Is Modern Hebrew more difficult than Modern Greek?

Predrag   Mon Dec 25, 2006 9:33 am GMT
Neither I am a Slav,I am a Slavo-turko-greek-Albanian who uses a slavic nick and pretends to be a pure Illyrian
I am jealous of Greece,I admit it but don't blame the Slavs
Darius   Mon Dec 25, 2006 9:45 am GMT
Predrag Calliope,

Stop it now. It seems that you too like each other too much. I hope you meat one day and have a baby that will look something like this: 1/8 chinese, 1/8 russian, 1/8 greek, 1/8 albanian, 1/8 croatian, 1/8 serbian, and the rest turkish. You act just like two brothers who fight for the toys.

I'm happy I'm Polish and not Greek or whatever.
Predrag   Mon Dec 25, 2006 9:58 am GMT
Darius,persian?
Are you sure,you are pure Polish or Germano-Russo-Polish?
Darius   Mon Dec 25, 2006 10:24 am GMT
Well, you can call me Darek if you want, but that's only for my friends.
Akiko   Wed Dec 27, 2006 9:18 pm GMT
Hi everybody! My name is Akiko and I am from Japan. I am happy to be here posting. I like people very much. I wanted to say that greek language is very hard. Hebrew is not very hard, and more musical. Greek language is very "dry". I has not a variety of tones. It is like a levelled road, flat, no ups or downs, very boring. Hebrew is like a song but that you have to sing it like something has stuck in your throat. Not boring, just different.

Bye, bye!
Gianina   Thu Dec 28, 2006 3:34 am GMT
Akiko,

Thank you for stopping by. I hope you are as beautiful as your words. Let's have more of your postings in the future, ok?
ZhongGuoRen   Thu Dec 28, 2006 11:10 am GMT
Akiko

Thank you for your description.
Guest   Thu Dec 28, 2006 11:42 am GMT
ZhongGuoRen
Greek levelled road, flat, no ups or downs that is to say an easy,rythmic language like Spanish.Hebrew is also not so difficult in pronounciation,it resembles arabic.Languages with variety in tones ä,ü,ö,ë double letters
and digrahs of guttural consonant are exteremely Difficult.

ZhongGuoRen can speak Japanese.Let's have a dialog with our friend Akiko...
ComputerGenerated   Thu Dec 28, 2006 3:36 pm GMT
Hebrew is ok if you know a little arabic. Greek is ok if you know a little turkish or if you have a turkish parent or grandparent (like all greeks) or if you have nothing better to do with your life. Do anything, just don't speak it in public, because people usually laugh when they listen to greek language. It's a strange phenomenom and I can't understand why? I looks fine to me...
Angelica   Thu Dec 28, 2006 5:50 pm GMT
Quite the opposite,personally I laugh at the guttural
languages,not with spanish and greek.
As you speak italian greek has some italian words,this will help you
Salek Bicim   Thu Dec 28, 2006 10:04 pm GMT
I like greks, greek men, greek women, greek food, greek language, greek kids, greek education, everything greek is my pleasure of the day, which is always followed by a cuban cigar.
ZhongGuoRen   Fri Dec 29, 2006 4:37 am GMT
Each has his likes and dislikes, it comes down to individual feelings, and detailed connection with his native language. I have discovered that Greek alphabet seems much easier to recognise than Hebrew one, and perhaps Hebrew grammar, I guess, is not easier than Greek. Nowadays I think that Israel should be more powerful than Greek in many respects. Greece, objectively speaking, is such a great country in human's history, but actually its rays of light seems faintly and laggardly, while Israel has been becoming more powerful and highly developed in terms of economic controlment, national cohesion, military affairs. And it would be of some interest for me to learn a foreign language which is far away from English, German, Italian or French. So I would rather choose Hebrew which is generally described as very difficult and full of guttural consonant, than choose Greek which is recognized as the primogenitor of Indo-European languages. That's all.
Mitch (MeiGuoRen)   Mon Jan 01, 2007 6:48 am GMT
ZhongGuoRen

I have a few points and suggestions for you for learning Modern Hebrew:

First of all, the pronunciation is actually pretty easy. There are only five vowels (a e i o u) more or less like Spanish, plus the schwa. (The word schwa is taken from Hebrew.) There is only one real guttural sound in Modern Hebrew, which is basically the same as the "ch" in the German "Bach." The "r" for most Israelis is pronounced as in standard French or German.

The orthography--when they use vowel points--is also very straightforward. You can probably learn to read a vowel-pointed text with an understandable pronunciation in a half hour.

Yes, the grammar is different from Chinese, English, or anything else you're used to, but you can get a feeling for the patterns with enough exposure. (You'll need to understand the "root" of each word just to use a dictionary.)

The hard part, as I alluded to in a previous post, is finding enough modern vowel-pointed reading material to keep you going until you master enough of the language to tackle unpointed texts. So here are a few suggestions:

Sha'ar Lamatchil www.slamathil.co.il This is an easy-to-read, vowel-pointed Hebrew weekly published in Israel, used mainly by new immigrants.

Yanshuf www.hebrewtoday.com A relatively new easy-to-read Hebrew biweekly. It seems to cover a wider range of topics than Sha'ar Lamatchil. Also--and quite useful--you can get a CD with all the articles in audio.

The Gesher series If you search for "Easy Hebrew" on the http://israel-catalog.com/ website, you'll see a number of titles (originally called the Gesher series) written in easy, vowel-pointed Hebrew for adults. (This site also carries Yanshuf at a good price.)

Childrens books Search on the web, and look for translations from English, so you can look at both.

As for primary learning material, there are a number of texts, but I really like the "Learn Hebrew Now" software sold by Transparent Language: www.transparent.com
They have some free resources like articles in Hebrew with translation on their website.

You can search for Internet radio broadcasts, including some in easy Hebrew. You can also find video broadcasts from many nations at World Wide Internet TV: http://wwitv.com/portal.htm
The Academic Channel: http://tv.proj.ac.il is good.

I hope this helps. Be'hatzlacha! (Good luck!)
ZhongGuoRen   Mon Jan 01, 2007 7:25 am GMT
Mitch (MeiGuoRen)

Oh, I really appreciate your helpful and kindly suggestions. Thank you!