Leigh Kimmel’s Reviews > How Biblical Languages Work: A Student's Guide to Learning Hebrew and Greek > Status Update

Tips for various kinds of learners to study in ways that work to their strengths rather than against their weaknesses.

The complexity of meaning, literal and figurative. How words gain multiple meanings. How words with vastly different meanings end up growing together to the point they sound alike and have to be distinguished by context (or by spelling or other orthographic distinction in written language). Recognizing layers of meaning, including plays on words or historical references.

Getting a little into stylistics and the ways in which language is used in a variety of different situations, from jokes to governance.

From writing systems to morphology. Morphemes are the fundamental building blocks of meaning. Free and bound roots, and various affixes that modify the roots, whether changing their function or more closely defining their meanings -- and different languages do them differently. Hebrew in particular, with its triconsonantal roots and various infixes and circumfixes, may seem quite alien to speakers of English.

A look at how the Hebrew and Greek alphabets are related to the Roman alphabet in which English is written. All have developed from the early Semitic alphabet that was probably spread throughout the Mediterranean by Phoenician traders. (The Cyrillic alphabet, in which Russian and several other Slavic languages are written, also traces back to the same roots).

From language in general to written language in particular -- because when we are studying the Bible, we are studying materials written in languages that are no longer cradle tongues (yes, both Hebrew and Greek have living descendants, but Modern Israeli Hebrew and Modern Greek are not the same as their ancestors, any more than Modern English is the tongue of Beowulf).

The basic "what is language" discussion, similar to the first session or two of the introductory linguistics course I took when I was an undergrad at UIUC.

A basic introduction to the authors and "what is language?"