Second Language Arabic Knowledge Useful for Learning Hebrew Vocabulary

Abstract

Arabic and Hebrew belong to the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family, and thus, they are semantically and phonetically similar in many lexical aspects. This study examined the benefits of Malaysian university students having prior knowledge of Arabic while learning Hebrew. A two-page questionnaire was administered to two groups of 30 and 40 students at advanced and fundamental Arabic proficiency levels, respectively. Page 1 contained a checklist with Yes/No columns about 30 Hebrew words to examine the participants’ prior knowledge. If participants answered yes, they were asked to write the meaning of the word in English or Malay. They then answered multiple-choice questions about the 30 Hebrew words on Page 2. Arabic counterparts were not shown on the questionnaire to prevent cuing the participants. The first group of participants, 30 Malaysian students with advanced Arabic proficiency, learned an average of 23.07 Hebrew words. The vocabulary items most correctly identified by Group 1 were ‘olam “world” (30 correct answers), katavti “I wrote” (28), mavet “death” (28), melekh “king” (27), moakh “brain” (27), shabat “Saturday” (27), shen “tooth” (27), shamayim “sky” (26), shana “year” (26), ahavti “I loved” (26), and ozen “ear” (26). The second group, 40 Malaysian students with basic Arabic knowledge, acquired 12.83 words on average. The scores of the two groups differed with statistical significance at the 5% level (p < 0.001, df = 68, t = 14.26). From these results, it appears that Arabic lexical knowledge significantly facilitates Malaysian students’ acquisition of Hebrew vocabulary.