Only that German is way easier for an English-speaker to learn. The patterns, sounds and words are familiar to us through the echoes of Anglo-Saxon in what we speak today.
German I gather has complicated grammar, which makes it less easy to learn. Hebrew by contrast has relatively simple grammar—and I know Hebrew grammar already (though my knowledge is in places a bit rusty); I learned it at the age of sixteen and never completely forgot it.
As for vocabulary, I'm often helped when learning Hebrew by words being from the same root as words I already know from the liturgy, or the Bible, or the book Judith WINOLJ was helping me translate a year ago. (Of course, when new words involve new roots, that's no help; but that would be the case, though to a lesser extent, for an Indo-European language too.)
If I were just wanting to learn a language which might be of use, I'd learn Spanish. (Actually, I already did, but...) It's useful over about 70% of the Western Hemisphere which frankly, Hebrew never will be.
That might be true, but I meet several Israelis for every Spanish speaker I meet.
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Date: 2010-08-17 01:01 pm (UTC)German I gather has complicated grammar, which makes it less easy to learn. Hebrew by contrast has relatively simple grammar—and I know Hebrew grammar already (though my knowledge is in places a bit rusty); I learned it at the age of sixteen and never completely forgot it.
As for vocabulary, I'm often helped when learning Hebrew by words being from the same root as words I already know from the liturgy, or the Bible, or the book Judith WINOLJ was helping me translate a year ago. (Of course, when new words involve new roots, that's no help; but that would be the case, though to a lesser extent, for an Indo-European language too.)
If I were just wanting to learn a language which might be of use, I'd learn Spanish. (Actually, I already did, but...) It's useful over about 70% of the Western Hemisphere which frankly, Hebrew never will be.
That might be true, but I meet several Israelis for every Spanish speaker I meet.