Customer Reviews

Colloquial Hebrew (Colloquial Series)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Walla! Ze sefer tov meod!

I purchased Esther Raizen's Modern Hebrew for Beginners and was very, very pleased with the online multimedia supplement to the course, the workbook style of the text, and the relative ease with which Raizen's course helped me to learn Hebrew. However, there were a couple (and only a couple) of weaknesses to Raizen's workbook that led me to search for another source on Amazon that could help with learning verbs and that contained an answer key, something that is vital to language reinforcement. Raizen's text (2000 edition) does not contain an answer key, and she jumps into past tense way too early without really giving a very good explanation about how to conjugate the past tense.

In the midst of my frustration, I found Wang and Littleton's Colloquial Hebrew: The Complete Course for Beginners (Multimedia). Though afraid that this would be just another traveler's phrasebook with minimal grammatical explanation, I decided to ignore my skepticism and heed the "Complete Course" part of the title. Upon receipt of this course, I was very excited to see that it is cram-packed with dialogues (in un-vocalized Hebrew, or Hebrew without its vowel marks), transliterations, grammatical and syntactical explanations, verb tables (past, present, & future), cultural notes about Judaism and Israel, and best of all, an answer key! This course is targeted to those who are learning Hebrew on their own.

The first chapter "Reading and Writing Hebrew" teaches the Hebrew Aleph Bet, both its block and script forms. The table provided seems a little intimidating at first, but if you listen to the audio CD provided, you will hear a very clear pronunciation of each letter and its sound. In this chapter, you also learn how to read vocalized and un-vocalized Hebrew words and how to write the Aleph Bet with the aid of arrows that show how to write the Hebrew letters, block and script.

The student dives into unvocalized Hebrew dialogues in subsequent chapters, aided by the two audio CDs and transliterations. Wordlists, grammatical explanations, exercises, and verb tables help to reinforce what is learned in the dialogues. The verb tables in each chapter correspond to the verbs used in the dialogues in that chapter, and the verb patterns of each verb are pointed out by bolding the nuances that indicate the differences in pattern. I'll use the verb "to learn" in present tense as an example. The top of the table will have the Hebrew root, the English translation of the infinitive--"To Learn"--followed by the transliteration--"lilmod"--and then the Hebrew. The table has four rows listed according to the following:

1. First, second, and third person singular (masculine form)
2. First, second, and third person singular (feminine form)
3. First, second, and third person plural (masculine)
4. First, second, and third person plural (feminine)

Each column contains:

1. The conjugations in English transliteration
2. The conjugations in the Hebrew alphabet
3. The pronouns (I, you, he, she, we, they) in Hebrew corresponding with their respective verbs

In this way, you learn the verbs by patternization, a critical approach to learning another verb system, especially the Hebrew verb system which is ruled by a root system. Page 47 of the text states:

"The Hebrew verb (po'al) is formed from a root (shoresh) consisting in most cases of three letters (although some have four). This root gives the basic idea of the verb, which is given more specific meaning when vowels, prefixes and suffixes are added. These additions follow a number of patterns expressing tense, mood, and voice."

Using patterns to learn Hebrew helps tremendously in learning past and future tenses, and even adjectives.

Some other strong points of this course are the following:

1. Colloquial Hebrew contains a quick grammar reference in the back of the book! I love this because if you need to remember a basic grammatical point such as, say, how to use adverbs properly, you can just turn to the quick grammar guide instead of flipping through the book's 300+ pages.

2. The audio for the dialogues are clear, though the speakers talk very rapidly. Although this might appear to be a weakness, the more you read the dialogue yourself, and the more you read along with the audio, the more you will pick up on the rapidity of the spoken language, and the better prepared you will be to listen to the daily spoken language in Israel and on the radio (see below).

3. The back of the book contains a verb table, something that will not be very useful until you complete the course. It contains different forms of the verbs used in the course, but it is not very user-friendly to the beginner.

4. There is a very useful Hebrew-English dictionary in the back of the book. I wish there were an English-Hebrew dictionary as well, like in Esther Raizen's course, but it is not that big of a problem.

5. The main dialogues in the course do not tell different stories, but instead, the book as a whole tells one story about a visiting journalist's experiences in Israel. The student is with Peter Green the journalist from the time he enters Israel and converses with a cab driver (nehag monit) at Ben-Gurion International Airport until his Israeli counterparts throw him a going-away party. The student follows Peter's journey through Israel as he meets Israelis, makes phone calls, eats in restaurants, navigates the country, works at a kibbutz, visits the doctor, etc. Thus, the student is able to follow a story and experience Israel and Israeli culture as he or she learns the Hebrew language!

