Showing posts with label Rosetta Stone. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rosetta Stone. Show all posts

Saturday, June 7, 2014

Hebrew, Again

Try not to think "book."
I don’t intend to blog my way through Hebrew, since I have no particular intention of making my blog as tedious as possible (if my blog is going to be boring, let that come without my intention). Something occurred to me as I continued my studying Hebrew with Rosetta Stone. Over the years as I have studied various languages, I’ve taken piles of notes (now, mostly long since lost or discarded; I’m not losing any sleep over not having my first list of French vocabulary words from when I was 12).

Rosetta Stone, on the other hand, isn’t really conducive to taking notes. Unlike my experience when I was 12, this is not language as a substitution code (if you’re thinking “boy,” say “garçon”), but instead a more organic way of learning the language (don’t think “boy,” think “ילד”).
But I’d still like to take some notes. There is a pdf of the course material. I might go through it and jot out the words as they occur, partly so I have a word list (and I don’t need to do what I did at twelve, connecting each word to its English equivalent; the bare list of words will be enough), and partly because I know that the physical act of writing down a word helps in the memorization (and it will improve my handwriting).

Today’s lesson actually introduced some new words, and it was strange they way they did it. We got four pictures: A dog, some bread, children writing, and a book. Then they throw the word “sefer” (ספר) at you and expect you to sink or swim. (Go for the book.) Maybe I’ve forgotten some earlier (as in years ago) review, but it seem sort of strange to say, “come on, you’ve got a one-in-four chance, and the odds only get better if you hit one.” Or maybe it knew that I’d been there, many times before.

It’s early yet, but I suspect this is something that would give many hopeful learners a lot of anxiety and frustration. Some of that also came from trying to tap things out on an on-screen Hebrew keyboard; an unfamiliar arrangement of unfamiliar letters. I’m going to persevere though.
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Friday, June 6, 2014

Making Peace with Hebrew

That's me!
I have been trying to learn Hebrew, off and on, for the last fifteen years or so. A few years ago, James gave me a copy of Rosetta Stone Hebrew. I used it for a while, then I took an actual Hebrew course. A problem I had with the course was that no one in my group wanted to take second-level Hebrew, so I jumped to third-level Hebrew with self study for the second level. Throw in a freeway collision (I was rear-ended by a guy on his cell phone) and the need to recuperate, and it just wasn't possible. Now that I've forgotten just about everything, I've returned to Hebrew.

When I launched Rosetta Stone (for the first time in about two years), I needed to run it though a series of updates. Then it remembered who I was and where I had left off. Except I was going to crank things back to Lesson 1. Time to say שלום (Shalom) all over again. I adjusted my microphone and said "shalom" to Rosetta Stone after a long absence.

My basic feeling is that the initial set of verbs, though all describing familiar things, are still somewhat abstract. I doubt I will ever need to say "the girls are running," or "the man eats." Still, every language course has to start you off with something pretty basic. At one point "la birdo kantas" was about as complex as I got in Esperanto.


You can follow my blog on Twitter (@impofthediverse) or on Facebook. If you like this post, share it with your friends. If you have a comment just for me, e-mail me at impofthediverse@gmail.com.
This blog runs solely on ego! Follow this blog! Comment on this post! Let me know that you want to read more of it!
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