Hebrew

Hebrew has about 9 million speakers — small next to everything else in this section, and worth saying plainly. It does not open a large market or a vast population.

But it holds something unique: it is the only successful language revival humanity knows of. For nearly two thousand years Hebrew existed as the language of scripture, prayer and scholarly correspondence, but no child grew up speaking it. Then, in roughly forty years between 1881 and 1921, a community of native speakers formed. Eliezer Ben-Yehuda's son is regarded as the first person in almost two millennia to have Hebrew as a mother tongue.

For anyone interested in language or history, that alone is a reason. Beyond it, Hebrew opens the Bible in the original and a strong modern literature.

The honest counterweight: the script is quick, but real text carries no vowels, so you have to know a word before you can read it. Same as Arabic, and that is the actual barrier.

What is particular about Hebrew is that it is very old and very new at once. An Israeli today can read the opening of Genesis — written some three thousand years ago — far more easily than an English speaker reads Old English from only one thousand. Because the language was held in scripture for nearly two millennia, it never had time to drift.

Second, as in Arabic: the three-consonant root system. The root כ-ת-ב (k-t-b) carries writing and yields katav (he wrote), ktav (script), michtav (a letter), katava (an article), ktovet (an address). Vocabulary has structure rather than being a list.

And there is a beauty of a different kind: a great many Modern Hebrew words were deliberately coined over the last century, built from ancient roots for things that had never existed. Chashmal — an obscure word in Ezekiel — now means electricity.

Hebrew grammar is much tighter than Arabic. Four things repay the effort.

No verb to be in the present. I am a teacher is simply ani more — I teacher. As in Arabic, and it makes sentences shorter than you expect.

Everything agrees for gender. This is what trips English speakers most: not only nouns and adjectives, but verbs change according to the gender of the subject, including in the first person. A man and a woman say I am going differently. You have to choose a form from your very first sentence.

Seven verb patterns (binyanim). Any root can be run through seven patterns, each giving a different shade: active, passive, causative, reflexive. Do not memorise the table — learn to recognise first and use later.

The definite article attaches. There is no separate word for the; you prefix ha- to the noun. Small, but present in every sentence.

Reading is the decisive skill in Hebrew, because real text carries no vowels. The string ספר could be sefer (a book), safar (he counted), sapar (a barber) or sfar (a frontier) — context and vocabulary decide.

So the reading path should be: learn words with niqqud for about three months, then reread the same familiar texts with the marks removed. That rereading step is what teaches you to read for real, and learners routinely skip it because it feels uncomfortable.

One effective trick: read newspaper headlines. They are short, they recycle a small vocabulary, and they carry no niqqud — exactly the exercise you need.

And do not neglect handwriting. Train only on print and you will read books but not a note left on a table.

Listening to Hebrew comes with one advantage and one difficulty.

The advantage: Modern Hebrew phonology is fairly compact — few vowels, no tones, reasonably clear word boundaries. Next to French it is much easier.

The difficulty: real speech is full of slang and loanwords no course teaches. You can finish two years of formal study and still not follow a scene of Israeli television, simply because a third of the words sit outside the textbook. This is why real material has to come in early.

The ladder: coursebook audio → the Streetwise Hebrew podcast (which explains, in English, exactly the words and phrases Israelis actually use) → Israeli drama with Hebrew subtitles.

Speaking Hebrew has a barrier beginners do not anticipate: you must choose a gender the moment you open your mouth. Because verbs agree with the speaker's gender, there is no neutral phrasing to hide behind. Decide early which form is yours and drill it to reflex.

On conversational culture, one thing is worth knowing in advance: Israelis are direct to a degree many foreigners find startling at first. They have a word for it — dugri — and treat it as a virtue rather than a fault. A blunt question about salary or age, or open disagreement across a dinner table, is not rudeness.

For a learner this cuts in your favour: you will be corrected bluntly and often, and that is a gift if you take it the right way.

Writing Hebrew poses a question Latin-script languages do not: by hand or in print? The answer is both, but handwriting is what you will use if you live in Israel, and print is what you read.

On spelling: because vowels are unwritten, Hebrew spelling is far simpler than French — you are largely recording consonants. But a few homophonous pairs cause trouble: כ and ק, ט and ת, א and ע, ס and ש. Most spelling errors cluster there, including for native speakers.

Typing: the Hebrew keyboard is not laid out alphabetically, and takes about a week to learn.

Dugri: bluntness as a value

Israelis are direct to a degree that startles many foreigners for the first few weeks. Asking outright about salary, disagreeing across a dinner table, talking over one another — these read as honesty and closeness rather than rudeness. Understanding it early prevents a lot of misreading.

Shalom does three jobs

The same word greets, farewells, and means peace. Many Hebrew greetings carry layers like this, and knowing them makes your speech noticeably more natural.

The week ends on Friday

The weekend is Friday and Saturday, and Sunday is the first working day. The calendar, the timetables and even the names of the days follow that rhythm — yom rishon literally means first day, and it is Sunday.

A language still being coined

The Academy of the Hebrew Language still publishes new words for modern concepts, and Israelis still argue about whether to use them or the English loan instead. There are few places where you can watch a language deciding about itself so publicly.