6. The transliterations are so clear that you do not necessarily have to have the CDs to help with correct pronunciation, although the CDs are good for listening comprehension.

Colloquial Hebrew is a very strong (but not perfect--there are some typos throughout the text as well as other minor problems) introduction to the Hebrew language but does not go beyond introduction. Although I say I purchased this course because of a couple of flaws in Esther Raizen's Modern Hebrew for Beginners, I am very happy that I own both courses because each complements the other. Therefore, I highly recommend buying these two courses together. They both have their own strong points that can add to your learning experience. After finishing these two texts, I would suggest purchasing Raizen's Modern Hebrew for Intermediate Students, which will bring you to upper intermediate level. Those who want to gain proficiency should apply to an Ulpan (intensive Hebrew program in Israel) after completing Raizen's intermediate course.

The following are online sources that I highly recommend if you have little exposure to native Hebrew speakers:

91FM[dot]CO[dot]IL
91 FM (Radio Lev Hamedina) is a GREAT music station out of Israel. This website allows you to listen to the top 25 current music hits out of Israel. You can also listen to live radio broadcast 24 hours a day! A great way to hear Hebrew as it is spoken every day in Israel, and a great way to be exposed to Israeli pop culture.

israelradio[dot]ourtoolbar[dot]com
Download the Israel radio toolbar so that you can listen to over 50 Israeli radio stations online. I have this one and it provides easy access to radio stations, including 91FM. System requirements: Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/Vista, Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or greater, Firefox 1.0.1 or greater.

KIKAR-ISRAEL[dot]COM
This is an all-English site that contains news about the music celebrities in Israel and allows you to watch Israeli music videos. A great taste of pop culture.

ISRAEL-MUSIC[dot]COM
I have bought music from this Israeli company (out of Ra'ana, Israel) four times and they have been very reliable. So far, they have the best SELECTION (albeit not the best prices) of Israeli music that you can get online, and you can hear the samples from each album. However, their customer service is questionable because I have emailed them a few times for general questions and they have never responded. They also have "live help" but I can never get any help. But they are very good at getting the products to the customer within a reasonable amount of time. Since their prices are not the best, you can find music on eshop-israel[dot]com (also out of Israel) for a cheaper price (most of the time). Israel-music also sells Israeli movies.

ORLYSBOOKSTORE[dot]COM
This is a good site that I have found that is based in the United States (California). They contain books, movies, music, software, etc. in Hebrew, and you can sample the albums. Their prices are not better than Israel-Music, but if you do not want to buy from out of the country, I would buy from Orly's.

HEBREWSONGS[dot]COM
Based in Australia, Hebrew Songs gives the translations/transliterations of your favorite Hebrew music, religious and secular. You can find your old favorites or the latest hits out of Israel on this site. There are also links to the songs in Hebrew as well. Even better, you can send in a request to have a song transliterated/translated into English. This is a great site to help with learning Hebrew! And it's FREE!


If you wanna talk like a Sabra, you're gonna have to learn how to sing like one!
Listening to Israeli music is the best way to help with pronouncing and remembering Hebrew words. Some great Israeli singers that I would suggest are the following: Miri Mesika (singer and actress with a beautiful voice), Harel Moyal, Sarit Hadad, Ninet Tayeb, Shiri Maimon (a very talented singer who is rumored to be working on an international English album), Rami Kleinstein, Eyal Golan, Idan Raichel Project (can be found on Amazon), Maya Buskila, Ofra Haza (a legend), Shlomi Shabat, Subliminal, Tact Family, Fools of Prophecy, David Broza, Hadag Nachash, Ivri Lider, Gad Elbaz, Ethnix, Synergia, Liraz Tscherchi.



