"Hungry"

Здравствуйте!

Я читаю учебник "Roots of the Russian Language" сейчас, и смотрю слово "Алкать," которое значит "to be hungry."
Но я услышал, что можно сказать "я голоден." Я не понимаю разницы между этими. Кто-нибудь может объяснить разницу?

Спасибо!

Алкать is obsolete and it means to be hunger for, to crave for
to be hungry (about meal) is быть голодным

Are you kidding? "Алкать" is an extremely archaic word. To the extent it took me a few seconds to guess its meaning. Of course, there is a more common word derived from it - алчный "greedy, avid". Still, outdated but at least understood by native speakers.

In everyday speech use "Я голоден" ("I'm hungry"), "Я хочу есть" ("I want to eat"), "Хочу перекусить" ("Wanna have a snack") and so on, depending on the meaning. "Я проголодался" (lit. "I have grown hungry") may also work. After all, in Russian one rarely says "Я голоден". Too neutral, and doesn't really sound like "it's about time to eat".

the book is said to be first published in 1989 but some words are written with the "ять" character, which was disused with the orthography reform in 1918
as an essay writer its author was active as early as 1943 having published a critique on Ostrovsky's (1823-1886) writing, so you can gauge what version of Russian he may have known

алкать means "to crave for" or "to starve" but rarely used and even least often associated with food. This word is not widely used and I guess it is more like 19 century word

Спасибо вам за помощь!

yep, "алкать" из very old word, but modern Russian has derivative word "алчность".