Blog and Poll: Greek vs. Hebrew--which is easier to learn?

[R. Mansfield]

Which is easier to learn: GREEK or HEBREW? Weigh in with your vote and check out David Lang's post on the subject at the Accordance Blog!

 

 

[A. Smith]

Most people will be able to read parts of the GNT before they’re able to read the HB, given the same time studying both languages. I’m not sure ‘easy/hard’ is the right distinction.

The HB is a much larger corpus, which accounts for much of the difficulty. More grammatical variation and vocab to learn.

[danielamari]

Richard, for me, it was easier to learn Hebrew, because i already mastered another Semitic language before learning Hebrew. It was lot easier to achieve readability in Hebrew: holding the text and reading it and understanding it. I understand why many students complain about the complexity of Hebrew in seminaries: there are excessive grammatical rules relating to vowels and accents that are unnecessary to be taught in the first year or even second year of hebrew studies. There are similar and parallels grammatical rules for other Semitic languages, but only true linguists in these languages learn all such rules. Expecting a Hebrew student to master them can be discouraging to the student in my humble opinion.

 

Concerning Greek, it took me longer time to achieve readability because Hellenistic Greek, unlike all modern spoken languages I know, seems not to respect a framework of word order. Furthermore, the complex structure that one can build from phrases and sentences almost requires the reader to slow down and do some parsing before proceeding.

 

Having said that, because Greek was more challenging for me, I had to study it many years longer, but I am surprised that I am as comfortable in it as Hebrew if not more. It is ironic for a student coming from Semitic background.

[Helen Brown]

We have added a poll to this post, so please feel free just to add your vote.

[ukfraser]

I struggle with both but at least with greek i was reading in the same direction and already knew the majority of the alphabet so for me it was easier. point 1 of the greek list in the blog strikes a chord with me.

Edited August 11, 2019 by ukfraser

[mtpeterson]

I had an interesting experience a few years ago. I was on a coast to coast flight and was reading my Hebrew Bible.  One of the flight stewards saw my open bible and tapped me on the shoulder and began (politely) to speak Hebrew to me. Well, I do not understand spoken, modern Hebrew except for snippets here and there. He apologized and confessed that he couldn't make head nor tails of pointed Hebrew text. It was completly opaque to him. We had a good laugh.

 

I've been working on my Hebrew for about 15 years now and can read the text comfortably but slowly. Two years ago I decided to really go after Greek hard. So, I signed up for Mounce's online course, waded throught them, but do not know if I'll ever be able to understand Greek any where near fluently. My brain just doesn't handle the sentence structure.

 

Cheers,

 

Michael

Edited March 12, 2020 by mtpeterson

[miketisdell]

Looking at his article, I would also note that Hebrew can be more difficult because there are more places where the language is ambiguous and more Hapex's 

I would note that Biblical Greek is far more difficult if you include the Greek OT corpus it the Biblical Greek category. 

[Λύχνις Δαν]

When I first saw this survey I was puzzled. We don't do this because it's easy. We may do it for a lot of reasons but easy cannot be high on the list.

As to which is easier not sure - the one I make the most progress with is the one I work on most and there are countless nuances to both. And for sure, one will appeal make more sense to one person than it does to another. I am not sure that one is inherently easier than the other. The morphology might be simpler in one than the other, but the syntax might be more complex or ambiguous.

 

But in the end if you want to be able to read/speak/understand whichever way you slice it it's a long road, to thoroughly mix my metaphors.

 

Thx

D

[Λύχνις Δαν]

Looking at his article, I would also note that Hebrew can be more difficult because there are more places where the language is ambiguous and more Hapex's 

 

 

Is this due to a lack of material ? I am not familiar with the body of Ancient Hebrew but is there just less of it, and less variety of it than there is for the Greek ?

 

I would note that Biblical Greek is far more difficult if you include the Greek OT corpus it the Biblical Greek category. 

 

I would put that the other way around - the biblical text is easier (language wise) to grapple with with a better grounding in the broader body of Greek material.

 

Thx

D

[miketisdell]

Is this due to a lack of material ? I am not familiar with the body of Ancient Hebrew but is there just less of it, and less variety of it than there is for the Greek ?

 

 

I would put that the other way around - the biblical text is easier (language wise) to grapple with with a better grounding in the broader body of Greek material.

 

Thx

D

 

The NT Greek is easier partly because the vocabulary is so small in comparison to the OT Hebrew vocabulary. There are only about 450 words in the NT that are used 30+ times which means there is very little vocabulary to cover before one is able to read most passages with just a little help. The LXX is closer to 1500 words needed as a base. 

 

I am not sure that I would say that the OT Greek is better grounded i.e. there are several translation of the NT (Peshitta, Vulgate, Coptic, etc...) that can help ground the NT Greek. And there are some very significant textual variants of the OT Greek that are not easily resolved. 

 

 

 

 

[Λύχνις Δαν]

Lexically I would agree that learning NT vocab is certainly a smaller pool. But I wasn't thinking only lexcally. By broader Greek also I wasn't speaking of NT vs OT as much as extra-biblical and non-biblical material in similar dialect, Koine, Atticized Koine and so on.

 

That was also the context of my question about Hebrew - how much ancient material is there from which to find assistance in dealing with issues like the hapaxes you mention, or unexpected grammatical constructions and so on ?

 

Thx

D

[Michel Gilbert]

For the question of which is harder to learn, consider this prelude, which my first Hebrew teacher, Dr. Dennis Magary, expounded upon during the first moments of our first class:

 

הוא is "he,"

היא is "she,"

מי is "who,"

and,

Woe is me!

 

(sound like

"who" is "he,"

"he" is "she,"

"me" is "who,"

and,

Woe is me!

[Brian K. Mitchell]

Mr. Michel Gilbert your post above reminds me very much of Rabbi Jack Moline's Abbott & Costello Learn Hebrew (LINK)

[Jesse Dornfeld]

Hi.

 

Prefacing this saying I am totally unqualified to answer whatsoever, but I am answering anyways!!!

 

I think Hebrew makes more intuitive sense. I see it LIKE I learned spanish in high school. English is a mess and so is Greek.