Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #372994 in Books
• Published on: 1993-09
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 341 pages

Customer Reviews

Loaded with great words
This quickly rose to the top of my collection of Hebrew books. It's accessible to anyone who has a solid first-year course in the language, but the more you know the more you can get out of it. That means it's the kind of book you will come back to several times. It's not just a history of the language, in fact, history is not its primary focus. It's a vocabulary book, and a superb one.

It groups words by their structural or pattern similarities and shows how various roots acuire shades of meaning as projected through each pattern. It has large lists of structurally related words, and many roots are repeatedly represented, horizontally if you like, across multiple patterns. It prompted me to make a spreadsheet, in fact, laying out this rich vocabulary in the implied two dimensions. It presents plenty of etymological relationships, also, implying a third dimension.

It has lots of exercises and puzzles to engage you and test your absorption of the material.

I don't know of a better presentation of vocabulary, built-up from and built-in to the grammatical framework. Along with R. Matityahu Clark's Etymological Dictionary of Biblical Hebrew, it's almost as though one can "calculate" vocabulary words.

If only all Hebrew teachers had read this book!
After living in Israel for going on 3 years, taking 5 months of intensive Ulpan and several part-time follow-up Hebrew Ulpanim, I am now speaking Hebrew fairly decently.

However, it wasn't until I just read this book that it all started to make sense, everything has now fallen into place.

The most important thing that I learned was the secret behind those "irregular" verbs that always give so much trouble when learning a new language.

The author also shows the evolution of various words and how and why the spellings and pronounciations of many Hebrew words have changed over time.

In almost all cases, the author gives clear examples that show how the same concepts run parallel in English and other languages.

He sheds light on many different aspects of language and communication, all in an entertaining and easy to read manner.

A great introduction to the history of the language for the Layman
Writen over 30 years ago Horowitz's book is still a minor classic.
Surely there is no better introduction to the long history of the holy tounge for the English speaker with a good working knowlege of Hebrew.
Althogh writen for schoools the book is suitable for those who long left Hebrew school or "Heder"
We are introduced to some basic principles of the semitic languages then countless examples are given from both modern and biblical Hebrew.
Horowitz's book is not a leaned scientific study... but its an informative read for anyone who loves the Hebrew language whether he uses it at study , prayer as as his everyday language.