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#hebrew
כָלב 
Have you ever seen pita lettering? Now you have.
Context: a protest action against a minister in the Israeli government. https://www.timesofisrael.com/anti-government-protesters-spark-anger-with-passover-pita-display-at-ministers-home/
#lettering #protest #Hebrew
Catch the 2023 #WPA11yDay session "A Practical Guide to Automated Accessibility" with Mark Steadman.
Now available with translated transcripts in French, Malay, and Hebrew!
#Accessibility #translation #polyglot #Hebrew #French #Malay
This morning, as we enter the first day of Passover, I received the most beautiful gift—a photo of little 5-year-old Athena tracing the letter Aleph in my Hebrew 1 workbook, guided by her loving grandmother, Gracia M. Gombita
In the midst of so much turmoil in the world, this image brought me peace, hope, and purpose.
A child learning Hebrew… a grandmother passing on tradition… a language that carries generations of resilience and light.
This is what Passover is about. Not just the story of freedom from Egypt, but the ongoing journey of identity, memory, and connection. From one generation to the next.
This is why I teach. This is why I create.
To everyone beginning the holiday—Chag Pesach Sameach. May we continue to pass down beauty, truth, and belonging, letter by letter. Great job Athena, let’s cheer her on 
Reasons to support my translation work:
1) You'd get a better translation of the Bible.
2) You'd be supporting a disabled trans artist doing what they love.
3) Your money doesn't go to any church, religious publisher, or soulless corporation. It just buys me groceries and bicycle brakes (I seriously need some new brakes).
4) There is far more to the Bible than just religion. The Bible is the heritage of Jews, Christians, Muslims, numerous cults, and families across the world. You might even have a family Bible with your family tree in it, or an inherited or commemorative Bible.
I'm working on an original translation of the Bible. My goal is to let the words of scripture guide my translation rather than reading a favored theology into the text. As the saying goes, "Where the Bible speaks, we speak, where it is silent, we are silent." In addition to being a formal equivalence, I try to preserve original idioms (with clarification in the footnotes), poetic and metaphorical language, and distinct synonyms (ie. land/ground/dust) where possible.
The text is available under a Creative Commons license. And it is available at a website, and as an ebook, though it is still incomplete.
Please support my translation work:
https://ko-fi.com/wltbible
https://wlt.ct.ws
Boker Tov (Good morning) friends!
Took my Hebrew workbooks out for a breakfast date this morning—because nothing says romance like going over Hebrew letters over coffee and pancakes. They didn’t say much, but I could feel the aleph-bet chemistry.
Wishing you all a delicious morning and equally sweet “dates” with your Hebrew learning today. May your vocab grow as fast as your appetite!
Don’t miss this!
I made you a free video + PDF to help you nail the מה נשתנה (Four Questions) song for the Passover Seder — whether you’re learning it for the first time or brushing up.
Bring it to your Seder to impress everyone with your singing (or just share the PDF and be the hero who came prepared).
Download it now for free 
https://hebrewbyinbal.com/the4questions
Perfect for kids and adults who want to shine at the table 
Happy Passover!
חג פסח שמח
Inbal
What better way to start your morning than with Gimel?
One of my students sent in the sweetest video practicing from their Hebrew 1 workbook—and yes, they were working on Gimel!
Starting your day with Hebrew practice? I want to see it!
Send me your videos using any of the Hebrew by Inbal books—you just might inspire someone else to open theirs!
Untitled photo, possibly related to: Migrant child in Shafter camp, Farm Security Administration. California
#Shafter #California #America #Hebrew #undefined #photography #DorotheaLange
The earth is waking…
You can feel it in the soft breeze, see it in the burst of blossoms, and hear it in the joyful chirping of birds. Spring is here, and with it comes the quiet reminder that renewal is always possible.
Take a deep breath—new beginnings are blooming all around us.
Master the Four Questions in Hebrew (Ma Nishtana) - Easy
Passover Guide!
Bring Hebrew to your Seder with my Passover gift for you.
A video + downloadable lyrics cheat sheet to help you (or your kids!) understand, sing, and master /mah neesh-ta-‘nah/ — The Four Questions — in Hebrew this year.
The lyrics are in Hebrew, English, and my PSP Phonetic System, so you can sing it confidently, even if you don’t read Hebrew fluently yet.
No sign-up, no fuss — just click and enjoy. I mention it in the video too: you have it all right here.
Just read the description in the YouTube video to find the downloadable link. Enjoy and please leave your thoughts on the lesson.
