Lesson 0

Contents:

         0.a Alphabet
         0.b Nouns

0.a: Alphabet

Hebrew alphabet consists of 22 consonants and 5 vowels. It is written right-to-left. Consonants are written in the standard sense of letters, along the writing line (there are no capital letters in hebrew!). Vowels, on the other hand, are written under the corresponding consonant (and pronounced after it). We will gradually cover all, today we start with the following consonants:

• ב - [b], as in 'about', and v, as in 'even'. Later we'll learn how to distinguish whenever it's either of the two.
  
• ג - [g], as in 'ago' (not as in 'age'!).
  
  
• ד - [d], as in 'dad'.
  


• נ - [n], as in 'now'.
  
  

And the following vowels ('ם'/'X' here represent any consonant):

• םִ - [i], as in 'ski' (a dot centrally beneath the consonant).
  
  
• םֵ - [e], as in 'men' (two horizontally aligned dots centrally beneath the consonant).
  


• םַ - [a], as in 'car' (an horizontal stroke centrally beneath the consonant).
  
  

Don't forget - the vowel under the consonant comes after the consonant! Note that a consonant can come without a following vowel, combining directly to the following consonant.

All right, that was a lot to remember, let's see it in action - on fictional words, for the time being (click the audioplayer or the 'listen' tag to hear sound):

בַבַ	[baba]	listen
נִגֵד	[niged]	listen

There's some more for practice (first try to read it, then click to hear):

גֵדֵג	listen
דַבֵנִג	listen
בַגַד	listen
גֵדֵנ	listen
גַנַנ	listen

And now listen and try to write down in hebrew. Having done that - click 'show' button to see the right answer:

• listen בַב
• listen גַנַנ
• listen דִבִנ
• listen גַנַב
• listen גֵדֵנ
• listen בֵדֵג
• listen בִדִג

Finally, write in hebrew the following words (and check the right answer):

dan	listen	דַנ
bagdad	listen	בַגדַד
gandi	listen	גַנדִ

0.b Nouns

There isn’t much to play with, but let’s learn the nouns:

דַג	[dag]	fish	listen
גַנַב	[ganav]	thief	listen
בֵגֵד	[beged]	cloth	listen

Now it's time to introduce one of peculiarities of hebrew aphabet - a few consonants are written a bit differently when they appear at the end of a word. Of the consonants we learned today, one - "n" - has a final form:

• ן - [n] final.
  
  

Note - it doesn't affect pronunciation, only the written form.

גַן	[gan]	garden	listen
בֵן	[ben]	son	listen
גַנַן	[ganan]	gardener	listen

(Note - adding the suffix 'an' is a common way to express profession, like adding 'er' in english).

By the way, all these were masculine nouns – we’ll get into that in our next lesson.