Читать книгу Hebrew For Dummies - Jill Suzanne Jacobs - Страница 30

Hebrew, like other ancient Semitic languages (such as Acadian, Samarian, Ugaritic, and Arabic), is written from right to left. Why? Is there a preponderance of lefties in the region? No!

Maybe you’ve read the Bible, in particular the part where Moses comes down from the mountain with the Ten Commandments in hand. And if you haven’t read the Bible, perhaps you’ve seen the Mel Brooks film version in History of the World: Part 1. When Moses came down from the mountain, what was he holding? A copy of an email from the Almighty? A scroll of papyrus? No. He was holding two stone tablets! You may ask, “Well, how did the Ten Commandments get on the stone tablets? Did Moses have a special pen or something?”

When ancient Hebrew emerged, it was written by chiseling it in stone. If the writer was a rightie, they would have used their dominant hand — their right hand — to pound the mallet onto the stylus they held with their left hand. And because ancient Hebrew society (like all societies) favored righties, its language was written from right to left. The Phoenicians and then the Greeks followed suit. Then, for a while, the Greeks wrote in both directions, switching when they got to the end of the tablet or page. That practice makes sense, if you think about it; why press the Return key on your electric typewriter to go all the way back to start a new line when you can just keep going where you are in the backward direction! Then the Greeks decided that left to right would be their standard, but Hebrew scribes kept on writing right to left. Tradition! (OK, folks today are just as likely to have an electric typewriter as the ancient Greeks, but that's neither here nor there.)

If you want some practice reading, check out https://www.easylearnhebrew.com, an online course in Hebrew. The site can help you read Hebrew in no time!

FUN&GAMES

Write the sound that each of the following Hebrew characters makes:

בּ (B) _____	ג (G) _____	ל (L)____	ב (V) _____
ד (D) _____	ה (H) _____	ר (R)____	א (° silent) _____

You can find the answers in Appendix C.