A progress report, or dots and dashes are not always Morse code

In a post last month entitled "I, polyglot" I reported that I had begun trying to learn to read Hebrew. At that time I had completed four video lessons out of a total of 11 in an online course. Today I'm going to give you a progress report.

I'm still trying, but my learning rate has slowed a bit. It has not become moribund yet; it is just moving along at the pace of molasses (British, treacle). Specifically, I have now completed six of the 11 video lessons. I know, pathetic, isn't it? I will get there eventually, or it may be more accurate to say that I intend to.

In my defense, I have gone back and reviewed the first six videos several times to make sure the information is emblazoned in my brain. I tend to go a little too fast because I am eager to get on with it, and instead of the new knowledge sinking in I find that what I thought I had learned has gone with the wind.

There is a famous movie title hidden in the preceding paragraph. Finding it ensures your continued eligibility to be our grand prize winner. No purchase is necessary.

I shall now go on at length about why Hebrew is so difficult. For one thing, the letters look nothing like ours, and many of them look like one another. For another thing, Hebrew is read from right to left instead of from left to right, so the back of the book will be in the front and the front of the book will be in the back. If you can't comprehend what I'm trying to say, it doesn't matter. Just keep reading.

You may remember that I ended a recent post with the phrase "I remain yr obdt svt" in the same way people ended business letters in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. If you managed to interpret the last part as "your obedient servant" you begin to understand the biggest problem involved with learning Hebrew. In written Hebrew, both ancient and modern, there are no vowels. It's hard to know how to pronounce words, or even to know what the words are, when there are no vowels UNLESS you already speak the language.

That's why native speakers of English can see that "yr obdt svt" is "your obedient servant" but non-native speakers might scratch their heads. Little boys in Christian Sunday Schools often choose the shortest verse in the New Testament, John 11:35, to fulfill their assignment to memorize a Scripture verse each week. Here is what that verse would look like if English had no vowels:

JSS WPT
Here's another verse with which you may be familiar. Can you read it without the vowels?

N TH BGNNNG GD CRTD TH HVN ND TH RTH

Wouldn't it be helpful if there were some way to indicate vowels? Of course it would!

J_eS_uS W_ePT
_iN TH_e B_eG_iNN_iNG G_oD CR_eaT_eD TH_e H_eaV_eN _aND TH_{e ea}RTH

Between 1,500 and 1,000 years ago, a group of Hebrew scholars in the Palestinian city of Tiberias -- they are known as Masoretes -- devised a way to show non-speakers of Hebrew how to pronounce the Hebrew words in the Old Testament by adding a system of dots and dashes (mostly dots) placed strategically over, under, and near the consonants of the Hebrew Bible.

Here is what a passage from the Hebrew Old Testament (Tanakh) looks like with the Masoretic vowel indicators added:

The first sentence (first two lines) translated into English is "Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD is one". One of the most well-known passages in the Hebrew Scriptures, it is found in the sixth chapter of the book of Deuteronomy.

A transliteration of the Hebrew line is "shema yisrael (adonai) eloheinu (adonai) echad" but that is a little misleading. The word adonai does not appear in the text. Adonai means "the LORD" and is always used as a substitute for the four-letter word יְהוָה (YHWH), which is really unpronounceable because it is more like the sound of inhaling and exhaling (the living God, remember?). You can see, then, how a word like YHWH became YaHWeH by others even though it is never spoken in Judaism. And that word morphed into the English word Jehovah after the letters J and V were added to our alphabet in the Middle Ages.

A historical note: When Moses asked the voice speaking to him from the bush that burned but was not consumed what its name was (so that he could tell it to the Israelites) the voice said יְהוָה (YHWH) which has always been translated as "I am that I am". As I said, observant Jews never utter this name because it is considered too holy; they say adonai (LORD) instead. In an English sentence they write G-d instead of God.

Things get complicated very rapidly when a person is trying to learn Hebrew.

I'm just saying.

I, polyglot

I never make New Year's resolutions, but I decided late in December to try to learn to read Hebrew. So far I have completed four video lessons onlline out of a total of 11 in the course and am making good progress. You CAN teach an old dog new tricks.

I can read Greek (that is, I can pronounce the words even though I have no idea what most of them mean) and I have also attempted to learn to read Russian because I like a good challenge for my brain. It fascinated me that USSR became CCCP in Cyrillic.

I know a smattering of Swedish because I spent a month in Stockholm in 1969. I know a smattering of Albanian because my wife's parents spoke it (Tosk dialect as opposed to Gheg) in their home. I know a smattering of Spanish (maybe a little more than a smattering) because I live in the United States in the 21st century.

I studied French and Latin in school. I can say "How are you?" in Chinese and "Thank you" in Portuguese and "Goodbye" in Japanese and Italian and German. Speaking of German, I can also say Achtung! and Dummkopf.

When asked to demonstrate one's knowledge of French, one might hearken back to one's schooldays and say je suis, tu es, il est, nous sommes, vous êtes, ils sont which means I am, you are, he is, we are, you are, they are. But I have a friend in Sweden who made me laugh back in 1969 when he demonstrated his French ability by saying je me lave, tu te laves, il se lave, nous nous lavons, vous vous lavez, ils ses lavent which means I wash myself, you wash yourself, he washes himself, we wash ourselves, you wash yourselves, they wash themselves.

I'm still laughing.

The hardest part of learning Hebrew, by the way, is that there are no vowels in the alphabet, just consonants. You probably won't believe how vowels are indicated even if I show you.

The odd thing is that ancient Hebrew had no vowels, all Torah scrolls have no vowels, and modern Hebrew (what is used in Israel today) has no vowels. Vowels were invented by the Masoretes of Tiberias in the fifth or sixth century A.D. (or C.E., if you prefer) so that non-speakers of Hebrew could read the books of the Old Testament.

I think Arabic also uses dots to indicate vowels, but I am not ready to tackle Arabic yet.

Maybe I don't have it in me to be a polyglot.

A quote from Robert Browning seems fitting here: "A man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?"

But I am still going to do my best to learn to read Hebrew.