Scottish Hebrew

The Hebrew vocabulary videos by Dr. David P. Murray available online are a hoot. Like all Scots, Murray mispronounces every word he lays his tongue on. For an American, that is, who grew up on Walter Cronkite’s English and on Hebrew spoken with Israeli tonalities. To an American ear, Murray’s English and Hebrew come across as the linguistic equivalent of Mr. Bean's comic gestuality. 

Murray makes use of tried and true memory hook methods. “My son is the bane of my life.” Get it?  Oh yeah. If you already know Hebrew, you will laugh and laugh at his vocabulary and grammar lessons. In my opinion, a better approach to learning Hebrew is that of Randall Buth and colleagues. Murray himself might concur. In any case, I can’t thank Murray enough for the great laughs his audio/videos engender.

Comments

[Darrell Pursiful]

I canna' change the laws of phonetics, Captain!

[Ros]

I think it's a bit rich coming from an American to accuse a Scot of mispronouncing every word. As an Englishwoman, of course, I am entitled to point out that neither Scots nor Americans have the slightest idea how to speak their own language, let alone Hebrew!

[John Anderson]

Wow, I can't believe I sat through 10 minutes of that. And now I can't remember if "el" means "to" or "beach." Great!!!

The best part of that was his memory hook sentences. Absolutley ridiculous. But I'm sure helpful to some.

[Hebrew Student]

Before offering to take the dust out of our brother's eye, we should make sure we don't have a twig in our own eye. Unless we know Hebrew well enough to speak the language confidently with Israelis, we shouldn't be overly critical of the attempts of others.
Actually, I think the real problem here is that the person doing the videos is trying to use the pronunciation given in all standard Biblical Hebrew grammars - i.e. those written by university professors in Christian counties, which emphasis long and short vowel distinctions, etc. This sounds funny to those who can speak Hebrew because that's not the way Israelis speak today...

[JohnFH]

Ros,

The most delightful English I've ever heard was that spoken by an African exchange student Paola and I met at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago. She hailed from South Africa. Her pronunciation and cadences were a blast from the past. Historically speaking, her ideolect seemed to resemble a fossil from the 19th century. Or at least that is what I imagined when listening to her.

Hebrew Student,

It is an excellent goal for any student of ancient Hebrew to be fluent in modern Hebrew as well, though of course an American accent in Israeli Hebrew, as I learned to my chagrin during a summer spent in Israel when I would speak modern Hebrew on an occasional basis, is impossible to hide.

I'm in favor of teaching ancient Hebrew in accordance with modern Israeli pronunciation. That's how I learned the language, and that's how I've always taught it.