How to learn Hebrew by reading

Modern Hebrew is a remarkable story: an ancient written language revived as an everyday spoken one in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and now the main language of Israel. Its literature runs from S. Y. Agnon, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1966, to Amos Oz and David Grossman.

For readers, Hebrew offers a short alphabet and a regular, root-based vocabulary, along with one big challenge: ordinary text leaves out most of the vowels.

What makes Hebrew hard to read

• The alphabet. Twenty-two letters, written right to left, five of which take a different form at the end of a word: כ and ך, מ and ם, נ and ן, פ and ף, צ and ץ. Some letters look alike and need a careful eye: ב and כ, ד and ר, ה, ח and ת, ו, ז and ן.
• Vowels you don’t see. Hebrew vowels are written with niqqud, small dots and dashes above, below and inside the letters. But niqqud appears mainly in children’s books, poetry, prayer books and texts for learners. Everyday spelling uses ו and י as partial vowel hints and leaves the rest to the reader.
• Roots. Most words are built on a root of three consonants. From כ-ת-ב (k-t-v, writing) come כתב (katav, he wrote), מכתב (mikhtav, letter), כתובת (ktovet, address) and כתיבה (ktiva, writing). Recognizing the root is half of reading.
• Verb patterns. Verbs come in seven patterns, the binyanim, each with its own shape and shade of meaning: active, passive, reflexive, causative and so on.
• Small words attached. “The,” “and,” “in,” “to,” “from,” “that” and “as” are single letters joined to the next word: ובבית (u-va-bayit) is “and in the house,” written as one word.
• Gender everywhere. Verbs and adjectives agree with gender, and so does “you”: אתה (ata) to a man, את (at) to a woman. Present-tense verbs work like adjectives, with four forms (כותב for a man, כותבת for a woman, כותבים for men and כותבות for women, all meaning “writes”), and there’s no present tense of “to be.”
• Numbers with a twist. Numbers have masculine and feminine forms, and from three to ten the one that looks feminine goes with masculine nouns: שלושה בנים (shlosha banim), “three sons,” but שלוש בנות (shalosh banot), “three daughters.” Many native speakers blur the distinction in casual speech, but edited books follow the rule.

Learning a new script walks through how to learn an alphabet like the Hebrew one with audio.

Hebrew reading at each level

What to expect from Hebrew text at each CEFR level:

• A2, elementary. Text with full niqqud, so you can read every word as it’s pronounced. Short sentences in the present and past, the most common verb patterns, and everyday words.
• B1, intermediate. Still pointed. Longer sentences joined with ש (“that”) and כש (“when”), the future tense, and more of the verb patterns.
• B2, upper intermediate. Unpointed text, as in an ordinary book. The passive patterns, a wider vocabulary, and literary touches such as putting the verb before the subject.
• C1, advanced. Close to the original, lightly condensed. C2 is the complete book.

For what the levels mean in any language, see CEFR levels explained.

Robinson Crusoe at A2 and at B2

Two moments from Defoe’s novel, written for this page at two levels. At A2 the text is pointed; at B2 it’s printed as ordinary Hebrew is.

A2

הַסְּפִינָה נִטְרְפָה בַּסְּעָרָה. רַק רוֹבִּינְזוֹן נִשְׁאַר בַּחַיִּים. הוּא שָׂחָה אֶל אִי בּוֹדֵד.‏

The ship was wrecked in the storm. Only Robinson survived. He swam to a desert island.

B2

אחרי שנים ארוכות של בדידות מצא רובינזון על החוף טביעת רגל יחפה של אדם, ומאותו יום לא הצליח לישון בשקט.‏

After long years of solitude, Robinson found the print of a bare human foot on the beach, and from that day on he couldn’t sleep in peace.

The pointed A2 text shows every vowel: ha-sfina nitrefa ba-se’ara, “the ship was wrecked in the storm.” In בַּסְּעָרָה, “in the storm,” the prefix ב (“in”) has absorbed the word for “the.” Notice the dot on the left of שׂ in שָׂחָה, sakha, “swam,” which makes it an s; with the dot on the right it would be sh. The B2 text has no points at all. It puts the verb before the subject (מצא רובינזון, “found Robinson”), a literary order, uses a construct phrase (טביעת רגל, “print of a foot”), and opens its last clause with two attached prefixes, ו and מ, in ומאותו (“and from that”).

A daily routine for reading Hebrew

1. Read pointed text aloud. At A2 and B1, read a paragraph aloud before you listen. With niqqud, you can check yourself against the page.
2. Then listen with the text highlighted. Hear where the stress falls, and the sounds English lacks, like the throaty ח.
3. Look for the root. When a word is new, peel off any prefixes and find its three root letters. You may know a cousin already.
4. Prepare for unpointed text early. Even at B1, try reading a page while ignoring the points, then check. It makes the step to B2 much smaller.

The principles of extensive reading, set out by Day and Bamford (1998, Extensive Reading in the Second Language Classroom), are exactly what Hebrew learners need for the jump to unpointed text: easy material, lots of it, read for pleasure. Reading without vowels is a skill built on knowing words well, and nothing builds that like volume. See also comprehensible input, reading while listening and the 98% rule.

Classics to start with

• Robinson Crusoe is concrete and practical, full of everyday words for building, planting and surviving. Ideal at A2 and B1.
• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is short and playful, with plenty of dialogue, at A2 or B1.
• Around the World in Eighty Days has short chapters and a clear goal, a good first novel.
• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes collects twelve complete puzzles, a good fit for B1 and B2.
• The Jungle Book is vivid and episodic, good at B1.

Reading Hebrew in Lexo

Lexo’s Hebrew has niqqud at A2 and B1, so you can read every word as it’s pronounced while you learn, and unpointed text from B2, as in any Hebrew book. Pages read right to left and turn right to left, and you can enlarge the type when the points get small.

Tap any word and a card shows what it means in that sentence, its base form and its part of speech, so a word wearing prefixes, like ובבית, leads you back to בית, “house.” It also gives the word’s reading in Latin letters, so once the niqqud disappear at B2, you can still check how an unpointed word is said. Phrases and idioms are explained as a whole, the whole sentence is translated into English, and words you want to keep go into your Words list.

Every word can be played on its own, which matters most once the points disappear, and the whole book is narrated, with different voices for different characters and the text highlighted word by word. When a passage needs more attention, sentence-by-sentence mode gives you one sentence at a time, with audio and translation.

Levels go from A2 to C2, and you set one per book. Ask for an edition that hasn’t been written yet and Lexo writes it: chapter 1 in a few minutes, the rest as you go, and a dated “First edition” mark for you. Books are downloaded, so they work offline, and there’s no account or email to give.

Hebrew’s closest relative on this site is Arabic, which shares its root system and many of its roots.

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