Hebrew From Scratch

Remember kindergarten? I live it. Every day. Well, Sunday through Thursday at least. Ulpan, the 5-week Hebrew immersion course I’m currently taking, is taught ALL in Hebrew.

Which is not as problematic as it seems or as I first thought because I am in a level that is the actual equivalent of kindergarten Hebrew. Right now, we’re learning the letters of the alphabet (19 down, 3 more to go! Woot woot!) and some simple vocabulary with the letters we know. Yesterday we started some verb conjugation and the class suddenly is a lot harder…

I was hoping to avoid the mystical workings of feminine and masculine that I slogged through miserably in French, but naturally we’re doing that too. Ice cream, interestingly enough, is feminine in French and Hebrew. Glida. gimel, lamed, yod, he. Go me!

The teacher talks in a very enunciated, slow voice, and watches our faces for either recognition or bewilderment (for me, the latter) and then writes it on the board.

The title of our textbook doesn’t do much for my already battered ego, “Hebrew From Scratch, Part I”. Part I? Really? That’s just adding insult to injury. Rude.

It’s yellow and has lots of Hebrew words on it I don’t know, and is bound on the wrong side, just like everything else here. I knew, coming over, that Hebrew is read from right to left, but somehow I didn’t manage to make the mental leap and figure out that the books would all be bound on the right, and you have to read it, well, backwards.

It’s a big problem. Every time I go to do my homework, I pull out my book, plop it on my (huge) desk binding to the left, and get confused as to why it’s all upside down. Oh yeah. Duh.

The book is great, the exercises we’re doing are downright embarrassing to think about they’re so elementary. A lot of what we’re doing is looking at the formal, printed letters, reading it out loud, and writing it out in script (sort of like going from Times New Roman to cursive).

Aka HARD. Some of the letters are almost exactly the same.

There are 4 letters that are essentially a straight line, but with varying lengths and little notches at the top that may or may not be in different directions. Oh, and want to hear one that I’m convinced was made up just to mess with non-Native speakers? If the letter Vav (usually a “v” sound) is in the middle of a word, it makes an O sound. Or a V sound, it’s really a guessing game.

Which I am terrible at.

But reading out loud is probably the hardest part.

Why is that, you wonder, don’t you just sound out the words? Oh no, that would be too easy, and wouldn’t satisfy the sadistic need for Hebrew to torment people trying (failing) to learn it.

THERE ARE NO VOWELS. Does this Mem (M) make a moo mee, mah, meh, or mmm sound? I HAVE NO IDEA, and there is NO WAY TO TELL.

Well, sometimes there is, but a lot of the times there’s not. And those are the times the teacher calls on me to read out loud. I just try all the vowels until she nods, and I assume that’s the right one and move on to the next incomprehensible syllable.

I think I’m making it sound worse than it really is… I knew it would be hard going into it, but I think the Ulpan style of teaching is really effective at getting us to learn a lot, and fast. It’s just frustrating to know things like male/female verb conjugation, but at this point, I’d be thrilled to know numbers so I don’t look like an idiot every time I go to the market or get out of a cab. “Where is…?” would also be a great one to know. The little things I ask for…

We have a quiz on Sunday (weekends here are Friday and Saturday) over the 52 pages of the book that we’ve been through, and I’m nervous. But not, since it’s school work and me and school work have always gotten along.

That and the fact that I spend waaaay too much time studying Hebrew (trans: Evrit! Woot!). Think flashcards. Color-coded to correspond with the chapter. And little cards with all the letters we’ve learned on my wall. And grammatical rule notes also on the wall, but obviously in a different color. Not to mention the nightly, cumulative spelling tests.

I have way too much free time.