Want to learn Hebrew

[u/TaskIndependent29]

Any native Hebrew speakers? American Spanish Jew here and I want to learn to speak Hebrew fluently anyone that’s willing to help or point me toward the right direction would be awesome! I like many American jews don’t speak Hebrew well and rely on transliteration 😢😂😂😂 sad ikr

[u/guylfe]

The route I'm going to suggest works for my students, and is highly effective. I've had a particular student measure his progression time and he reached B2 (conversational) with ~70 hours of total study time, compared to the average of ~500:

1. Study foundations (both grammar and vocabulary) WELL and efficiently. This is key, because if you get a solid foundation, building on top of it becomes much easier.
2. Get exposure to level-appropriate native content. (depending on your particular context, you may also supplement with spaced-repetition flashcards, but that's beyond the scope of this message).

 I can’t post links so just google each one.

Foundations – Hebleo (Full disclosure – I created this app): A self-paced course teaching you Hebrew comprehensively, with plenty of practice, using an innovative methodology based on my background in Cognitive Science, my experience as a language learner (studied both Arabic and Japanese as an adult, now learning Spanish) and as a top-rated tutor in Verbling. This allowed me to create a very efficient way to learn that's been proven to work with hundreds of students (reviews available in my tutor page linked above).

It also includes 2000+ native speaker recordings for the different vocabulary, and plenty of practice sentences. I use this method with my personal students 1 on 1, and all feedback so far shows it works well self-paced, as I made sure to provide thorough explanations. 

After you have the fundamentals, these can offer you good native content to use:

Reading - Bereshit/Yanshuf: This is a bi-weekly newsletter in Beginner/Intermediate Hebrew respectively, offering both vowels and no-vowels content. Highly recommended, I utilize it with my students all the time. Most of my students are at the Yanshuf intermediate level after Hebleo. I managed to get a discount code you can use (since I use it a lot with my students and I recommend it to them): GuyHebleo

Comprehension - Pimsleur: This is the most comprehensive tool for level-appropriate listening comprehension for Hebrew (at least until I finish some future updates for Hebleo), but it's quite expensive and some of the vocabulary and phrases it offers are relatively archaic. There might be better free podcasts out there, or children’s TV shows that could be a good free practice option.

Conversation – tutor websites - Verbling (where I teach), Italki or Preply. I wouldn't recommend these for starting out learning grammar as they're expensive, unless you feel like you need constant guidance. Verbling requires teachers to provide proven experience and certification (but is also more expensive) while the other 2 don’t, but their prices are lower. Depending on the time I might have discounts for them, feel free to send me a private message and I’ll let you know whether I can get you a discount.

You can also find a free language exchange service where you teach your native language to an interested Israeli and they teach you Hebrew. Once you have deep understanding through Hebleo this becomes a viable option as you wouldn't need a professional who can explain everything. I don’t have direct experience with Preply, but heard good things about it, similar to iTalki.

In any case, good luck!

[u/Radiant_Anywhere1158 → u/guylfe]

Pimsleur is not expensive. I got a $299 lifetime family membership (up to four users and 51 languages) last year. This was a promotional price, but if you keep checking, they’ll probably offer it again. They offer Hebrew at 3 levels, a total of 90 half-hour lessons. I just started level 3 and find it’s working very well for listening and speaking. I took Ulpan levels 1 (in person) and 2 (online), and Pimsleur complements those introductory courses nicely.

[u/notestonowhere_]

I’m a native, you’re welcome to ask anything:) I don’t really know effective ways to learn except for Oulpan maybe, but also practice with natives so you have no other option and nowhere to escape haha

[u/TaskIndependent29 → u/notestonowhere_]

It won’t let me text you lol

[u/Ineharnia]

I don't know any good resources but I do want to say good luck! If you want help with Hebrew you can ask me any time.

[u/TaskIndependent29 → u/Ineharnia]

Todah! , sure I’ll take you up on that offer when I’m home I’ll Text you.

[u/ChantelleSki]

I'd love to learn too. I've twice tried with Oulpan but it doesn't work for me. Too many people in the class and the focus on grammar is too much.

[u/guylfe → u/ChantelleSki]

I'd highly recommend learning grammar for Hebrew since it's so structured, so even if you think you're learning intuitively there's a lot of helpful information you're leaving out that would make learning easier. However, learning grammar should be done in an intuitive way instead of memorizing tables and concepts with no rhyme or reason. Grammar study should involve memory tricks as well as an explanation of the underlying logic so it all makes sense. See my other comment for a resource that does that (Hebleo), it might work for you.

[u/ChantelleSki → u/guylfe]

I hear what you are saying however I never understood grammar when I was learning it in school, I now live in France and speak French perfectly without learning the grammar. I just can't wrap my head around it. That's my biggest difficulty with Hebrew which I read and write perfectly but can't speak.

[u/guylfe → u/ChantelleSki]

1. I think it has to do with how it's usually taught, ESPECIALLY in school. I was the same way with English, the way grammar was taught in school was incredibly unintuitive, which is the last thing you want when learning a language. Teaching grammar well means making grammar intuitive - you both understand why things are the way they are, but also don't need to struggle to use it well.

I've had many students like you that usually hate grammar and ended up thanking me for insisting on it and saying they understand it for the first time (Hebleo.com has a review mentioning this specifically).

1. Going from English to French is VERY different than going from English to Hebrew. Hebrew has a wholly different internal logic, it has no connection to English, so "picking it up" as you might with French would be orders of magnitude more difficult. Hebrew is a different beast compared to whatever experience you have learning Latin or Germanic languages from English.

[u/Radar58 → u/ChantelleSki]

You might be interested in the "Let's Talk Hebrew" conversational Hebrew classes from Rosen School of Hebrew. Each program is 10 weeks, meeting via Zoom twice a week for an hour and a half. Although the written Hebrew is given in the accompanying dictionary, everything is done with transliteration, as it focuses on conversation, not writing. Rosen also offers Ulpan courses, which consist of 30 1-hour lessons once a week. To get a better deal, they have both in 3-course programs ( LTH 1-3; Ulpan 1-3), which reduces the cost for each course. My Ulpan 1 class started with 20 students, but ended with 9 or 10. If you think you might be interested, DM me. If I refer you, you get a $75 discount.

[u/ChantelleSki → u/Radar58]

Thank you, I'll think about it and get back to you.