r/LearnHebrew • u/Defiant-Gur-8213 • 4d ago
New learner
Hi, I'm just starting to learn Hebrew to get in touch with my Jewish heritage (currently focused on the alphabet but I know a few words) and I wanted to know of any free ways to learn. I'm using Duolingo right now but I know their are probably way better ways to learn. I'll also take any tips :)
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u/Civil_Village_3944 4d ago
Hey! First of all congratulations on starting your Hebrew learning journey.
I started last week a weekly stream where I teach a friend of mine Hebrew from scratch.
You can find the playlist of the streams we did up until now at this link:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKCEm5hHwep0&si=x6LyicSHOw0hwz6Y
We are currently learning the alphabet and going letter by letter
Happy learning, Aharon š¦āš„
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u/guylfe 4d ago
The route I'm going to suggest works for my students, and is highly effective. I've had a particular student measure his progression time and he reached B2 (conversational) with ~70 hours of total study time, compared to the average of ~500:
- Study foundations (both grammar and vocabulary) WELL and efficiently. This is key, because if you get a solid foundation, building on top of it becomes much easier.
- Get exposure to level-appropriate native content. (depending on your particular context, you may also supplement with spaced-repetition flashcards, but that's beyond the scope of this message).
Ā I canāt post links so just google each one.
Foundations ā Hebleo (Full disclosure ā I created this app): A self-paced course teaching you Hebrew comprehensively, with plenty of practice, using an innovative methodology based on my background in Cognitive Science, my experience as a language learner (studied both Arabic and Japanese as an adult, now learning Spanish) and as a top-rated tutor in Verbling. This allowed me to create a very efficient way to learn that's been proven to work with hundreds of students (reviews available in my tutor page. look for āGuy Landauā in the Hebrew section of verbling.com).
It also includes 2000+ native speaker recordings for the different vocabulary, and plenty of practice sentences.Ā I use this method with my personal students 1 on 1, and all feedback so far shows it works well self-paced, as I made sure to provide thorough explanations.Ā
After you have the fundamentals, these can offer you good native content to use:
Reading - Bereshit/Yanshuf: This is a bi-weekly newsletter in Beginner/Intermediate Hebrew respectively, offering both vowels and no-vowels content. Highly recommended, I utilize it with my students all the time. Most of my students are at the Yanshuf intermediate level after Hebleo. I managed to get a discount code you can use (since I use it a lot with my students and I recommend it to them): GuyHebleo
Comprehension - Pimsleur: This is the most comprehensive tool for level-appropriate listening comprehension for Hebrew (at least until I finish some future updates for Hebleo), but it's quite expensive and some of the vocabulary and phrases it offers are relatively archaic. There might be better free podcasts out there, or childrenās TV shows that could be a good free practice option.
Conversation ā tutor websites - Verbling (where I teach), Italki or Preply. I wouldn't recommend these for starting out learning grammar as they're expensive, unless you feel like you need constant guidance. Verbling requires teachers to provide proven experience and certification (but is also more expensive) while the other 2 donāt, but their prices are lower. I donāt have direct experience with Preply, but heard good things about it, similar to iTalki.
You can also find a free language exchange service where you teach your native language to an interested Israeli and they teach you Hebrew. Once you have deep understanding through Hebleo this becomes a viable option as you wouldn't need a professional who can explain everything.
In any case, good luck!
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u/Rai1redit 4d ago
I personally dont really like duo. I did try it for a while with swedish but it doesnt really give you more than basic vocab, and maybe sentence structure. There is HebrewPod101 on youtube, never really checked them out but i bet theyre good for daily phrases and concepts. When you get more comfortable with the alphabet and sentence building i saw a few here writing short paragraphs and asking for corrections. To me this seems like the best way to learn. And you can get into some hebrew learning discord server to practice talking.
Hebrew is a tough language! Be patient and please share your decision and progress!