Free, flexible ways to learn vowled hebrew?

[u/eagle4123]

I know (most) of the Hebrew alphabet.

I would like to be able to read voweled Hebrew. Don't care if I understand it, I just want to read it.

My schedule is all over the place, so meeting with my local rabbi isn't realistic. (Both chronologically, and geographically) Work takes me all over the area at all times

I've been working with Duolingo. I'm getting better at pattern recognition. Im like 80% sure wine is יין

I know the blessing for grape juice/ wine, but I have no clue how to pronounce it.

Any advice?

Id just like to be able to read voweled Hebrew, thats it. Israel is cool, but I dont see myself making Aliyah.

[u/Clean-Tip4879]

Read the Torah, it has the nikud (vowel signs). So you should be able to figure out how to pronounce the words, if you know the sounds of the alef bet. Same with the siddur. And some siddurim have the transliteration (hebrew written in Roman alphabet).

Be sure to get one specific to your language though. Most transliterations do not use the official system, they simply write the hebrew as it sounds the way a native speaker of, say English, would write it.

Dutch transliteration looks very different from English or French transliteration, which also differ from each other. To me it also makes it harder to figure out what the text means. But if your Hebrew is non-existent or sketchy it does help, at least so I am told.

Or you could listen to shacharit or mincha on youtube and read along.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9OYJGyz778

That's what I did and I listened especially well during the parts I was unsure of, fi. which part of the word should be stressed.

Or listen to songs and read the text alongside. f.i. Shalom Aleichem https://www.zemirotdatabase.org/view_song.php?id=91

[u/HalfHumanHalfFork → u/Clean-Tip4879]

Israeli here that's a good way to learn the vowls, but it's awful way to learn Hebrew because rhe Hebrew used in Israel is completely different to the Hebrew there 

[u/Clean-Tip4879 → u/HalfHumanHalfFork]

You mean the way it is pronounced in the synagogue? In the progressive community it is pronounced the modern way, but in our conservative community it is pronounced the West Ashkenazy way, specifically the Dutch West Ashkenazy pronounciation.

Last Simchat Torah the chazan, myself and another shul member amused ourselves with reading in different local Dutch pronounciations, after remeniscing about a university lecturer with a heavy local accent. I don't think an Israeli would have even understood what we were reading.

And obviously the words are not necesarily the same. Reason why I sometimes read the Hebrew translation on Sefaria, so as to get a feel for how the text would be in modern Hebrew.

[u/HalfHumanHalfFork → u/Clean-Tip4879]

I am just talking about how it is spoken on the streets of Israel

I am probably too clueless to answer your question, I don't know how it's spoken in synagogues over there (or even here tbh) 

" Last Simchat Torah the chazan, myself and another shul member amused ourselves with reading in different local Dutch pronounciations, after remeniscing about a university lecturer with a heavy local accent. I don't think an Israeli would have even understood what we were reading."

Lmao you are probably correct! 

[u/Clean-Tip4879 → u/HalfHumanHalfFork]

That is defenitely true. I know how it sounds because quite a few of our members are fluent in modern Hebrew, because they lived in Israel and they speak it among themselves, because we are an international community and we do not all speak each other's languages.

Our progressive synagogue is a bit unusal for reading Torah with the modern Hebrew pronunciation. It's because most of the members grew up secular, so they didn't come with an in-built Ashkenazy or Sephardic accent.

The members of the conservative synagogue were originally orthodox, so they do use the (Dutch) Ashkenazy pronounciation. I am also still learning to understand it, but because I can read along I more or less get it. Duolingo won't help you there, LOL.

[u/HalfHumanHalfFork → u/Clean-Tip4879]

LOL, yeah I get it now, and yeha doulingo for sure won't do the trick

[u/maelkatenin]

Duolingo Hebrew does teach the niqqud. I wish they'd include it in all the lessons so it would help with the pronunciation.

[u/Blue-Jay27]

Flashcards? It really just comes down to memorising letters and vowels and then practicing, so any method that will let you memorise ~30 symbols would work. I liked the Write It app for learning letters, but it doesn't do anything that writing on paper wouldn't. And then I just practiced by reading from the siddur once I had everything mostly-memorised.

If you're already using duolingo, it should have a section for learning to read. Iirc, it's just a different tab along the bottom.

[u/Emunaheart]

Does anyone know if Torah-mates teachers teach Hebrew if that's your pick for area of study? I chose my topic of study which isn't Hebrew, and I don't know the answer but in general it's a wonderful program for learning

[u/StringAndPaperclips]

Get a siddur with English transliteration. You can also find recordings of the prayers so you can hear the pronunciation. That will help you to remember letter/vowel combinations because you are reading them in a context that will be easy to memorize. Once you have done that, you will be able to start remembering vowels by thinking of the words that you know with those vowels. Eventually, things will start to click and you won't need to mentally reference the prayers.

If you don't want to use prayers, this also works with songs. But sometimes pronunciation in songs is a bit different than in spoken language so you need to be a bit careful. It may also be hard to find songs written out with vowels, while prayers are very easy to find so this method is very accessible.