MILINGUA[dot]COM
This is a very good site that you can sample before subscribing. It is legitimate and created by Israelis for English speakers. Albeit a bit on the pricey side, I believe it is worth the investment because the audio is crystal clear and reasonably slow and the site is constantly updated. I would definitely check this one out. Milingua contains the following as of the date of this review: Beginner, intermediate, advanced courses; 5500-word Hebrew dictionary; a FREE audio Hebrew dictionary; Biblical Hebrew; Verb Tables (audio conjugation tables); Practical Sentences; Practical Hebrew Texts (like news paper articles); Vocabulary lessons with sentences; and 101 Animated Words CD that you can buy separately (you can sample this as well).

laits[dot]utexas[dot]edu/hebrew
This is a very good interactive site that is meant to supplement Esther Raizen's Hebrew courses. You do not have to own her books in order to access the lessons on this site. Contains flash cards, videos, audio, etc. Very good supplemental source!

Hebrew is such a beautiful (and equally important) language and learning it is a rewarding experience. With lots of hard work and dedication, don't be surprised if you eventually find yourself reading about the latest scientific discovery from the Ha'aretz or ordering falafel in Hebrew at a Jerusalem restaurant as you converse with your Israeli friends. There will be times of frustration and the feeling that you want to abandon the language altogether, but be patient and never give up.

Shalom!

As an Israeli, I gave this course to my friend who has been struggling with the language for many years. This book helped her to get along in daily life without having to use a dictionary. All of a sudden, her questions were understood and more importantly she could understand the answers...The language now make sense to her and she had great fun with the exercises. The recording helped her to pronounce everything correctly and got her up to speed very quickly.
It's worth every cent! Highly recommended.

I share everyone's enthusiasm for this book: it's one of the most clearly-written, user-friendly guide for adults to learn Hebrew that I've yet found. I've spent many evenings and four weekends completing this book, and it's helped bring back the language fluency that I had as a child.

I've taken off a star, however, because of the inexcusable number of errors in the answer key and in the book. Sometimes, portions of exercises are inexplicably missing entirely from the answer key; in other cases, the answer key includes misspelled or sporadically different words compared to the actual exercise, and vice-versa. The CD recordings also vary words and even omit entire sentences from the in-book dialogs.

The authors also have a frustrating tendency to use words in the book that they do not define in the end-of-book dictionary, so it can be sometimes hard to read along. Plan on including a decent Hebrew dictionary along with this book.

The Disc 1 I received was also defective, however, Routledge promptly promised to replace it when asked.

That said, this remains one of the better books, its flaws aside. But it was inexcusable for the publishers to release it without a competent editorial job. "Modern Hebrew for Beginners" is probably your better bet.

I've just received the book, tape and CD combination, and I'm very impressed. Like another reviewer, I am frustrated that after several years of attempting to learn the language, I'm not at the level of facility as I have been after only one or two years of other languages.

The dialogs are spoken by natives, so it helps your pronunciation.

The book and CDs complement one another, but don't totally duplicate the information the other. For example, the book has written exercises and cultural notes, while the CD has an instructor, suggestions about how to use the system, comments and explanations about the dialogue, and role play exercises with prompts.

I really like the fact that the book doesn't assume I'm a college student, and isn't full of vocabulary about dorms, classrooms and libararies, which I'm very unlikely to use, but could pick up if I knew the language.

I highly recommend the edition I bought, which includes CDs and tapes. The CD tracks are portions of each unit, so you can review in smaller chunks. The tapes can be used in special foreign language learning tape players that replay even smaller sections repeatedly.

One note, It's an English book and CD series. The instructor has a standard (BBC) English accent. Some Americans have problems understanding this accent. I was raised bi-culturally, so I don't have this problem. I also think that's likely to be a problem older Americans might have, and younger ones don't.

This is a typical example of a decent cours with some strengths but also some weaknesees.

PROS
+ I like how contemporary it is, the dialoges focus on modern life and do not feel stilted or outdated.
+ The use of both the Hebrew and the Roman alphabet is a nice way to allow people to decide whether to take a more communicative approach and mainly use transliterations or to advance more slowly and learn Hebrew writing as well.

CONS
- It is not particularly extensive. Compared to many other Colloquial courses (Czech, Italian and Icelandic spring to mind), you'll finish this course with a rather limited vocabulary.
- The author commits the cardinal mistake of often using words you haven't learned yet in exercises. After you've tried several times to read the Hebrew, tried to identify it and to translate it, it's rather frustrating to discover that - once again - the reason is that the author has not bothered to include the word.
- The grammar explanations are rather extensive, and that is great, but not well organised. The course makes Hebrew grammar seems more confusing than it is.

I'm not sure why it's so difficult to find a decent Hebrew textbook as compared to, say, the numerous French and Spanish primers that flood the market. I know Hebrew isn't as widely spoken as the latter two languages, but surely it can't be that hard to produce a decent textbook.

