My observation in light of what Alan and Reefton Jack have said is that there's a huge difference between learning a living and a dead language. I don't know any Hebrew and have never studied it, but I suspect the situation with Hebrew is similar to the situation with Greek.
When you study modern Greek you are taught to speak and express yourself in it. You start learning simple, childish dialogue from day one:
Eimai o AntreaV
Einai o Niko
O Niko ekei mia aiga
Learning to read and write the language take a back seat to expressing yourself in the language. The goal is to understand and be understood by Greek speakers. And the more you do this, the better.
Study ancient Greek, especially NT Greek and the situation is entirely different. The goal is not learning to express yourself in the language; the goal is learning to read the Greek NT. This may seem like a minor difference, but it's not. Since you don't learn it is a spoken language, (Who would you talk to anyway?) the emphasis is on translation through grammar and word definition, not self expression.
This leads to the exact phenomenon that Alan has described. I remember one piece of Asian equipment here where I work came with a note that read:
"Failure of proper anchorage will make vibration, which can remarkably adverse the machine."
This illustrates the big difference between studying an English dictionary versus learning to express yourself in English. It's the same with all languages. There are professors of ancient Greek, whose pronounciation and attempts at self expression would make even Greek children snicker.