let the text move, when you mull it over again and again, it begins to mean more than a string of sounds.

[Glenn Dean]

Before this discussion, I was translating Amos Ch 1 and Psalm 8. I think my first passage will be Ps 8, which is about perfect - it's 9 verses in total.

[Kenneth Greifer]

Jason,
I don't think what I am doing is a good idea. I feel that I could have learned Biblical Hebrew if I tried to read out loud and tried to learn words, etc. I think that if you read the word "bayit" in Hebrew out loud or in your mind or you just say "house", in a way, you are reading the Hebrew as another language. You could study any language without knowing how to pronounce the words, but you need to know their meanings and the grammar rules to make sense out of it. I believe that for me treating Hebrew as a silent written language is good enough for my interests in the subject. I regret doing this sometimes, but I am really bad at memorizing information I don't use. If I don't use these words in regular life, I am not going to memorize them anyway. Maybe in the future I will try to learn the language, but not now.

[talmid56]

I would definitely recommend Jason’s approach to Hebrew that he’s outlined. Read all you can first, without looking up anything in a lexicon or parser. Take it in small chunks at first. Say, a paragraph or two, then half a chapter, then a chapter as you become better at it. Before looking up anything you don’t understand, try to make some guesses first from context what the word or phrase could mean. Do this from the Hebrew text in front of you, not by comparing a translation (not even an ancient translation, e.g., the Septuagint or the Vulgate). There is a place for doing those things, but don’t do them right off the bat.

I would also suggest trying to ask and answer questions from the text, in Hebrew, as an aid to understanding the text and helping you read. We do this in our native language at times when reading new material. Normally we do it in our heads rather than writing it or saying it aloud, but sometimes we do it. It can be helpful in Hebrew study, as well. If you would like to try this approach, see my earlier B-Hebrew posts giving a sample from Exodus. Or you can see them on my blog.

As for translating, there are several concerns I have about that approach, despite being trained that way in my formal Hebrew studies. First, we are often taught that it is necessary to do this to read. It isn’t necessary. It actually can hinder reading. Second, it is based on some wrong assumptions or misunderstandings. It assumes that students at an early stage of their Hebrew studies, who are not yet fluent in the language, can understand it well enough to translate. It also assumes that the result will be accurate enough and understandable enough to help the learner who produced it, and perhaps help others. None of these beliefs are valid. The truth is, students become good readers in a language, including their native language, by first learning to understand, and then to produce, understandable messages. And those reading skills can develop, and do develop, by learning vocabulary in a meaningful context. Grammar skills also develop the same way. This is what “comprehensible input” in language acquisition means. And a person must have fluency, preferably strong or expert fluency, in two languages to be a competent translator. A person who has little to no fluency in Hebrew cannot translate it well. Nor can a person translate a Hebrew text who doesn’t read Hebrew well.

It should also be noted that grammatical analysis, while it can be a helpful tool, does not itself build reading skills. It is, rather, an aid to one who already has basic reading skills.

And Kenneth, I don’t mean this to put you down. But, if you aren’t trying to learn Hebrew in any serious way, how does being a B-Hebrew member help you?

[Kenneth Greifer]

And Kenneth, I don’t mean this to put you down. But, if you aren’t trying to learn Hebrew in any serious way, how does being a B-Hebrew member help you?

Dewayne,
I am not trying to learn Biblical Hebrew as in memorizing the language. I am trying to understand the language while looking at translations or doing my own alternative translations. I am interested in textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible, and I am not really trying to memorize the words I analyze as I try to look at different verses. There are many words in English that I can understand, I hope correctly, but that I never use because I don't know or talk to people who use those kinds of words. All of those words might as well be a foreign language to me, although I get the gist of what people are saying. I have read books and articles that were full of English words that I can't imagine anyone actually uses. I am amazed that there are so many English words that I have never heard of for so many things. I read blogs and articles by scholars sometimes and I am amazed by the words they know.

As far as learning languages though, I have an opinion on that that might seem strange. I think you learn a language by mixing it with the language you already know like saying a verse in English and then putting a word from Biblical Hebrew into that sentence instead of saying a full sentence in Biblical Hebrew. Also, I think you should say the meaning of that word in English too. In my opinion, by using English around the word, your mind figures out the meaning of the Hebrew word from it's context. I am sure that everyone will say I am wrong, but that is my opinion. I think that over time, you can use more Hebrew words in the sentence as you get used to them and you won't need to use English words as much. I noticed that people who I have met who have learned English seem to be willing to speak Spanish, usually, mixed with English until they learn enough words to speak English without Spanish.

[talmid56]

I understand why you're taking that particular approach to learning Hebrew vocabulary. I've even seen some modern languages textbooks for beginners do that. French in 10 Minutes A Day comes to mind. But having been both a teacher (Spanish, Latin, French, and English as A Second Language) of languages and a learner (eight so far, not counting my native English), I can tell you that this is not an optimal method. And doing Hebrew that way, you are not learning it in its own context. You are learning it in a foreign context. You cannot make the proper connections of meaning with the other Hebrew words that way. As Jason pointed out, meaning depends on context. Which is one reason why the reading vs translation question is important.

Learning Hebrew works best when doing so on its own terms. The “I must translate so I can read mantra” not only ignores how languages actually work, and how reading skills are actually acquired, but it promotes two wrong assumptions or viewpoints, consciously or unconsciously. First, that it is not possible to just learn to read the texts with comprehension. Second, that the content of the texts is unworthy of being addressed on its own terms: it must be translated first. Both of these do the student more harm than good, in my view.