Problem
How do you learn a foreign alphabet?
Answers
Keep looking at the entire alphabet every day by printing it out and sticking it on the fridge door.
Do a course on Duolingo.
Stories
I have signed up for Greek, Hebrew and Russian. Today on Facebook I saw this picture. The message with it was Mazel Tov. I looked at the letters, wondered what they meant.
I remembered that Hebrew letters go from right to left. You write from the right. You read from the right. You can tell by the exclamation mark on the far left that the sentence or phrase ends on the left. Therefore it starts on the right.
The upright letter in the middle, ending the first word is an L. The first letter on the far right looks like a quickly written M with a line underneath. M.L! Suddenly I saw that the words read Mazel Tov!
Mazel is luck. Tov is good. Good luck, but the same words also do for congratulations and well done.
Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer. Traveller on the internet. Author, writer, speaker. Teacher of English and other languages. Please read my other posts on travel and learning languages, Greek, Hebrew, Cyrillic, Romanian, Russian and more. Follow me, bookmark and share links to your favourite posts.
How do you learn a foreign alphabet?
Answers
Keep looking at the entire alphabet every day by printing it out and sticking it on the fridge door.
Do a course on Duolingo.
Stories
I have signed up for Greek, Hebrew and Russian. Today on Facebook I saw this picture. The message with it was Mazel Tov. I looked at the letters, wondered what they meant.
I remembered that Hebrew letters go from right to left. You write from the right. You read from the right. You can tell by the exclamation mark on the far left that the sentence or phrase ends on the left. Therefore it starts on the right.
The upright letter in the middle, ending the first word is an L. The first letter on the far right looks like a quickly written M with a line underneath. M.L! Suddenly I saw that the words read Mazel Tov!
Mazel is luck. Tov is good. Good luck, but the same words also do for congratulations and well done.
When might Hebrew be useful to you?
1 FOOD LABELS
Reading labels on food and drink in supermarkets. It's handy to be able to recognize the word Kosher,
K - SH - R on a cake or bottle of wine, not necessarily in the kosher section, when going to a party, or entertaining somebody who might be keeping kosher, or organizing a large event
2 GREETING CARDS
Finding congratulations cards for a friend or when invited to a wedding or barmitzvah - and what not to send by mistake as condolences to a funeral.
3 GRAVESTONES, MODERN MONUMENTS
Gravestones of family, ancestors and famous people. Monuments such as Holocaust memorials worldwide. Synagogues in cities.
4 PICTURES ON HISTORY WEBSITES
5 PHOTOS of ISRAEL
Pictures of tourist sites in ISRAEL.
6 NEWS STORIES
Street names and traffic signs in news stories.
7 TRANSLATING BIBLE STORIES
Finding what the original words were before translation into Greek, Latin and English. For example, was the word translated as virgin meaning, in that era, or that context, young girl, unmarried girl, novice or what?
8 HELP WITH OTHER LANGUAGES
Hebrew has letters similar to Greek and Cyrillic (used for Russian and Romanian).
Tips
www.duolingo.com
Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer. Traveller on the internet. Author, writer, speaker. Teacher of English and other languages. Please read my other posts on travel and learning languages, Greek, Hebrew, Cyrillic, Romanian, Russian and more. Follow me, bookmark and share links to your favourite posts.
No comments:
Post a Comment