Hebrew for beginners

Heiser, like most PhD's, bases his pronunciation and transliteration on Modern Hebrew. Thus you are going to learn a system that will inevitably lead to inaccuracy, contradiction, and confusion. Heiser calls the Hebrew "B" a "Beth". Beth is a girl's name.

Futato calls it a Bet. This is much better but is still significantly inaccurate in both the vowel and the final consonant.

Some call the letter a Beit. This is better still because the "ei" sound is correct. It is a diphthong (blending of two vowel sounds) of the E and I sounds. The E sound is "eh" or a short English E sound. The I is "ee" or a long English E sound. It is very common for the I sound to be a long E sound in most Mediteranean countries. When you say the two sounds together quickly, "eh" "ee", the result is a long English A sound..."ay".  [eh+ee = ay]

The final consonant is a T sound, but not exactly a T sound such as we have in English. It is a softened T sound, yes, but it is NOT NOT NOT NOT a "th" sound like we have in English...not even close. It is better to just pronounce it like a regular T than to pronounce it like an English "th" sound. Neither the hard "th" (like "thing") nor the soft "th" (like "this") is correct. This creates a slight problem when trying to convey the proper sound when using English characters. Normally, as in the word David, the second D sound, which is softened, would be transliterated as "dh"--thus Daawidh. Because we don't use "dh" in English, it doesn't create a transliteration problem. But we do use "th" in English, and it has a sound (two sounds, actually) that are not used in Hebrew. Therefore it is not a viable option to use "th" for transliteration of Hebrew into English.

Although it at first apprears clunky, I use "tth" to transliterate a non-dagesh "taw" (T sound, incorrectly referred to as "tav", the final letter of Hebrew). This indicates that it is both softened and yet still a T sound. Thus, the best way to transliterate the name of the second Hebrew consonant is beitth. However, one can use beit and still essentially indicate the correct sound--something close to the English word "bait". Bet is not desirable (because it's wrong) and beth is the worst of all.

This isn't a minor issue. I have a CD set by John Pennington in which he pronounces the Hebrew words used more than 20 times in the Bible. Because he uses a strange Anglicized version of Modern Hebrew, I simply can't understand what word he is pronouncing about 30% of the time. He pronounces many words the same way when they shouldn't sound the same. That is one of the problems with Modern Hebrew, and there are others as well.

In my experience, most PhD's don't pronounce or transliterate Hebrew properly because they were taught inaccuracies from their own professors who likewise were taught inaccuracies. This has gone on for at least a hundred years or more, since about the time Modern Hebrew started to become standard.

The biggest problem with transliteration is that those who employ it don't seem to understand what the point of transliteration is. It is used to as closely as possible transmit the proper PRONUNCIATION of the original language. In most cases, though, it seems as if they want to create the simplest possible SPELLING. All that does is force people unfamiliar with the original language to pronounce the language incorrectly. My fear is that reinforcing this imprecision is precisely what the Hebrew Pronunciation Add-in will do when Logos eventually releases it.

David Paul said:

This isn't a minor issue. I have a CD set by John Pennington in which he pronounces the Hebrew words used more than 20 times in the Bible. Because he uses a strange Anglicized version of Modern Hebrew, I simply can't understand what word he is pronouncing about 30% of the time. He pronounces many words the same way when they shouldn't sound the same. That is one of the problems with Modern Hebrew, and there are others as well.

And Pennington uses the "Erasmian" pronunciation for his NT Greek CDs. After one has been using Modern Greek or Randall Buth's Phonetic Koinê pronunciation, Erasmian sounds HORRIBLE and like fingernails scraping on a chalkboard. [:D]

Can you recommend a book or URL that gives the proper pronunciation of Biblical Hebrew with explanations of the detailed technicalities, like your comment that Taw is a softened "t" sound? I guess that's like tau in Greek was when theta was a hard "t" sound - i.e., like the "t" in "stop" instead of the "t" in "top, which is what theta was before it changed to an unvoiced "th" sound; say both "top" and "stop" with your hand in front of your mouth; the soft "t" won't emit a rush of air. I know Modern Hebrew pronunciation, and have grammars like Weingreen and Pratico that use a more "Classical Hebrew" pronunciation chart, but they don't get into the technicalities and finer shades of differentiation from our consonants that are used by them for transliteration.

