Ulpan

Jay and I started ulpan, intensive Hebrew language classes, almost 2 weeks ago. It's our excuse for why the blogging is slowing down. We are in class 5 days/week, 5 hours/day in a kibbutz half an hour from where we live and have lots of homework. The class is small, just 4 other students, 2 from France and 2 from the US.

The ulpan guys

We meet in a bomb shelter

We spend several hours trying (often with little immediate success) to learn new words. We sing children's songs and have inane conversations with the few words we know. We laugh a lot. Every morning we struggle to remember words, re-introduce ourselves, are pleased to meet each other all over again, ask where we live and how long we've been in Israel. We play games like standing at the board, trying to write down numbers our classmates call out as fast as they can. Or putting out 10 objects, learning their names, then leaving while a few a removed and saying what's missing. It's either ulpan or an Alzheimer's preview.

Jay, trying to remember what's missing...and how to say it in Hebrew

Yesterday we learned a few verbs. Thank goodness! Now, besides studying and talking, we can eat, drink, shop, talk, walk, stand and sit.

There are many cases where Hebrew has only one word for two in English. For example, "like" and "love" are the same word. Romantic comedies must be even funnier here. Also, there is one word for both "this" and "that." Do I sit in this chair or that chair becomes Abbott and Costello material. I asked our teacher whether it was confusing. I got the Israeli shrug and a bemused, "yes, it's like that."

Here's another interesting thing about Hebrew, or perhaps about my experience of Israel. Before I started ulpan, I made a list of words I knew. About a third were different ways to say good: good, very good, ok, everything ok, sbaba (ok in Arabaic), excellent. I didn't know any negative words! Now that I have a week of Hebrew class behind me, I know the word for "bad," but it turns out that it has that rolling, throatal r that I can't pronounce, so if I tried to say it, people wouldn't understand me. I've already forgotten it anyway. So the worst I can be is "not good." So far the words I know are happily quite sufficient in this department. But perhaps this is where the Jewish mother style of complaining comes from?

After a few hours, when our heads are about to burst, we go out and walk around the kibbutz. One day we learned the names of trees and plants that grow there.

Kumquats grow here. Delicious, but what a word!

Anenome (clalit)

Our second day, we took a field trip to the local grocery store. We caused a minor traffic jam in the chocolate aisle as we practiced reading prices on various products. We took turns going to the good-natured cashier asking "kama ze ole?" (how much does this cost?) and reporting our findings back to the group. Since this is a country of immigrants, people are generally patient with us, talking slowly and remembering when they learned Hebrew. Today, we went back to the grocery store again. Old pros now, having mastered the numbers, we learned the names of vegetables and fruits. Very useful!

Kama ze ole?

We had our class over for lunch. Nicolas, a playwright and theatre director from Paris, seated between the girls, deemed them "very dramatic."

Back to the flashcards for us!