Could somebody direct me to web pages where I can find Hebrew texts with the reading marks (movements)? I am desperate, searching for Hebrew reading material on the net is like searching for gold or something... I thought maybe there would be someone here who may help me...
http://foundationstone.com.au/ http://www.dictionary.co.il/index.php radio: http://www.multilingualbooks.com/online-radio-hebrew.html other links http://judaism.about.com/od/learnhebrewonlin1/Learn_Hebrew_Online.htm
Thank you Sam, I couldn't open any of the links except the first one, which had no texts, they are all proxied from here or something... would you extend your favor and paste here as much text as you want...please...
Ah all the links are from Israel.Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I will do my best.
http://learnhebrewprayers.com/ I think this is an American website. Perhaps you'll be able to access it. Unfortunately your most abundant source of Hebrew written with vowels will be liturgical, because temple members are expected to recite passages phonetically, without necessarily knowing what they're saying. (No one will admit that, so don't ask them. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!) The secular websites I found that are for "beginners" don't use vowels.
Hey, two words I recognize, right in the first sentence! Elohim and ha eretz. I didn't realize that elohim, the plural of "gods," occurred so soon. Dude, I can say with complete confidence that... um... those prayers will be equally effective at getting you into everyone's heaven. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Elohim exists in all semitic languages, in Arabic it sounds: Allahum. But ancient Arab linguists never took it to be a plural noun; they explained it in a different context because they didn't compare it to its Aramaic or Hebrew equivalents. And this is the great thing about studying both Hebrew and Arabic together; it clarifies a lot about each of them, though Arabic is way more rich and complicated than Hebrew. You know FR, you could have used all that time and effort and learned a big bunch of languages, it really isn't that hard; just learn the first one and the rest will roll off by themselves.
I don't think that Jewish scholars translated it that way either, although this is far outside my expertise. The subject has come up on SciForums and people said there was a convoluted explanation for it that was vaguely similar to the Christian trinity, one god that has more than one face or personality. That's surely because Arabic has always been a living language with a huge number of native speakers, spread over a wide area. It now has more than 200,000,000 in about ten countries. The size of the community promotes richness. Hebrew, on the other hand, since Roman times was a dead language used only for religious purposes by a few million people. Even Latin fared better, it was widely used in secular scholarship. Hebrew was only revived sixty years ago and is only spoken in Israel. It has a lot of catching up to do, and a tiny community of native speakers in which to do it. (A great many Israelis are immigrants who learned Hebrew as a second language.) I started studying Spanish when I was 11 and rate myself at 8 - 8.5 on my powers-of-three scale. I learned Esperanto when I was 14 and am more or less fluent, 8.5. I was an honorary member of the Chinese community in Los Angeles for many years and am about a 7. I range from 7 to 6 in German, French, Portuguese, Italian and Yiddish and use them for internet correspondence. Well not Yiddish I guess. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! 2=10 words, 4=100, 6=1000, etc., assuming a comparable level of grammar.
Good for you, nice collection... Elohim אלוהים is an obvious plural noun in Hebrew, so ancient Hebraics postulated that the plural declension was an indication of reverence. In Arabic, Allahum اللّهم does not look plural, so Arabs postulated that the M (meem) at the end of the word Allah was a substitute for the lacking vocative article, which does make a bit of sense. The other explanations are modern ones. I don't know if Elohim was truly just a way of revering El, which is very possible, or if it had another relation to the pagan past of Hebraics. However, if I were to assume something, it would be that the word simply relates to the fact that ancient Semites were polytheists. This makes much more sense to me than the funny explanation you cited. Actually what you said about the history of Hebrew and Arabic is true, but it is not why Hebrew is simpler than Arabic. Formal Arabic is much older chronologically than Hebrew. Although its origin goes back to thousands of years ago, Hebrew today amazingly resembles the modern informal Arabic dialects, especially the nomadic dialects. As it is natural, those dialects have lost most of the complexity of ancient Arabic grammar. So modern Hebrew is less complicated because it is much more evolved than formal Arabic. Formal Arabic has not changed a bit for 1500 years; this has been actively maintained for religious then political reasons.