Wang's book is good for several reasons: it starts off assuming you know absolutely nothing and progresses from there. She starts you off with the alphabet (and not just the block letters, but the script). Then letter recognition. And only then does she proceed to basic sentences. The instructions are in English, unlike some language books that immediately start speaking to you in the language. That drives me nuts. Also, Wang doesn't merely translate Hebrew passages into English but offers an English transliteration of the former so you will get a hang of the pronunciation. This is particularly welcome in a language that doesn't have written vowels!

The book focuses on real-life vocabulary. This isn't the book to learn posh Hebrew. This is the language found in everyday life. You'll learn about city life, travel, food, friends, family, counting, ect. You're also not parroting back stock phrases, which is worthless when you're learning another tongue. The emphasis is on learning proper conjugation, translating back and forth between languages, and being able to make up sentences of your own. I'm also thankful this book doesn't teach vocabulary that only students would use (i.e. dorms, colleges), because naturally I'm not a student and I bet a lot of people picking up this book wouldn't be either.

By the end of the book, you'll be learning some vocabulary used in newspapers. You won't be fluent by book's end, but you'll be at a decent intermediate level and be prepared to take your studies from there.

There are conjugation tables at the back (much appreciated for the tricky verb patterns!) and a small vocabularly index. If you're going to be serious about this, however, I'm going to make a suggestion that I make of every language primer I've used: get a decent bilingual dictionary. While most language textbooks offer a vocabularly index, they're nowhere near the length or breadth you need if you're going to be learning the language efficiently.

There is, however, one little beef I have: there are numerous spelling mistakes peppered here and there. I'm fortunate in that when I first picked this book up, I'd already had a few years of Hebrew instruction at school so I could flip through the first few chapters to pick and choose what I needed, and I had the luxury of noticing spelling mistakes where a beginner may not. You'll know you've hit a mistake when a word doesn't match its transliteration.

It's not going to derail your learning, but will confuse beginners momentarily and therefore is annoying.

Also, I got the book alone. I purchased this through a bookstore and there weren't any tapes or CDs that I could see, and it wasn't until later that I learned they even existed. If you've already had some exposure to spoken Hebrew, you'll probably be fine without them. But if you're starting Hebrew from scratch you should definitely get the tapes/CDs so you can hear what the spoken language sounds like and try to emulate their pronunciation.

I started with 'Living Israeli Hebrew For the Very Beginner' and it proved an invaluable foundation for both speaking and reading...you do have to know your aleph-bet visually and aurally. I have done 'Pimsleur I' and it was a great start on pronunciation and conversational style. 'Hebrew in 10 Minutes a Day' is modestly helpful, mainly for the stickers... and now I have a live personal tutor whose idea of rapid immersion makes me empathize with the Salem witches... but the one thing that has allowed me to start weaving all this together, and actually make sense of the spoken and written language, is this book. (I did not get the tapes or CD, but plan to add them if I can.) Thank heavens for the excellent transliterations!

My reasons for 4 instead of 5 stars are that I would have liked a little more complete verb table, and definitely would like a larger vocab dictionary and a better index. In short, looking stuff up is tough and slow, but there's a lot here, and generally very well-explained.

Follows a tried-and-true formula: mixed vocab, dialogues, and applications, with important language points interspersed throughout the book. Good transliterations, perhaps a few minor errors, as a previous reviewer pointed out (but, as a learner of the language, you feel kind of cool when you find the discrepancies! Well, I do... erm...) I didn't see anything in this book that warranted taking away a star. The variety of subjects covered in this book is a welcome feature, and the cultural notes add to the feeling of completeness.

Excellent for laying the foundations of understanding, and gets you pretty comfortable with forming sentences. Very recommended. I don't think there's a second book, but I'd definitely buy it if there was. I only wish my paperback copy from Borders had included the audio CD... Would be very nice to have.

My Hebrew tutor loaned me his copy of the course, and I found it so useful that I purchased my own copy. It starts with basics but then advances quickly. The lessons are compact and require review several times over in order to become proficient. The accompanying book is necessary for the first time or two, but after that listening to the CD's alone is instructive. Mastery of this course will place you far beyond the beginner stage.

This book is a good introduction to Modern Hebrew but I agree with a previous reviewer that it's not extensive and some words are used that have not been previously introduced.