Davide's Notes

These are my very first notes on Biblical Hebrew. As a textbook, I am using Lambdin's Introduction to Biblical Hebrew, together with the U of London study guide for the course "Foundations in Biblical Hebrew" (frankly, I have found this study guide only marginally useful so far -- but I am still very much in an early phase). I am using throughout this post a font bigger than usual for clarity.

To do: print out Psalm 25 in Hebrew, along with a translation. Practice writing and recognizing the Hebrew letters; write them on flash cards.

Useful online reference: Learn to read Biblical Hebrew

Since it was not obvious for me to find how to type the Hebrew letters using the Tavultesoft Keyman keyboard with the Ezra SIL Unicode font just reading the docs, here is a table that recaps what I have been able to do so far (note that the dagesh is associated to the key "="). Some of the notes won't probably make sense to anybody else than myself.

Name	Letter	Keyboard	Sound	Note
Aleph	א	Shift + .	glottal stop [zero]
Bet	בּ ב	b + = b	b v	stop spirant
Gimel	גּ ג	g + = g	g g	stop spirant   Looks like a reversed gamma
Dalet	דּ ד	d + = d	d δ (as in this)	stop spirant
Hey	ה	h	h [zero]	When suffixed, makes the word feminine. When prefixed, it is the definite article "the".
Waw	ו	w	w [zero]	Looks like a quarter note (associate with "wav")
Zayin	ז	z	z
Chet	ח	x	ch as in Bach
Tet	ט	v	t	can't use "t" as key since this is mapped to tav (below). Looks like a "tête".
Yud	י	y	y [zero]	attached to the end of a word designates the possessive pronoun ("my")
Kaph	כּ ךּ כ ך	k + = and K + = k and K	k x	stop spirant
Lamed	ל	l	l	something like an L upside down
Mem	מ ם	m and M	m	vaguely resembles an "m"
Nun	נ ן	n and N	n	seems a shrinked version of a persian nun
Samech	ס	s	s	reminds of the last part of a persian sin
Ayin	ע	Shift + ,	[zero]	It looks like a gamma, and actually got translated into Gk as a γ (possibly because of an original ghayn, retained e.g. in arabic), e.g. עמרה -> Γομορρα
Pey	פּ ףּ פ ף	p + = and P + = p and P	p f	stop spirant
Tsade	צ ץ	c and C	ts
Quph	ק	q	q	specular to a "q"
Resh	ר	r	r	specular to an "r"
Shin	ש	S	sh s	שׁ (key j) שׂ (key f) similar to persian shin
Tav	תּ ת	t + = t	t θ (as in thin)	stop spirant Looks like a "tavola"

On the dagesh:

1. dagesh forte is the point within a letter to indicate doubling. Example: המּלך hammelek, the king
   
2. dagesh lene is the point within a letter to indicate stop instead of spirant for the six consonants known as begadkepat, i.e. ב ג ד כ פ ת. Because of the first rule above, this means that for example בּ could be both "b" (stop) and "bb". Spiralized consonants never occur doubled.
   
3. mappiq -- to be considered later
   

Finally for now, a partial list for vowels (these will definitely need much more time):

1. a
   1. short, as in that: בַּ (b+dagesh+a)
   2. long, as in father: בָ (b+A). First word: father, אָב (easy: think of Gen 17:4-5, Abraham as "father" [Ab] of many nations -- whether this is philologically correct or not it doesn't matter here)
   3. reduced: בֲ (b+a+;)
      
2. e
   1. short, as in elephant: וֶ (w+e - note lowercase e)
   2. long, as in grey: בֵ (b+E - note capital E). Mother: אֵם ; Son בֵּן (easy)
   3. reduced, as in help: אְ (shift+.+ ;). Note that when in the middle of a word it is silent.
3. i
   1. long, as in machine: בִ (b+i). One dot like our "i". Prophet: נָבִיא
      
4. o
   1. long, as in open: בֹּ (b+dagesh+o). Moses: משֶׁה (note that the dot over shin absorbes the dot over mem)
5. u
   1. long, as in tune: בּוּ (bu = b+dagesh+waw+dagesh)
      

With just these short notes I can at least read the following well-known words (which is somewhat encouraging):
אָב אֵם בֵּן הַר שָׁלוֹם רַבִּי אָמֵן שַׁבַּת רֵאשִׁית אֶרֶץ דָּבָר יוֹם