It must be Hebrew!
Starting today, MM and I officially started to teach other each other our own language. Well, Hebrew is not really MM's native language, but he is very fluent in it. We tried this idea before but this time, there is even a notebook involved. So we are serious.
The idea is to teach a new word every other day, and in the between days we would try to play/have fun with the word just learned, or simply take a break.
I figure the break is probably what I need most in the future after today's class, when MM spent half an hour explaining a single word to me, "bear".
Let's see, where should I start. We have 80% of the first page in our book full of notes about this single word. It pronounced as easy as "dov", if written in English. So that's pretty easy. Then there comes some square-ish alien looking thingy, Hebrew letters I was told, that is not too bad I suppose. I am sure Chinese characters gave English speakers that first impression as well.
Next I was told the last letter "bet", actually pronounced differently in different positions of a word. Fine, English has the same thing.
Now brace yourself--not only the letter is pronounced differently, they look differently as well depending on whether it is at the beginning of a syllable or after a vowel. Why aren't they two letters then, if they look and sound differently?!
Perhaps Hebrew will end up with hundreds of letter to start with I suppose. I formed this hypothesis when MM told me, "By the way, the middle of the three letters can be pronounced in three ways, and yes they also look a bit different in each occasion too."
By "a bit different", we are talking about a letter looks like a hump-back person, who forgets his hat, tucks his hat under his arm, and finally wears his hat (the hat, called holam, is a dot flying all over the places).
Even better, sometimes the hump-back creature disappears and his hat is inherited by its right-hand neighbor (the 1st letter, because Hebrew reads from right to left) and in Ancient Hebrew, as the way Bible writes, even the hat completely disappeared!
Let me make this clear, one is supposed to recognize this hump-back fellow wherever he is, with or without his hat, with him in front of you or disappeared into the thin air. Oh, did I also happened to mention you're supposed to call him differently in different cases?
"Good morning, Mr Tough!
Oops, I am so sorry. I didn't notice your hat is actually under your arm today. Yes the weather is a bit too humid for a hat, Mr...(checking notes) Harsh. "
I don't know about you. I cannot adapt to this system in a short time unless I am crazily in love with the hump-back creature and his alien-looking buddies, which I probably will pretty soon, with MM , the most passionate tutor you can find on earth around.
But, next time, when he started saying, "Hebrew only has 24 letters..." I have this line waiting for him,
"Right, only each look and are pronounced differently depending on what the weather is like!"
2 comments:
Hebrew is a much easier language to learn than English. If you have managed English then Hebrew should be simple.
First off it has fewer letters and then you always pronounce all of them and they do sound the same. The only way they can sound different is sometimes they're soft and sometimes hard (like "b" and "v" from the letter "bet" or "p" and "f" from the letter "peh"). However after you get used to the sound of the language this becomes second nature.
The easiest thing with Hebrew though is the way that all nouns verbs and adjectives are all built from three letter roots using standard rules. This means that if you see a new word you can always guess the meaning by looking for its root. Now try doing that in English...
Umm, sounds like German you described. I learned German for a year and the grammar was killing me...
Hope you are right. I'll keep you posted. Just learned today though, "my bear" and "teddy bear" are pronounced the same. Not very soothing either.
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