How to read Hebrew
First, you have to remember all the letters and their respective sounds.
There is no one correct way to do it, write them over and over, use
anki, whatever method you prefer. There are only 22, but you also have
to remember the Sofiot letters, a form which some letters take when they
are at the end of a word. For example צ will become ץ, and פ will be ף,
with some exceptions with foriegn words that end with the P sound
(מיקרוסקופ as an example) . That's how it is, stop crying. There are 5
of them, so in total you have 27, which is one more than English, and
you don't have capital letters (Hebrew cursive is only used in
handwriting, you don't really need to know it. If you want, you can
still look it up, it’s pretty simple). After that you need to learn the
nikkud which are the vowel markings around the letters. The hardest part
about reading Hebrew is that letters can be read in many ways, and
mostly the only way to know the right one is guessing from context. It’s
pretty rare to see in English words that are written the same but read
differently, but it is very common in Hebrew.
| bread |
le-chem |
לחם |
| fought |
la-cham |
לחם |
| to hot |
le-cham |
לחם |
If there is no nikuud, the only way to distinguish is to know the words
and the context. There are around 12 markings that you must know. They
will help you to know the reading of a word when you look it up, since
there is no way to know the reading just by seeing it without it. This
is why listening is important while learning Hebrew, maybe more so than
other languages. You may think this is terrible, but English has the
same BS. Think about the classic example of “though, tough, through and
thorough”, or words like “enough” and “sauce” to see how English
spelling can be just as confusing sometimes. By knowing the words,
you’ll have no issue reading them. Reading Hebrew can be tough, even for
native speakers. Since we don't use Nikkud in most written texts
(exceptions are religious texts and children’s books, mostly), reading a
word is often a guessing game. However don't worry about it too much,
with time you will get better. When you know the word, reading it will
be easy. When you know a lot of words, reading will be even easier
because it will be easier to distinguish between what is a full word, a
conjugation, or another word with a suffix or a prefix. When you look up
words in sites like Morfix, take the time to read all the options to
make sure you are getting the right reading and meaning. Another thing
to notice is that sometimes a prefix or a suffix might confuse you to
think it is a different word. For example in the 3rd and 4th examples
above, the word is different, “חם” but because of the attached ל
(implies direction) you may confuse it with לחם. Keep an eye.
To sum it up -
- Remember the letters and their sounds.
-
Remember the Niqqud basics (check out the cheatsheet at the bottom).
- Read and listen as much as possible to acquire new words.
Worth noting - some letters have “strong” and “soft” pronunciation. So פ
can be either “p” sound or “f” sound. With niqqud you’ll see the
difference, the “strong” sound is marked by a dot inside the letter (פּ,
בּ for example), but without it you’ll have to remember. Then again,
sometimes you don't have to guess - like when the same פ and ב are in
the beginning of the word, they are always (except for exceptions, of
course) read in the “strong” pronunciation. On a personal note, if I
(and many others) can learn to read Japanese, which is probably the
world’s hardest writing system, you can learn Hebrew. Another kind
person helping with this guide mentioned that if they can learn
chinese... you’ll be fine. You see, Hebrew is really not the worst
language out there! (we’ll get there eventually)