Tip - Learn Hebrew Names First

In the previous videos in this series on How to Learn Hebrew Vocabulary, we looked at the importance of learning the commonest Hebrew words in a given Biblical text first. If you use this approach, you will make much faster progress than by doing anything else. We also looked at how to actually find those commonest words, using modern Bible software such as BibleWorks.

In this lesson, we want to look at another (complimentary) approach, and that is to start by simply learning the most common names in the portions of Scripture which you are most interested in. By names, we mean names of people (e.g. Yahweh, Israel, Judah, Jacob) as well as names of places (e.g. Jerusalem, Egypt, Moab).

This approach is especially important because, at first, most people are not fluent at reading, and are not confident about learning large amounts of vocabulary. Since the names of people and places are already familiar to you, by starting with the commonest names, you can get a handle on how to read words more fluently, and you can learn a good number of names relatively quickly.

But first, you need to learn how to find those names in the portion(s) of the Bible you are interested in, in your chosen language (Hebrew or Aramaic, for instance). And you need to learn how to create lists of them for yourself. We cover both these topics in this important video.

So enjoy watching this video, as well as the previous ones. Once you have watched these videos, your next task is to start creating a (hopefully long!) list of the commonest words, and/or the commonest names, from your chosen portion of Scripture. Then, in the next few videos, we will explore the best and most efficient methods for actually learning (memorising) those words.

You are making great progress - keep going!

Watch the Video Lesson