The Sound of the Throat: Pharyngeal Consonants
English speakers tend to speak from the front of their mouths, but Semitic languages like Arabic and Hebrew utilize the deep pharynx to create distinct, guttural sounds. This guide explores…
Hebrew
The Great ‘Bet/Vet’ Split in Hebrew
Ever stumbled over whether to say 'bet' or 'vet' in Hebrew? This seemingly random choice is a window into a fascinating historical sound change affecting a whole family of consonants.…
Digitizing the Dead Sea Scrolls: An OCR Puzzle
Teaching a computer to read is simple, but what if the text is a 2,000-year-old, fragmented manuscript written in an archaic script? The digitization of the Dead Sea Scrolls presents…
The Root System: Hebrew’s Word DNA
Move beyond memorizing endless vocabulary lists and discover the secret logic of Hebrew: the *shoresh* or three-letter root system. This post reveals how a single root can spawn an entire…
Gematria: The Hebrew Word-Number Cipher
Discover Gematria, the ancient Hebrew practice of finding hidden meaning by assigning numerical values to letters. More than a simple cipher, this fascinating system reveals a world where language and…
The Aleph-Bet’s Missing Vowels
Ever wondered how languages like Hebrew and Arabic are read by millions without written vowels? It's not magic, but an ingenious system based on consonantal "roots" that carry a word's…
Yalla & Sababa: The Soul of Hebrew Slang
Move beyond biblical texts and listen to the living, breathing soul of modern Israel. To truly understand its culture, you need to know its slang—the vibrant, borrowed, and brilliant words…
What Is a ‘Construct State’ in Hebrew and Arabic?
In English, we say 'the king's house', but what if you could fuse the words into a single concept like 'house-king'? This is the 'construct state', a core grammatical feature…
From Chariots to Covenants: The Linguistic Archaeology of the Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible was not written in a single moment, and the language itself is a key to unlocking its layered history. By exploring the field of Biblical philology, we…
The Revival of Hebrew: The Tale of a Slumbering Language
Many stories surrounding language involve the mystery of deciphering ancient codes, the valor of wartime cryptography, or the mystical origins of universal tongues. However, one...