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Lesson Transcript

Sherah: Hebrew Pronunciation Season 1 Lesson 3 - The Hebrew Consonants.
Amir: Shalom! Bruchim habaim.
Sherah: Sherah here, Pronunciation Series, Lesson 3 on Hebrew consonants. Hello and welcome to the pronunciation lessons at HebrewPod101.com, where we study modern Hebrew in a fun, educational way.
Amir: So brush up on the Hebrew that you started learning long ago or start learning today.
Sherah: Thanks for being here with us. Amir, what are we looking at in this lesson?
Amir: Well, Sherah, in this lesson, we’ll work on our pronunciation of all the other Hebrew consonants we haven’t covered in the previous lessons.
Sherah: That should be fun! At this rate, we should all be speaking like native Israelis by the end of this lesson.
Amir: We’re getting there. Just remember to repeat after me when I give you words to practice.
Sherah: We’ve already covered letters aleph and bet, so let’s jump to the third letter of the alphabet, gimmel.
Amir: Gimmel represents the -g sound as in “green.”
Sherah: And in foreign words, it can represent a -g sound or softer -g sound as in the name “George.” When it represents this sound, it has a small diacritic after it.
Amir: Let’s give you some examples to practice with.
Sherah: Sometimes like in the case of gimmel, we will give you an additional example to show you how the letter is used in foreign words.
Amir: So our first example for gimmel is gal.
Sherah: Gal means “wave.”
Amir: Correct. Our next example is when the gimmel is used to represent a sound not found in Hebrew, like in the word “jazz” which in Hebrew is jazz.
Sherah: So now, let’s move on to the next letter, dalet. Dalet represents the -d sound as in “deal.”
Amir: Our example is davar.
Sherah: “thing”
Amir: Now, let’s skip over the letters heh and vav which we already know and move on to the 7th letter of the alphabet, zayin.
Sherah: Zayin represents the -z sound as in “zoo” and in foreign words, it can represent the -g sound as in “garage.”
Amir: And our first example for zayin is zahav.
Sherah: This means “gold.”
Amir: Another example of zayin used in a foreign word is zhaner.
Sherah: Or “genre” in English.
Amir: Our next letter is a tough one for English speakers. It’s the letter ħet. We pronounce it as the root of the -ch in the name “Bach.” It’s a guttural letter pronounced at the back of the mouth.
Sherah: -ch
Amir: Yes. So let’s practice our ħet sound. Here is something that you always need, "ħaverָ.
Sherah: True. It’s a “friend.”
Amir: Next stop, maħolָ.
Sherah: “Dance.” When ħet comes at the end of a word and it’s preceded by another vowel other than -a, it carries an -a before it. Amir, can you give us some example of this?
Amir: Sure. How about the word no'aħ?
Sherah: Great example. This means “comfortable.” The extra -a is there to make the word easier to pronounce.
Amir: Right. This also happens with the letter -i which we’ll get to later.
Sherah: Yes. Now, we’re done with ħet, let’s move on to tet. This letter represents the -t sound.
Amir: You will notice that the letters tet and tav, the last letter of the alphabet sound exactly the same in modern Hebrew. You’ll need to remember which letter is used in which word.
Sherah: That’s right. I still look up words sometimes to see which one to use. It’s the same with aleph and ayin and ħet and kaf.
Amir: So, let’s move on to some examples of tet. The first word is tov.
Sherah: “good”
Amir: kar'tis
Sherah: “ticket” or “card”
Amir: Let’s move on past the yod and kaf to lamed.
Sherah: Lamed is a letter that represents the -l sound as in “light.”
Amir: Or as in leħemֶ.
Sherah: “bread”
Amir: Next stop is mem.
Sherah: Mem is a letter that represents the -m sound.
Amir: Our first mem example is mahָ’.
Sherah: “what”
Amir: We’ll move on to our next letter, nun.
Sherah: Nun represents the sound -n as in “nice.”
Amir: For example, ner.
Sherah: “Candle.” Next, we move on to samekh.
Amir: Samekh represents the -s sound as in “sin,” and our first example is sakin.
Sherah: “knife”
Amir: We’re up to the letter ayin.
Sherah: Ayin is kind of complicated like the letter aleph. It has no specific sound because it carries the vowel that comes before it. And at the end of the word, it carries an -a vowel if it is preceded by another vowel.
Amir: Traditionally, the vowel it carried was pronounced deep in the throat, but in modern Hebrew, it is pronounced like aleph, except by a minority of Hebrew speakers who still say it correctly.
Sherah: I’ve tried to pronounce it correctly, but it’s really quite difficult, so I don’t really worry about it since most Israelis don’t say it the traditional way either.
Amir: Okay. So, our first example of ayin is avodahֲ.
Sherah: “work”
Amir: ofano’a
Sherah: “motorcycle”
Amir: Now, we’re skipping over the letter peh, which we already talked about in our last lesson. We’re moving on the letter tzadik. It represents the -tz sound. First example is tzomet.
Sherah: “intersection”
Amir: Or botz.
Sherah: “Mud.” Tzadik can also represent the -ch sound from foreign words as in “cheetah.”
Amir: Kuf is the next letter in the alphabet and it represents the -k sound, as in kof.
Sherah: “monkey”
Amir: Only three more left.
Sherah: Yay!
Amir: Resh is the next letter and it represents the -r sound, but is different than the English R. It’s more like the -r in German or in French. It’s rolled in the back of the throat.
Sherah: You’ll need to practice that, -r.
Amir: rekhevֶ
Sherah: That’s a difficult one to say. It’s “vehicle.”
Amir: ir
Sherah: “city”
Amir: The letters shin and sin followed resh. They’re both represented by same letter and one is the -sh sound and the other is the -s sound.
Sherah: You can tell the difference between the two because sin, which represents -s, has a dot above the letter on the left side. Shin represents -sh, the most common of the two, and it will either be without a dot or sometimes have a dot above the right side.
Amir: An example of shin is shir.
Sherah: “Song.” It comes from the same root as my name, Sherah, which can mean singing or poetry.
Amir: And an example of sin is sin’ah.
Sherah: Funny, it actually is a sin. Sin’ah means “hatred.”
Amir: Well planned, huh?
Sherah: Yeah, definitely. So, we’ve made it to our last letter, haven’t we?
Amir: We sure have. And the last letter of the alphabet, drum roll, please.
Sherah: Da, da, da, da!
Amir: Is tav.
Sherah: Tav represents the -t sound. Remember when we mentioned it in the beginning of the lesson when we talked about tet. They both sound the same, so you have to remember which one goes into which word.
Amir: So let’s think of a good example for tav. How about toshav?
Sherah: “resident”
Amir: I have an even better one, maybe one that you already know, aħatַ.
Sherah: “One.” You should know that one if you’d been working on your numbers.
Amir: Well, Sherah, I think we should let them go now.
Sherah: Thanks for hanging out with us. We hope you got some good pronunciation practice.
Amir: Shalom!
Sherah: Bye

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