9YjRuTp-nD0.srt

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Can I Hebrew speaker understand an 
Arabic speaker?

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Well,
the short answer is no.

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The long answer is Kinda sorta maybe,
but not really.

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No.

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The question,

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one of the day is how similar our Hebrew
and Arabic as someone who has studied 

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both languages,
I get asked this question by quite a few

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people.
Um,

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and it's a good question.
It makes me think because I'm not quite 

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sure,
but I'll give you my best answer.

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Basically Hebrew and Arabic are very 
closely related languages and if you 

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study both,
that will become very apparent.

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You'll see tons of similarities and if 
you know one well already,

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that will help you learn the other much 
more easily,

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but at the same time they are not 
mutually comprehensible.

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That means,
uh,

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you,
if you speak one and not the other,

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that you won't be able to communicate 
with someone who speaks the other 

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language.
So they're not,

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you can't,
you can't communicate as though they're 

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the same language and won't work.
Okay.

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So let's talk about some things that are
kind of similar and I'll throw in some 

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differences as I go.

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And then I'll talk about how there are 
not really useful as a communication 

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tool with each other.
Okay.

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So they're similar because of the verbal
system and in terms of how you create 

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words in the language.
So in both Hebrew and Arabic,

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they have a system of roots.
Now those roots are usually three 

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consonant letters and you take those 
three consonant letters and you put them

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into kind of templates that help you 
create a word.

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So the templates are patterns.
They're like,

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um,
a set of,

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of a combination of vowels and ethics is
that could be a prefix or suffix or even

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an in fix inside the word.
So let's take a three letter root and 

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I'll give you an example.
In Hebrew,

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you've got the root ca to va,
that's Katie v.

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If you recognize it,
and in Arabic you've got to book Katie,

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be romanized it already.

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You can see there's a similarity.
That route is almost the same.

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The book and the va are different,
but low sounds are equivalent.

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So if you put them into the templates,
you can change it.

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Let's use a verb conjugation template in
the past tense.

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This is the simplest structure in both 
languages.

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So in Hebrew,
if you say,

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I wrote,
you would say cut off d in Arabic you 

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would say the top two or in a dialect 
maybe cut up in Hebrew for the second 

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person,
masculine for you,

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you would say a cutoff in Arabic.
Cut Up top.

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So you can see that's quite similar for 
the Feminine Second Person Singular in 

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Hebrew,
you would say cutoff in Arabic,

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you would say.
Okay,

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so you could see there there's a 
similarity here in the way that you put 

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the roots into these templates to 
conjugate the verbs and you can see that

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the conjugations are kind of similar.

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Uh,
the templates are kind of similar but 

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they're not exactly the same.
And there could be confusion like,

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um,
for uh,

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for the one I said for a in Hebrew,
it's cutoff date that I wrote,

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but in Arabic means you wrote,
it's when spoken to a female.

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So you can see there could be a 
confusion there and you might 

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misunderstand.
I think they're talking about someone 

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else.
I'm right.

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But she could see that same kind of 
system and that that kind of system of 

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templates is used to create nouns to 
create adjectives,

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all kinds of words,
just the templates are different and 

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have different affixes attached to them 
and different vowels.

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So that's one thing is that system of 
roots and templates,

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it's the same in both.
So if you learn that once for one 

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language,
it's just getting that concept down 

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really helps you with the second 
language that uses that same system 

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because it's a bit mind bending at first
to adjust to that route and template 

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system.

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Another way that there are similar is in
terms of just a lot of vocabulary,

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you already saw that that one route,
the cut,

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the cut the book.
So there's a lot of vocabulary that's 

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the same.
It's not the majority of words though.

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It's not like 80 percent or something 
like that.

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It's,
I would,

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I don't know the exact percentage.
I would guess that it's about a third 

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that's just off the top of my head from 
my studying experience.

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A third,
uh,

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some of the words are very similar or 
almost the same.

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And some are,
some are clearly related,

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if you examine the words,
but you might not notice that just from 

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hearing them because the phonology of 
the languages has become different due 

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to the languages history.
It's similar in French and Italian,

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French and Italian.
If you read two sentences,

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um,
equivalent centers,

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this side by side,
you can look at them and you can say,

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oh,
this word must be the same as this word.

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This one must be the same as this one 
because the words look kind of similar.

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They sound different and the spelling is
different.

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But you can look at them and see that 
they're the same.

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They have the same meaning because they 
look similar.

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Uh,
so there are a lot of words like that,

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like they're the kind of cognates,
but they're slightly different.

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Um,
so I'll give you some examples of both 

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types.
Like the ones that are very similar,

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a yad in Hebrew and Arabic,
that means hand dumb in Hebrew and 

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Arabic.
That means blood,

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right?
Um,

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there's a lot of words that are similar 
like that.

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The,
almost the same like that.

