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Is Modern Hebrew significantly easier to learn than Modern Standard Arabic?

For a first language English speaker, is Modern Hebrew significantly less challenging to learn the Modern Standard Arabic, relatively speaking. From the little bit of study I've done, the Hebrew alphabet was certainly more regular and a lot easier to master than the Arabic alphabet. However, in terms of actually learning the language, which one would you say was easier.

I've actually heard Hebrew described a few times as a half-way point between an Indo-European and Semetic language both in terms of vocabulary and grammar, in the sence it borrows heavily from Indo-European languages in terms of vocab and grammar, thus making it somewhat less complex for a speaker of an Indo-European language to learn. Is there any truth in this?

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Anatheme
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burninginme
For a first language English speaker, is Modern Hebrew significantly less challenging to learn the Modern Standard Arabic, relatively speaking. From the little bit of study I've done, the Hebrew alphabet was certainly more regular and a lot easier to master than the Arabic alphabet. However, in terms of actually learning the language, which one would you say was easier.

I've actually heard Hebrew described a few times as a half-way point between an Indo-European and Semetic language both in terms of vocabulary and grammar, in the sence it borrows heavily from Indo-European languages in terms of vocab and grammar, thus making it somewhat less complex for a speaker of an Indo-European language to learn. Is there any truth in this?

Thanks


I haven't done Hebrew, but I'm studying MSA and some of my coursemates are doing both Hebrew and Arabic, and all told me it was significantly easier than MSA. Now, I can't really give you the reasons why, but apparently the grammar isn't as tough as MSA grammar. Although both languages are semitic languages and have very little in common with Indo-European languages, and don't even belong to the same sub-root (Afro-Asiatic VS Indo-European).

The vocabulary (at least in Arabic) is completely different (of course you still have words borrowed from languages but they're pretty rare), and words in Arabic (and Hebrew as well I guess) follow a system of roots and patterns that is the base of etymology in both languages, but has barely anything in common with European languages etymology. Most words in say Italian and French are derived from Latin and Greek, and they're just kind of variations of the words like "année" coming from "annum" meaning year in French. Now in Arabic, you have three consonnants that compose a root (let's say ktb), and according to the pattern it's following, these roots can form lots of other words, like maktaba (desk?), kitaab (book) or kataba (to write), which all have the same ktb root and you can see that they belong to the same lexical field.

Also, in terms of alphabet, Arabic and Hebrew have nothing in common with the Latin, Greek and Cyrillic alphabets you can find in European languages. They're not the most difficult part of a language, but when European languages write their vowels as proper letters, they're only gonna be some sort of diacritics in Hebrew and Arabic. I don't know about Hebrew, but Arabic often ommits vowels when written (except in the Qu'ran, children books and textbooks) and it's make it quite difficult to read. Also, I found that the alphabet isn't as easy to learn as Greek or Cyrillic because the letters don't look like letters enough (I mean in Greek or Russian, you can see some similarities with the Latin alphabet that completely disappear in Hebrew or Arabic).

So, basically, I can't give you an unbiased opinion as I haven't done it, but I'll trust my friends saying Hebrew's much easier than Arabic, hoping that the explanations given about Arabic will help you.

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