אני: רחצת ידיים אחרי הארוחה?
בת4.5: הולכת לרחוץ ידיים, חוזרת ומכריזה: washתי!
(סיפור שראוי במיוחד לפורים, ההנהלה מתנצלת על האיחור הקל)
#הורות #דולשוני
#parenting #bilingual #English #Hebrew #codeswitching ? #morphosyntax
With Passover (and Easter) around the corner, people are packing their bags, hopping on planes, trains, and highways to be with the ones they love most for the holiday.
So tell me — where will you be spending the holiday?
Whether it’s a big family gathering or a quiet moment with someone special… I’d love to hear!
Yes, your Hebrew teacher should be a native speaker — but that’s just the starting point.
What sets me apart?
I’m a native speaker who truly understands Hebrew — and knows how to simplify it for English speakers.
I break it down in a way that clicks. Builds your confidence. Brings clarity. Helps you focus on what matters most.
And more than anything?
I care deeply about your success. This isn’t just a job — it’s my mission.
If you’re a student, drop a 
so others know they’re in good hands.
Rethinking Proto-Semitic
This week, I was stoked to attend a workshop in Marburg, Germany, entitled “Rethinking Proto-Semitic” and organized by profs Stefan Weninger and Michael Waltisberg. Despite some cancellations, the workshop had an amazing lineup of speakers—and a terrific atmosphere. Here’s my summary of the talks.
Leonid Kogan, “What can we learn from Eblaite on Proto-Semitic morphology?” Ongoing study and decipherment of the 24th-century BCE East Semitic language from Ebla, Syria shows the following features that are interesting for reconstruction:
- personal pronouns: independent 1sg. /ʔanā/, 1pl. /nuḥnū/, 2m.sg. /ʔatta/, 2m.pl. /ʔattunu/, 3m.sg. /suwa/, 3f.sg. /siya/; suffixed 1du. /-nay/, 1pl. /-nu/, 2du. /-kumay(n)/, 3du. /-sumay(n)/
- 3m.pl. prefix conjugation /ti-…-ū/
- t-perfect, as in Mesopotamian Akkadian
- autobenefactive use of the ventive /-am/
- no subjunctive marker -u, unlike Mesopotamian Akkadian (this is big)
- t-stem infinitives with both prefixation and infixation, like dar-da-bí-tum /tartappidum/ ‘to roam here and there’, cf. ra-ba-tum /rapādum/ ‘to roam’
- nominal oblique “masculine” plural ending /-ay/, as reconstructed for Sargonic Akkadian and Assyrian and compatible with Babylonian; unlike Central Semitic *-ī-na
- singular case endings preserved in the construct state and before pronominal suffixes, e.g. ba-lu da-a-tim /baʕlu daʕātim/ ‘owner of knowledge (nom.)’, me-gi-ru12-zu /migrusu/ ‘his favourite (nom.)’
- productive use of terminative *-is, e.g. DU-ti-iš /halaktis/ ‘for the journey’
- ‘twenty’ with -ū vowel like Central Semitic, not -ā like other languages
Maria Bulakh, “Intercalated *a as a plural marker in Soqotri and its implications for the reconstruction of Proto-Semitic”. While superficially hard to recognize (and Jorik and I didn’t attempt to in our paper on this subject), reconstruction of Modern South Arabian and especially Soqotri attest insertion of *-a- between the second and third radical of *CVCC- nouns in the plural. No external plural suffix though.
Me, “Rethinking the Proto-Semitic stative”. Slides here. Got some good suggestions for languages where I could go looking for a synchronic distinction between resultative *qatal-a and preterit *ya-qtul.
Me presenting. The audience was bigger than it looks here, although not much (around 15 people).Ahmad Al-Jallad, “Revisiting the post-verbal morphemes *-u and *-n(V) in Semitic: a proposal for a unified theory”. The different verbal suffixes/enclitics shaped like -u and -n(V) in Akkadian, Central Semitic possibly Modern South Arabian, and Gurage (South Abyssinian) could all descend from the Proto-Semitic *=u(m) locative, which gained various subordinating and durative meanings. Central Semitic *ya-qtul-u instead of *ya-qattal-u for the imperfect could show a collapse in the distinction between *ya-qtul and *ya-qattal related to the rise of the West Semitic perfect *qatal-a.
Michael Waltisberg, “Issues of reconstructive methodology in Semitics”. Based on his review of Rebecca Hasselbach(-Andee)’s 2013 Case in Semitic, Waltisberg discussed some methodological questions like whether our reconstructed Proto-Semitic represents an actually spoken language or just maps correspondences between different languages and whether there is room for dialectal diversity and different chronological stages within a protolanguage. (Prof. Hasselbach-Andee sadly had to cancel her planned attendance.)
