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How is Hebrew similar to Arabic?

How long will it take to learn the Torah's Hebrew?

  • Good day everyone, I'm sure you get that question ALL the time, I'm a native Arabic speaker and would very much like to study the Torah. So basically: 1.) How hard will it be to learn the language? 2.) How long will it take to learn the language? 3.) Are the interpretations, scholarly work, and Rabbinic commentary in modern or ancient Hebrew? 4.) Do current day Rabbis and Scholars speak/lecture/debate in modern or ancient Hebrew? 5.) Assuming I'm both equally fluent in English and Arabic, would using the English online material make it slower than Arabic to Hebrew (which is harder to find, I think) ? 6.) Any advice or notes are welcome.

  • Answer:

    "omg" unwisely used the phrase "Hebrew dialects." He meant to say "Hebrew pronunciations." Hebrew (at a given era) doesn't have dialects like, say, colloquial Arabic. = We don't know your motives, and we don't know how much energy you're going to invest in this endeavor, so it's hard to give you advice. Generally, I'd suggest to most people to learn Modern Hebrew. It's largely "backward compatible" with Biblical Hebrew. Kids in Israel are reading the bible without any preparation and they aren't told it's a different kind of Hebrew (sure, it has a different literary style, and archaic words, but that's usualy not a problem). I see that on the internet a lot of sites market "Biblical Hebrew" (versus Moden Hebrew) and I suspect it has mostly to do with business. Think of it this way: Imagine that Modern Hebrew is MSA (Modern Standard Arabic) and Biblical Hebrew is colloquial Arabic. You'd recommend me to learn MSA first and you'd tell me that I'd be able to understand colloquial Arabic (either outright or after some short preparation). Furthermore: Modern Hebrew is much, much, much closer to Biblical Hebrew than MSA to colloquial Arabic. (I don't know Classical Arabic. Had I known, perhaps i'd've chosen to replace every "colloquial Arabic" in my example, above, with "Classical Arabic".) = "3.) Are the interpretations, scholarly work, and Rabbinic commentary in modern or ancient Hebrew?" The body of Jewish literature is vast: it spans from the first century (it was forbidden to write the Oral Torah before that time) to nowadays. Yet the typical Israeli can manage texts from the various eras easily; he doesn't see it as different Hebrews but mostly as different styles of the same language.

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Hey asker, 1)Basically Hebrew is considered as a difficult language, Considering that you are a native Arabic speaker learning Heb will be much easier for you since these 2 are semitic languages . 2)I cant tell you how long it takes to study it since it's an individual thing..it depends on your sense of absorption languages ,perseverance etc.. 3)Interpretations,scholarly work etc.. (from the past) are close to ancient Heb,but there r so many-that I'm sure there r many in modern heb and many in ancient heb 4)Current rabbis speak generally in modern heb-but when they study the Gmara (Talmud ) etc they often use Aramaic words , Even when they write and lecture some may use ancient phrases and style.. 5)I think that from English online material will be easier as you mentioned. 6)When using online material PLEASE check out it's a reliable text. I suggest that you search for Arabic AND Hebrew speakers -they'll be able to give advices and will be much usefull that I am.. Good luck :))

Ruth Feldman

1) Very depends on you. 2) Ditto. 3) All things that were written on the Torah starts from the Tanaites era, around 1 AC. All Hebrew until the revive of Hebrew is different to modern Hebrew somewhat. From the revive, around 1900 AC, it's more or less like Hebrew of today. So it really depends on the time the thing you read was written in. 4) Modern Hebrew, but many Jews use also some Aramaic, influenced by the Babylonian Talmud, but mainly the more religious ones. 5) idk, but remember that most not borrowed Hebrew words have common root with Arabic, so it'll be much easier to an Arabic speaker to remember a lot of Hebrew words meanings. Modern Hebrew uses a lot of English words, especially in scholarly fields, so English will help in that aspect. 6) Make sure you know which Hebrew dialect you learn. Israeli pronunciation (modern Hebrew) is different from other pronunciations, and it's a dialect of Sephardic dialect.

omg

1) if you speak Arabic probably not too hard 2) if you invest a decent about of time into it then you should be good 3) I think more modern, but not completely modern 4) If they are quoting then ancient, but normal debating would probably be in modern hebrew 5) English to Hebrew is kind of confusing

Jacob

It depends on your ability to learn languages. People who already know several do better than those who know only one. Also, if you know Arabic, then Hebrew shouldn't be too difficult for you, because the languages are fairly similar in some respects. I would suggest learning from an immersion course or with native Hebrew speakers.

learning a language depend son the person modern and ancient Hebrew are very similar -same alphabet, many words are the same, but the sentence structure is different and ancient Hebrew has many exceptions to the rules. the commentaries depend on when it was written, but many of the common commentators wrote very similar, it wont be like you'll have to learn a whole new language for modern and ancient Hebrew. it will probably be better to learn modern Hebrew (will probably be easier to learn that for you also) then you'll just have to get used to ancient Hebrew, the way its written and such. using English would probably be better and easier. you should try to get a teacher to teach Hebrew to you. Hebrew is intense, there are many rules and just as many exceptions (like English). well Good luck. :)

Chani M

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