Syllabus – Vol. 2

Here we dig deeper into week 2 of our hypothetical syllabus.

Week 2 – Vowels and Syllabification
Before new material begins, the class is asked how their week went, what they studied, what they didn’t, and what they have questions on. Once those issues are settled, the teacher reviews. If the answering of the questions was already a review of last week, do it again anyway. Always review.

After the Alef-Bet is reviewed, some new Alef-Bet info is presented: begadkefat letters. The students are told to ignore what their textbook says in this regard. For them, only three letters have two sounds- פּ פ כּ כ בּ ב. Gimel will always be /g/. Dalet will always be /d/. And tav will always be /t/. Why this decision? Because no one knows what biblical Hebrew actually sounded like, so we choose the tradition of vocalization as exists in modern Hebrew. Should your students ever decide to plunge into modern Hebrew, they won’t say things funny. Now we move to vowels.

The most important thing for this class is that the students vocalize /bah/ when they see בָּה or any other monosyllabic form. If, by the end of the class, they know that the vowel sound is named qamets, great, but its not necessary yet. When they show up next week, they’ll need to know that, but in the two class-hours, they need to begin recognizing the sight with a sound, as they now do with consonants.

The following way of teaching Hebrew vowels is highly simplified for (American) beginners. Most Americans know their English vowels in the arbitrary order of the alphabet: a, e, i, o, and u, so its easiest to teach Hebrew vowels in that classification. BBH uses the term a-type vowel (or e-type, i-type, etc.). Basically, just as the students needed to learn/memorize the Alef-Bet in a week (and they could choose from a few ways to do so), they need to do the same with vowels.

a-type vowels -  בָּ  and  בַּ – bah

e-type vowels -  בֵּ  and  בֶּ – beh

i-type vowels -  בִּ – bih

o-type vowels – בֹּ (and sometimes  בָּ, but only with vocab you learn as such) – boh

u-type vowels – בֻּ – buh

The students then (always) ask, “Why do some vowels have two signs?” The correct answer is, “Because they are not the same vowel. For American beginners who speak our American kind of English, it helps us to learn Hebrew vowels by classifying them with a vowel we are familiar with.” Then another student always asks, “So what’s the difference between the two a’s or the two e’s?” The teacher thinks, Just wait, there’s another /u/ and another /o/ coming, but answers, “The difference between the two types, for us Americans, is small enough that we can treat both a-types as a’s.” The student says, “So there’s no difference between the two a’s?” The teacher replies, “There is, but right now that goes beyond our purposes. You’re welcome to investigate further (the BBH text does try to make distinctions with their types, interested students should start there), but for you right now, no, there is no difference.”

Next come the matres lectionis, which we hope you don’t call them to your newbies. This is a helpful time to slow down and talk to them about the transmission of the Bible and what purpose the vowel-letters served and still serve in unpointed texts.

u – וּ – ooo
o – וֹ – oh
י – used in conjunction (in pointed texts) with vowels. בּנֵי isn’t bet+nun+tsere+yod. Its bet+nun+tsere-yod.
ה often ends words to signal a vocalic ending.
(Throw א and ע in too while you’re at it)

At the end of class, give them (a handout or a page number in the text) something with a full vowel paradigm with names for the vowels. By next week, they need to recognize the vowels with the correct English vowel-type and know the Hebrew vowel name. Assign the Bible Names section of the workbook for homework. The other exercises are lame. No one needs practice transliterating. The Alef-Bet Story has helpful stuff on vowels as well. I like their paradigm the best. The vavs have canes and top hats.

Non-American students might need to think of other strategies. For example, South African students need different help. Because of the way vowels work in Afrikaans, they have a hard time distinguishing between o’s and u’s. Hence the students I’ve tutored, would not pronounce his name שְׁמוֹ she-moh, they would vocalize she-mu-ah because in Afrikaans, o’s and u’s get mixed and everything gets an extra -ah for flavor. Rather than simply teach them, Hebrew vowels, I had to teach them (by their request for a modern Hebrew pronunciation) not to do what was most natural for them. I photocopied a page from Jouon-Muraoka (p31 and 32) for them and explained that Hebrew vowels move in a scale that corresponds to positions of the mouth, from the widest position (like a smile) to vocalize /e/ to the closest position, without being closed (mouth in a circle), to vocalize /o/. This helped them (and telling them to count the syllables in she-moh and she-mu-ah), but was not necessary for the American students. Different classes in different places will have different needs.