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I immediately began to notice inconsistencies in transcription and spelling that confused me, and before I had completed the first chapter I put it down.I have no doubt the author means well - and the cultural information is interesting - but Hebrew is a highly complex language and consistency is critical for a beginning learner, at whom this book is aimed. I picked this book up at the Library after having studied Hebrew via Pimsleur, Rosetta Stone and several other printed books.
There are a lot more resources out there that teach you the letters and still really a lot on English Some sounds don't translate well and the English characters make it hard to remember what sounds the word is. The book is 100% in English, hence there are no hebrew characters. You don't learn the letters because you can't.
I do not, I stress, DO NOT willingly give this book any stars. Avoid at all costs. **EDIT** for some reason, it show 2 stars: while I would prefer negative stars, that is not an option. If you do not have any knowledge of the language, this might give you a leg up in VERY basic volcabulary. Worst Book Ever Written. It is absolutely horrible; there is no spelling in Hebrew, only minimal explanation of the Hebrew alphabet, horrific breaches in the normal English spelling of many Hebrew words, and no real explanation of anything. If you have ever taken any Hebrew course, or lived there, visited there, or even just heard the language being spoken around you, DO NOT buy this book. Go for Pimsleur, Barron's Mastering Hebrew, or a course at your local community collage; this book is the worst $20 you'll ever spend.
Nevertheless, after struggling with this book's relentlessly silly approach I ended up selling it to a secondhand bookshop and acquiring a couple of books on Biblical Hebrew (by J. I don't think that that's worth the money.I am still keen to learn Modern Hebrew, but the only people I can recommend this book to are those who have never been exposed to any language other than American English. I am perhaps unusual in that I'm interested in learning Hebrew although I'm not studying the Bible, nor am I planning to travel to Israel, nor am I Jewish, nor am I marrying into a Jewish family. In this respect, "Hebrew for Dummies" sucks. This book may teach you how to order a coffee in Jerusalem, but you will probably not learn how to read the menu in the coffee shop. Jewish (or at least closely related to someone Jewish) and c). I suppose the last one is kind of the point of the "For Dummies" series, which as a series I've never found very helpful.
The student of Hebrew who is not put to work straight away at deciphering the alphabet is, to put it bluntly, screwed. Perhaps this has been fixed in subsequent editions.The final problem is that Jacobs does not solve the huge problem of teaching the student to read the Hebrew alphabet.
American, b). I noticed, too, that the conversations on the accompanying CD of my edition did not always correspond to the transcripts in the book; I am enough of a linguist to be able to tell when what I'm hearing is not what I'm reading.
I am interested in learning Hebrew for the sake of learning a rich and difficult language which will open up a huge amount of literature to me. Weingreen and John Dobson), both of which were far more packed with information than this gee-whiz compendium of empty chit-chat.
Even then, I think they would be better off taking lessons. It assumes that the reader is a).
learning-impaired.
Just with english transliteration.I think it was a loss of money. I really like the "for Dummies" series, however, this volume does not fulfill my expectations. The chapters focus on practical sentences in Hebrew, however they are not so practical that you can use as a traveller guide and not so good that you can learn some hebrew.Also, but for the first chapter, it does not deal with hebrew characters.
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