Beginner's Aramaic Zohar update

BEGINNER'S ARAMAIC ZOHAR UPDATE: Justin Jaron Lewis e-mails:

Following up on your "Aramaic Watch" posting of Sept. 15 2011, I wanted to let you know that the first semester of the pilot course on the Aramaic of the Zohar concluded well. Six students who began the semester without any knowledge of Semitic languages successfully learned to sound out vocalized Aramaic (we are using modern Hebrew pronunciation for convenience), got a basic sense of how roots work, learned a few hundred words of vocabulary, and, from mid-semester or earlier, have been reading and translating brief selections from the Zohar. The course continues this semester with a focus on verbs; I'm hoping also to arrive at a comfort level with unpointed texts. A draft textbook is in progress. Thank you for your interest!

Well done! Thanks for the update.