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So what's the best learning roadmap for Hebrew language? You might have been asking yourself this when starting to learn Hebrew, or actually any language for that matter. You might be surprised but there are many efficient ways to start learning. The one that I have found the most effective when teaching other people Hebrew is the one that I will present below.
If you are considering a course in Hebrew I would still recommend you to do steps 0 - 2 or just get a glimpe of each one before your decision to invest in a course. If you are good with learning from books, I will point you to the useful books to learn Hebrew
0. Learn a few greeting words (hello, good day, how are you, pretty good, ...)
The is a pre-requesite, just learn a few easy words and phrases to start your journey, it should take about 10-20 minutes but it will psychologically give you the fuel to continue going on! With that said, after learning a few of the phrases, make sure you learn the letters and pronounciation, as soon as possible! It will tremendously improve your ability to remember words and phrase.
1. Learn the alphabet + pronunciations
This is important, learn all of the letters after you've learning a few phrases (in step 0). Learn each letter and the ways it can be pronounced. While it's not mandatory to remember the actual name of the letter, it helps a lot with the remembering of the sounds.
2. Learn the niqqud basics
The niqqud (or nikkud,nikud...) tells us how to read the letters. Knows the basics is essential. In Modern Hebrew some of the nikud sounds practically the same when it was used to be slightely different, which is why what I mean by learn the basics is:
learn the corresponding vowels to A,I, U, E, O (there are only five 'movements' that the letter can go to), don't get hung up if in the dictionary you see a 'kamatz' but you write a 'patach' (they sound the same).
3. Learn phrases and simple verbs with a simple construction.
At this stage there are many ways to go forward, that really depends on the style of the teacher or the style best suited to the solo learner. One way I recommend is, before going to advanced grammar and past,present and future (which can get a little complicated for the beginner), go on to learn how to say very simple verb constructions:
E.g: I + VERB + Object
4. Learn move nouns to build up vocabulary before adjectives and verbs
Since in Hebrew, verbs and adjective are divided to male and female it makes the work harder to remember even though the words are similar (sometimes with just a different niqqud or added letter). Learn nouns, a noun is either male or female, while a verb and adjective will depends on the gender.
5. Learn the pronouns ( I, you, he, she, etc)
At the beginning we focus a lot on saying , I do this, I want that, etc but at some point you will want to incorporate other pronouns. Before you do that make sure you actually have a small vocabulary under your belt, if you can say about 50 nouns, 10 verbs and 10 adjectives with the I pronoun in the present test, feel free to learn them with other pronouns.
It's fine to learn the pronouns before, however trying to learn everything with every pronoun, can feel slow and you don't have a lot to work with, it is better to have more vocabulary to work with.
6. Learn the past, present and future forms (intro to binyanim)
Binyanim are the building blocks of Hebrew, at some point you have to learn them if you want to move forward. You can either learn the rules of all 7 or you may just learn examples and develop and intuition about how to congegate words in Hebrew. I offer a hybrid appoach. Learn 3 verbs in each Binyan, later learn the rules, our brain remembers examples much more effectively.
7. Get more input
Read some books with nikud to expand upon your vocabulary, make sure you're reading out loud. Listen to Hebrew content without subtitles and encorporate the "immersion method".
I will update this section in the future, and will add some resources for each step. For now it should be enough to give you some directions.
Last Update: 03/08/2025