[Guy]

Hey Hlib, I’m actually working on such a solution now. When it’s done, tables will look somewhat different. There will be an item on the sidebar with all the vocab in a single filterable table. By default it would be ordered by lesson.

• This reply was modified 2 months ago by  Guy.

[Guy]

Unfortunately the image is blank, but I understand what you mean now. Yes, the pronunciation appears next to the word before the translation at this point, and will for some (but not all) lessons. It’s there for letter lessons specifically. The intention is that the initial transliteration would allow you to understand how to read the words so that you don’t need it afterwards.

So back to your initial question – Hebrew makes more sense to you than English because it is, in fact, phonetic – you read it pretty much as you write it, with very few exceptions. If you ever want to check yourself when only the audio is provided without the transliteration, you can use an online dictionary like dict.com to see the phonetic spelling of the word.

One caveat, I use the letter x for the transliteration of כ and ח later on – this isn’t the English X, but rather the Greek X, or chi. It’s pronoun like a kh should be pronounced in transliterations. I have a specific video emphasizing how to pronounce it.

Good luck, let me know if you need anything else!

dict.com

dictionary/" - translation into Farsi - dict.com dictionary | Lingea

Quick translation of dictionary/

[Guy]

Hey Karin, can you clarify your question? I don’t quite understand what you’re asking.

[Guy]

Hi Richard, thank you for bringing this to my attention! I will figure out how to solve it over the next few days. It should be there, so it’s about hunting down what is accidentally hiding it.

I hope this doesn’t prevent you from accessing the course. If it is, let me know and I will help you find a workaround in the meantime.

[Guy]

That’s an excellent question that requires going a bit under the hood for my thought process when designing that part of the course.

Before I explain, it’s important to contextualize – there are things that are simplified in the course on purpose to make your knowledge practical. This course is about Modern Hebrew as used in Israel – therefore I decided that generally, if something that I would teach you is both mentally taxing and a native speaker would not know it, then neither should you. There is nowhere where this is truer than the vowel markers (and I believe I mentioned this explicitly in the lesson itself). Most native speakers don’t use or remember them past 2nd grade, and they aren’t used almost anywhere that you would encounter native content. We are learning them mostly as a crutch to get to where we wouldn’t need them any longer.

With that in mind, kamatz can make either the a/o sound, and khataf kamatz generally SHOULD be an “o” sound. However, in Israel it also makes both sounds, and has become more of an issue of accent where Israelis differ from Americans. As an example, צָהֳרַיִם is pronounced as Tzaharayim at least as often as it’s pronounced Tzohorayim in Israel. And in most texts where you would have either kamatz with an “o” sound, the writing without vowels has replaced it with a Vav (ו) anyway. For example – תָּכְנִית would normally be written as תוכנית in everyday texts. So for all practical purposes, it’s just not worth going into all the details – you would almost never see a khataf kamatz, and if you do it’s probably going to be read as an “a” anyway in Israel (as when it isn’t it’s going to be replaced with a ו instead).

So while technically you are correct, practically this would be a bad way of teaching vowels for everyday use considering how little practical use they would have beyond the initial crutch phase. I might create an explanation document down the line, but since I clearly signpost that this is a simplification, the rare student for whom the underlying mechanism would matter (such as someone looking for Biblical Hebrew and/or is highly interested in poetry) can easily find the explanations elsewhere.

I hope my thought process here makes sense and that this clears up the issue. But having said all that, if you still think I should revise anything about it I’m more than open to hearing why.

[Guy]

Hello Elena, can you clarify which lesson this happens for?

I checked on my end and all of Chapter 1 is still available.

• This reply was modified 3 months, 1 week ago by  Guy.

[Guy]

Hey Richard, thank you for the kind words! Sorry for the late reply, apparently the notification system wasn’t working properly. As for your questions:

1. גָדַל (Gadal) is indeed “he grew”, not “he grows”. גָדֶל (Gadel) would be “he grows”.

2. I’ll see what I can do about skipping exercises manually. Out of curiosity, how practically do you use the course as a deaf person? From looking at it, the transcription feature for the video lessons works well when I speak English, but when I switch to Hebrew it doesn’t detect it. Are you able to follow along with what is on the screen and figure out what the transcription is supposed to be?

• This reply was modified 4 months ago by  Guy.
• This reply was modified 4 months ago by  Guy.

[Guy]

Hi Zack, thanks for letting me know. Have you tried several different browsers? This is the first time I’m hearing about this bug. Can you tell me what system you are using?

I apologize for the late reply, apparently the notification feature wasn’t working for me.

• This reply was modified 4 months ago by  Guy.

[Guy]

Oh that’s great to know! I actually didn’t imagine it would be useful for deaf students, but that’s very pleasant to hear!