Customer Reviews

Everyday Hebrew: Language Program

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'm just a kid that decided he wanted to learn Hebrew. While this book did teach me the aleph-bet in script and print (this was very useful), as the book proceeded I found it difficult to understand and frustrating. There are no answers to any of the questions or assignments...I found myself leafing through the beginning of the book to even interpret the questions. I would have enjoyed this book (and learned more) if the author had included corrections.

This is a really good system for learning to actually understand, speak, read and write the language. Most tape systems help you with guidebook Hebrew: teaching you how to get by at the airport, hotels and restaurants. This is for learning to really communicate. It is very efficiently laid out and easy to follow without the help of an instructor. it also comes witha full-fledged paperback text book -- not the little booklets most tape sets offer. My only criticism is that the stories are wildly sexist. All the men are doctors, while all the women are housewives, secretaries and nurses. In one story, a secretary worries that her boss would prefer a beautiful secretary to a competent one. In another, two women guess at the age of a mututal female friend. When one woman comments that the friend told her she is 25, both women laughingly question this. "Only 25?!" "So she says." And they both laugh. If you can get past that, it's a great tape and textbook set for learning the language.

I bought this set because I thought that the cassette tapes would provide a way to study while driving in the car. This did not work out. Too much content had to be learned before even one side of one tape could be understood. The content progressed at a very rapid pace and the introduction of new material was not well organized. The biggest problem with the book was the size of the Hebrew text. A magnifying glass is an essential tool to read the text. After a while, though, reading through the magnifying glass gave me a headache.

Of all the tape sets for language learning I've ever seen, this one is the best. It isn't as good as I'd like simply because it doesn't give you exact meaning for words or colloquial phrases. On the positive, it does an excellent job of teaching words and then using them. I was very much impressed by the fact that this system also teaches you how to write Hebrew script as well as to read print. Most methods I've seen will either ignore the script, or force you to write in print.

This is a great kit for beginners, it starts at the very beginning and takes you through almost everything you need to know as a beginner. The only real complaint I have is that the new vocabulary is given AFTER each new conversation passage. I guess the assumption is that you'll figure out the words from the context, but there's too many of them to do it that way. But you can always just flip the pages and read the vocab section before you're supposed to. All in all, this kit is a really good find. Another respondant pointed out the sexist nature of the stories and I have to agree. There's several instances of bosses hitting on their secretaries, etc. Then again, I guess that's true preparation for life in Israel...

Everything that the other reviewers have said is true. On the whole, the course is excellent, containing many stories that expose the learner to different situations, thereby reinforcing the vocabulary and the morphology naturally and in a sequential way. The illustrations are cartoonish, but who cares. A really cool feature of the book is that words with penultimate stress are transliterated in parentheses with an accent mark over the stressed syllable, making it impossible for a learner to pronounce those words with the wrong stress. Yet another pleasing feature is the comfortable size of the typeface--the letterforms and the dots are sharp, and they contrast well with the page. The book deserves five stars easily.

On the other hand, nobody has mentioned the dozens of useless, irritating beep-tones that occur throughout all four accompanying audiotapes. Every single Hebrew word or phrase pronounced on the tape is accompanied by an loud beep-tone to signal its completion. Before long, the relentless ding-dongs become a nightmare.

I really liked this book and tape set when I first began using it. It introduces many grammar points early on, and the tape sets have native speakers. However, newer methods have been developed since this book was written, and I think they are more effective. The newer series are based not on memorizing dialogues and word lists, but on seeing or hearing things are responding to them. In addition, newer multimedia series are more professionally done with children playing the parts of children, men playing the part of men, and women, of women. This isn't always the case in this tape set.

In addition, the tales of Dan the doctor, Dinah, the secretary he is wooing, and Yigal the American Doctor, and his family grow tired after a few weeks.

The book and tape set provides lots of grammatical exercises. So, it's very good in that regard. However, like another reviewer, I wish that the book included an answer key.

I really enjoyed using this book! Just looking at the cover in the photo is bringing back a lot of fond memories. This was the book that made me love Hebrew, and love studying languages in general. Because it was so motivating for me, I give it 4 stars despite its flaws.

This book introduces grammar and vocabulary in a very logical succession that helps you build a very good knowledge base for future study. At every point in this book I felt I was learning something useful, and I remember everything being very well explained and very clear. I always felt that I was consistently progressing and never hit a sticking point. I also found the recurring characters and the story line entertaining, and was intrigued by all the elements of Jewish and Israeli culture that made their way into the stories. I remember sections about Jewish holidays, kibbutzim, and the Israeli Defense Forces, for example. Rather than simply learning how to get by in Hebrew, I felt that I was gaining an understanding of life in Israel and that was very motivating.

Even though the book did help me gain a solid understanding of basic Hebrew and was very enjoyable, in hindsight I think the book and accompanying audio could have been better designed to help build stronger listening and speaking skills. The main voice that appears on the cassettes is a very well known radio personality in Israel, and was presumably chosen because he speaks "beautiful" Hebrew that conforms to all the old pronunciation guidelines of the Israel Broadcasting Authority. For example, he speaks with the 'ayin sound, and he pronounces the Het sound as a strong 'H' as an Arabic speaker would, rather than the "kh" sound that is standard in Modern Hebrew, and he emphatically rolls his r's, which I rarely hear Israeli sabras do. The guy also has quite a high voice and pronounces everything beautifully, with a kind of fantastical intonation I've never heard in real life. Real Hebrew is not beautiful, it's gutteral and nasty and sometimes sounds like whining, and the speech on this course's audio cassettes did little to prepare me for that. Incidentally, I do remember a course with a much more authentic audio component: Hebrew in Three Months, published by Hugo.

Another thing about the audio was that it was mostly receptive, meaning that the listener wasn't required to take part in the conversations, only listen and write answers etc. Most courses these days require the listener to practice and then produce one of both parts of a conversational exchange. So I finished this course with my reading and writing skills being much stronger than my speaking and listening.

But despite the audio flaws, I still recommend this book since it provides a solid knowledge base in an entertaining way. It's the most effective course I know in teaching the basic structures of Modern Hebrew. If I were to do it all over again I would still use this course, but use another course such as Pimsleur as an audio supplement to build my lisening and speaking skills.

I have found this book most useful and motivating. It takes you step by step through the language. I started myself practically from scratch and I feel I'm making a lot of progress day by day. Some people complain that there are not translations for certain words and expressions, but I remind them that it is necessary to have a dictionary as well.