Anyone who regularly reads in Hebrew?

[itisdeliciouscake]

I've now entering my third year of Hebrew study, and just had a few questions for anyone who reads Hebrew regularly...

How often do you read? How much (material) at a time? How long do you typically read for? How fast can you typically read?

On a related note... How often do you have to look words up? Like... how much vocabulary do you have memorized (down to what occurrence-frequency?)? How do you typically look up words (i.e. a reader's Bible? a lexicon?) Do you regularly work on improving vocabulary? If so, how?

And then... what books do you typically read? Which books do you find the most difficult? Easiest?




Basically I just want to get a good gauge of what someone who "knows biblical Hebrew" is able to do. Like... how proficient should one be at sight-reading, how much vocab one knows, etc. etc....




(On a rather unrelated side-note, am I the only one who HATES whenever someone makes any kind of oath in the Bible?? The syntax always gets crazy funky and throws me off....)

 

[itisdeliciouscake]

**cricket chirps**

 

[yonah_mishael]

In the narrative portions, I generally don’t look up words at all. I have a hard time with poetry (prophecy, psalms, proverbs). I don’t do anything to build vocabulary regularly, since I’m now working on Greek more than on Hebrew, trying to learn Attic at this point.

Do you use the Israeli pronunciation? Read regularly yourself? I'm all for reading narratives and maybe working on fixing my reading of poetry. At one point I would read through the religious cycle, reading all of Jonah (יונ&#1492 in one sitting, reading all of Lamentations (איכ&#1492, etc. I've got Skype, should you want to read together some time.

Regards,
YM

 

[Wanderlust Pilgrim]

Sometimes and awe yeah Tel Aviv! What's up bro? Haha

 

[Unix]

An idea is to read inscriptions from the Biblical period, mostly from when the two kingdoms were united, and to use the Dictionary of Epigraphic Hebrew. (Accordance has these kind of resources on a sale until midnight EDT tomorrow Monday April 20.) I wonder if anyone agrees it's a good idea to read these?
Another source I'm more sure I want to read, is Sirach (also on Accordance's sale now).

On another, slightly related as they do include some non-transliterated Hebrew, note: I would be happy to discuss commentaries to the Hebrew Bible and a select few other ancient texts, in the thread: Practical Commentary on Scripture ... that thread is for posting reviews of academic commentaries. (If You need help to navigate the thread for example if You want to quote a post when You post, You may PM me - I can find the relevant "sub-thread" quite easily. I'm happy to serve You.) It would be so great to have more people post and very interesting to read the reviews of someone who knows a bit of Hebrew!