Lutz Edzard, “Linguistic divergence and convergence in Arabic and Semitic revisited”. As the most protolanguage-sceptic scholar at the workshop, Edzard reviewed some of his problems with the linear-descent-only family tree model where every language in a family descends from a kind of ancestral singularity with no internal diversity.
Vera Tsukanova, “What can modern Arabic dialects reveal about the etymology of the L-stem in Semitic?” The development of the L-stem (*qātal-) in historical Arabic suggests that it is more likely that this stem originally had a concrete meaning like applicative that was bleached in some languages than that it was originally vague and acquired its specific meaning in pre-Arabic.
Eran Cohen, “Semitic k-based similative particles—comparative and diachronic aspects”. Different Semitic particles starting with k- can be diachronically related to each other according to recognized historical pathways of development.
Na’ama Pat-El, “Homomorphs and reconstruction”. We are probably not dealing with one, syncretic morpheme but rather two homophonous ones in the cases of 1) prefix conjugation 2m.sg./3f.sg. *t-; (2) f.sg. abstract noun/m.pl. adjective suffix *-ūt-; (3) f.sg. noun or adjective/weak root verbal noun or infinitive suffix *-t-. In the latter, most controversial case, Pat-El invoked some evidence that the verbal nouns like Biblical Hebrew šéḇeṯ ‘sitting’ (from y-š-b) are syntactically masculine (e.g. Ps 133:1).
Stefan Weninger, “The Semitic Urheimat question: a review of the proposals and some perspectives”. An overview of some proposed points of dispersal for the Semitic languages since the late 19th century, the main contenders being the Arabian peninsula and East and North Africa. In the Q&A, Kogan added his own suggestion, published in an Encyclopedia Aethiopica article: Canaan.
Walter Sommerfeld, “The concept of a common Semitic cultural area (‘Kish Civilization’) in the 3rd millennium”. Contemporary evidence shows that there is no basis for Ignace Gelb’s concept of a distinctly Semitic culture in Early Dynastic northern Babylonia.
Apart from these talks, we spent about half the time in unstructured panel discussions, on phonology, morphology, methodology, and classification/Urheimat questions. Each discussion was kicked off by a short, stimulating talk, mostly by attendees who did not present full papers: Martin Kümmel, Michaël Cysouw, and Aaron Rubin. This was an experimental feature of the workshop, and I’m on the fence about it; the discussions were certainly fun and a lot of interesting points were brought up (e.g. Kogan: linguistic paleontology shows that Proto-Semitic speakers did know hyraxes but did not know oryxes, and only Canaan is [+hyrax][-oryx]), but it felt like they yielded fewer concrete insights than regular talks would have. It was a nice way to get some more people involved, though, also from adjacent fields (Indo-European/Indo-Iranian and Caucasian/Germanic linguistics).
All in all, it was wonderful to be able to fully geek out about Proto-Semitic and its daughters for a couple of days. There’s plans to publish proceedings, so hopefully in a few years you’ll be able to read all about these topics in full detail. Stay tuned.
I am absolutely grinding away at #Hebrew study lately, but I need more listening practice. Anyone have any recommendations for some sort of light #Israeli comedy or something, ideally that I can stream from the US without paying for a whole other streaming service? I feel like most of the options I find are super dark, and there's enough dark stuff hurting my poor brain right now without making my entertainment/language practice about it.
Wow! Thank you so much for your thoughtful review Susan!
It means the world to know that Practically Speaking Hebrew has given you the foundation and clarity you needed. I put so much into this course to make Hebrew feel approachable and natural, and hearing that it has helped you understand the “why” behind the language is truly rewarding.
If anyone out there is looking for a clear and practical way to start speaking Hebrew with confidence—this is your sign to jump in and see the difference for yourself!
Received this wonderful review
Thank you so much Santo for your kind words! I’m thrilled to hear that you found the book simple and approachable—it’s exactly what I hoped to create for beginners like you. Learning Hebrew at any stage in life is an incredible journey, and I’m so happy to be part of yours.
For anyone thinking about starting, this is proof that it’s never too late to begin!
Wishing you continued success and joy in your Hebrew learning!
It’s modern, it’s expressive… and it technically works
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And it's also April Fool’s Day! 
(But for real — if you do want to learn the actual aleph-bet, I can help 
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