MJ, I know you are a linguist (or something like one), so I'm sure you have a better command of the lingo than I do. I've spent some time studying the IPA code and after trying to crack it, I began to wonder if they really knew what they were talking about. I'm not an expert in linguistics and I'm not an expert in Hebrew, Biblical or Modern. But I do have enough sense to know what I don't know, and I also can tell when stuff doesn't add up. A great deal of what passes for Hebrew these days contradicts itself. For instance, I was on a website where a bunch of guys were talking about developing Hebrew typefaces. One of them kept referring to "qamats katan". The (not so) funny thing is, both of those words begin with a Qohpph (Qoph--which is also transliterated/spelled "qof", "quf", "quph"). There is not a good and logical reason why he or anyone else should use two different English letters (Q and K) to transliterate a single Hebrew letter that was making the exact same sound. Unfortunately, people do stuff like that all the time when it comes to Hebrew.

I could give you dozens and dozens of examples of nonsensical malarkey related to Hebrew transliteration, pronunciation, and spelling (both in English and in Hebrew). In fact, I have encountered examples of people giving at least two different HEBREW SPELLINGS of the term "qamats qatan" based on differing niqquudh. Hebrew is broken, plain and simple, and it doesn't get any better because the people who use it are horribly sloppy--they either don't acknowledge the problem, do know but don't care, or adopt a free-for-all attitude such as "transliteration is a personal thing".

Even George said he doesn't care how anyone pronounces it. Truthfully, in most cases, I wouldn't either. But Hebrew is not just any language.  I know you are familiar with at least some of the rabbinic literature that not only suggests but gives compelling evidence that Hebrew is a unique and special language...the very language of God, used by Him to encode an amazing amount of information within the language itself. So-called language experts, like Heiser, laugh at and ridicule such notions. For him, Hebrew is just another Semitic language like Ugaritic. I KNOW BETTER. The rabbis, with whom I often disagree, are absolutely right about the big picture of the Hebrew language. At some point the only logical conclusion to draw when you've uncovered a long string of improbable coincidences is that you aren't dealing with coincidences.

Getting back to the sounds...because we're talking about sounds, it will be next to impossible for us to come to any consensus on this subject in this forum. I know something about fricatives, asprirated and unaspirated stops, etc., but not enough to get into an in-depth discussion using those linguistic terms. As far as what I mean by a "soft" T, all I can do is describe how I pronounce it. The initial (dagesh) taw is a plain "hard" T sound, just like in English. The non-dagesh "soft" T sound is produced by slightly interposing the tip of the tongue between the teeth. There is no attempt to produce a qualitatively different sound than is produced when speaking the "hard" T, but the tip of the tongue reduces and diminishes the "plosive" effect. [See the picture where I am attempting to produce this sound. [:P] ]

Now that I have been speaking Hebrew for some time, I have gotten to the point where I can essentially produce this sound without having to deliberately use the tip of my tongue--sometimes I do and sometimes I don't depending on the vagaries of the syllables I'm pronouncing. The one thing I know for sure is that it ISN'T an English "th" sound whether hard or soft. Those Anglicizsed sounds are not indigenous to the Eastern Mediteranean part of the world.

I do not suggest that anyone can know with perfect certainty what Biblical Hebrew either sounds or sounded like. But we can get pretty close. I do know that the stuff that permeates most Hebrew textbooks isn't it, mainly because THEY SAY SO. Simply put, they don't even try. I don't really care if one person's summative attempt at Biblical Hebrew is a bit different from mine--I'll even listen enough to perhaps change my mind. My main concern is that the result of our efforts not be flagrantly, shamefully, offensively STUPID. The results of our efforts shouldn't contradict in assinine ways and on multiple levels.

Jonathan Pitts said:

Please could someone recommend which is the best book for learning the basics of Hebrew

FYI, the University uses First Hebrew Primer for its textbook of choice and has used it for 5 or so years......

U. of Arizona that is....

Perhaps...but I would think someone with a website called PaleoBabble that dishes out zingers left and right ought to be able to take an opposing remark or two...mainly since I have particular comments in mind.