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Have you ever heard the expression "This sounds like Hebrew to me"? Most probably, it has happened when somebody tried to tell you that the subject of the discussion was too difficult to comprehend. But is it true? Is Hebrew really so difficult to learn?

Let's see. There are three major reasons, why people consider Hebrew the difficult language:

Hebrew alphabet ("aleph-bet") is absolutely different from Latin letters familiar to all of us.

Most written Hebrew texts, except children's books and Hebrew textbooks, would be written almost without vowels, so in order to pronounce the word you actually need you guessed it right, you need to know how to pronounce it!
And my favourite when you write in Hebrew, you have to do it from right to left. I admit, it does sound crazy.
Isn't this enough to discourage even the most adventurous among us from trying to learn the language of Bible?

Surprisingly, for many immigrants coming to Israel, Hebrew is a comparatively easy language to master, and there are three major reasons for it:

Hebrew is very logical, but at the same time very flexible language. It means that as soon as you know the "root" of the word (for example, "ahava" for love), knowing the rules, you will be able to construct all the related words ("to love", "to be in love", "to fall in love" and the rest of them). As in any other language, there are exceptions to the rules, but fortunately, Hebrew is less known for its exceptions, than most languages, including English, French, German or Russian. These are just the ones that I am familiar with including my native Russian.
Hebrew language has surprisingly easy grammar, as compared to most languages. Again, I certify it is true for the four languages above. There is good news for those of us, who struggled with verb tenses and forms in English: Hebrew has only three tenses: past, present and future. I am not joking.
Even though written Hebrew is one of the most ancient languages, it has not been spoken for centuries and had to be reconstructed by Eliezer Ben Iehuda in 19 century for the spoken version of it. (This, by itself, is the subject for the totally different article the miracle of language rebirth!) As a result of being "reconstructed", spoken Hebrew is very modern and flexible language, quickly absorbing words from different languages. For example, try to guess, what is the Hebrew word for T-shirt? You don't need the vocabulary, it is pronounced as "ti-shirt", for a simple reason there was no such garment in the Biblical times, so the word was "naturalized" from English, to give the name to the new "invention".
So, please don't be discouraged by the apparent lack of vowels in Hebrew. If you walk on the street and see three big letters over the building "BNK", it won't take you long to realize that it is "BANK". This was the first word that I have read, all by myself, on streets of Tel-Aviv, and became immensely proud of myself. It was easier after that. You just need a little bit of "chutzpah" to go.

Good luck, or, as they say in Israel, "Mazal tov!" But I bet, you know this one already.

Learn more about this author, Elena Yampolsky.
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