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Some that you can figure out quite 
easily with the pronouns,

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like I is an the in Hebrew or in Arabic 
or in Hebrew,

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you for a man as a ta in Arabic gets 
untaught,

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right?

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He is who in Hebrew,
it's in Arabic,

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right?
Um,

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and that might,
might depend on the dialect to,

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in Arabic is different in from country 
to country.

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Another one kitchen in Hebrew Mitzvah 
and in Arabic gets macbook.

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So pretty close.
Just one vowel changes in the Arabic 

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one,
uh,

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some that are a little bit more 
different,

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but you can see the similarity,
especially if you know the function or 

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meaning of the word,
like this one to you or for you in 

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Hebrew is the hot.
But in Arabic it's lack.

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So if you look at the vowels,
sorry,

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if you look at the consonants you can 
see,

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okay,
l k versus l,

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C h,
those might be the same,

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right?
Of in Hebrew is father Abba in Arabic.

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So again,
you see that be in the V,

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another one,
Ben,

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his son in Hebrew Eban his son in 
Arabic.

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So if you just look at the consonants 
that be in the end,

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you can say,
oh,

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those are related.
Another one,

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rush,
rush means head in Hebrew,

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and last,
last means head in Arabic.

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So that's in rush.
Those are clearly related.

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Another one,
tongue in Hebrew,

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lashawn in Arabic.
Listen,

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the sun,
so the sun and the show,

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maybe there's a change there.
And also the,

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the old became an r sound.
So there's some shifts in the sounds 

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going on.
Dog in Hebrew is Kelly in Arabic,

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it's called.
So you can see there are a lot of words 

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that have a similar,
a similar route or if they come from the

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same word,
but they've shifted and become 

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different.
So there's a lot of words like that that

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you wouldn't necessarily understand when
you hear them.

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And other one,
that's this,

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uh,
there are some words that are the same,

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but they have a different meaning like a
Medina or Medina.

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In Hebrew,
Medina is state like Israel,

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the state of Israel.
But in Arabic Medina means a city.

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So they're both political entities.
There is a connection in the meaning,

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but it's not exactly the same,
meaning the meaning has become different

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and they're also a lot of words that are
just different entirely.

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For whatever reason.
It's always kind of strange to discover 

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words that are exactly the same in 
Hebrew and Arabic.

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And then the next word in the sentence 
is entirely different and you've never 

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seen it before.
So like why did this one become the same

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in both languages,
but this one is different.

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What?
So it makes it kind of interesting.

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I don't always know.
You usually don't know the answer,

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but yeah.
Anyway,

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there's a lot of different vocabulary so
you can see that there are quite related

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and there's a lot of crossover but you 
won't understand one just by learning 

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the other.

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Right.
It will help you learn the other.

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If you make the effort though and if you
take what you know and try to apply it 

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to the other language.
Well learning.

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So let me give you an example of when I 
first went to Egypt in 1997.

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I went there after having studied Hebrew
for a couple of years already and I was 

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visiting Israel and I went to Egypt to,
so I tried to use my Hebrew and apply it

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to Arabic because I only knew a little 
bit of Arabic.

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I didn't know enough to really to have a
conversation or whatever.

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So I would try to use my very simple 
Arabic and insert Hebrew words into it.

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And I knew the difference in phonology,
so I would kind of shift in Arab buys my

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pronunciation of the Hebrew words.
And I was surprised by how often people 

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understood me and the people didn't 
speak Hebrew.

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They weren't seen bruce speakers,
but they understood,

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I guess they could,
they could hear the word and think of an

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equivalent or similar sounding word in 
Arabic or they could cure the root and 

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maybe that route was used in a different
word in there,

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Arabic dialect or whatever.
Uh,

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so they could figure out what I was 
saying a lot of the time.

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And they looked at me strangely.
They thought maybe I was a Weirdo or I 

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remember they often asked me if I was 
from Lebanon,

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so maybe they thought that my bizarre 
Arabic pigeon language was Lebanese 

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Arabic.
That seemed to be something like that.

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They kept asking me if I was from 
Lebanon.

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Uh,
it happened like that in Jordan too.

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I remember when I was in Jordan the same
year,

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um,
that I,

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I managed to use some Hebrew words in 
situations where I was surprised that it

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went across.

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So they understood a lot of my Hebrew 
words when I era buys them.

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So that's just an example of how the 
language has crossover and you,

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you can apply one to the other,
but they're generally not mutually 

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comprehensible.
You have to make the effort to shift it 

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to change that knowledge into the other 
language.

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So that's why there are two different 
languages,

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not dialects of the same language.
All right.

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So that's,
that's what I wanted to share with you.

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Just my experience with how similar they
are,

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give you some similarities,
differences,

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and hope you understand a little bit 
better than before.

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All right.
Thank you for listening.

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Good Nights.