When English speakers first look at Hebrew, it can feel entirely unfamiliar. It has a completely different alphabet, you read it from right to left, and the grammar rules are very different from English.

So, is Hebrew hard to learn?

The short answer is: Hebrew is moderately challenging, but extremely logical.

The U.S. Foreign Service Institute (FSI) places Hebrew in their middle tier of language difficulty. This means it’s harder for an English speaker to learn than Spanish or French, but it’s much easier than languages like Arabic, Mandarin, or Japanese.

To help you understand what you’re getting into, I’ll break down exactly what makes Hebrew challenging, and what actually makes it surprisingly easy.

The Hebrew alphabet and reading right-to-left

The biggest mental hurdle for beginners is the Hebrew alphabet, known as the Aleph-Bet.

There are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet, and they don’t look anything like English letters. On top of that, Hebrew is written and read from right to left.

While this sounds like a massive challenge, you can actually learn the alphabet in just a few days. Your brain adapts to reading right-to-left much faster than you might expect.

Another thing that confuses beginners is the lack of vowels. In modern, everyday Israeli Hebrew (like in newspapers, text messages, and books), vowels are usually left out.

Instead of writing vowel letters, Hebrew uses a system of dots and dashes called niqqud placed under or above the consonants. But native speakers don’t even use these! They just recognize the shape of the word from memory and context.

It’s kind of like reading English if all the vowels were removed. If I wrote “cmptr”, you’d automatically know it says “computer”. Hebrew works the same way.

Gendered words and verb patterns

One of the harder parts of Hebrew grammar is that absolutely everything is gendered.

In English, we have “he” and “she”, but in Hebrew, even the word “you” changes depending on who you’re talking to. Nouns, adjectives, and verbs all change depending on whether the subject is masculine or feminine.

For example, here’s how you ask “How are you?”:

(Notice how the spelling is the exact same without vowels, but the pronunciation changes!)

Hebrew verbs are also built using specific patterns called Binyanim (which translates to “buildings” or “structures”). There are seven main verb patterns. Once you learn the pattern, you can easily guess how a verb will be conjugated in the past, present, and future.

The magic of the Hebrew root system

This is where Hebrew becomes incredibly logical and beautiful.

Almost all Hebrew words are based on a three-letter root, called a shoresh. Once you know a root, you can easily guess the meaning of dozens of other words that share those same three letters.

Let’s look at the root כ-ת-ב (K-T-V), which has to do with writing. By plugging these three letters into different vowel patterns and adding prefixes or suffixes, we get a whole family of related words.

Because of this root system, expanding your vocabulary in Hebrew is actually much faster than in many other languages. Learn one root, and you get five or six words for free.

What makes Hebrew surprisingly easy?

Now for the good news. There are several things about Modern Hebrew that make it a breeze for English speakers:

1. There’s no verb “to be” in the present tense In English, we say “I am happy” or “He is a student.” In Hebrew present tense, you just skip the “am” and “is”. You simply say “I happy” or “He student.”

2. Very few tenses English has complicated tenses like “I had been walking” or “She will have finished.” Hebrew keeps it simple. There are only three tenses: past, present, and future.

3. Lots of English loanwords Modern Israeli Hebrew has borrowed hundreds of words from English. If you don’t know a word in Hebrew, there’s a good chance the English word will work.

Words like televizya (television), internet (internet), telefon (telephone), and bananah (banana) are all used in everyday Hebrew.

4. Simple pronunciation for modern speakers Ancient Biblical Hebrew had a lot of difficult, throaty sounds. But Modern Israeli Hebrew has simplified a lot of this. Most English speakers have no trouble mimicking an Israeli accent with just a little bit of practice. The only sound that takes some effort is the “kh” sound (like clearing your throat), which you hear in words like L’chaim (cheers).

Ultimately, while the Hebrew alphabet and reading direction might make it look like a difficult language, its highly logical root system and simple tenses make it rewarding and achievable.