ENGLISH AND HEBREW, WHATS THE DIFFERENCE?

When I was studying Hebrew on the ulpan, my teacher would write a few new words on the board each day. Usually a couple verbs, an adjective, a noun or two, and then at least one of what she called, "International words."

Quickly it became clear to me that "international" means English.

There are a thousand examples of this. It gets to the point, that when I am speaking Hebrew, and am unable to come up with a word, I simply try saying the English word with an Israeli accent.

As I am riding the bus to work, I often watch attentively out the window, trying to read the Hebrew in the signs and advertisements. Its just a good time to practice. When I have seen a particular word several times and am still unable to decipher it, I will jot it down, and check the dictionary at home. (the kind of homework that never really stops for a new immigrant)

When this fails, the next time I see that sign with my wife, I check to see if she knows what it means. She has been in the country the same amount of time as I have, but has managed to pick up the language a lot faster. The problem with this method, is that my wife's first language is Russian, and she is prone to translating a word into Russian first, and then into English. Like a game of telephone, as the word is passed from language to language, it can lose its original meaning.

But I digress.

There was a funny instance in which we were riding the bus together, and I pointed to a sign above a restaurant door. "Do you know what that says?" I asked. "Boor-gar?, Is that some one's name?"

"You Americans are so smart," she said, "Burger, you know this word?"'

Strangely enough, they will actually write English words with Hebrew letters, even though they have a word with the same meaning, which they use in normal conversation.

One of the largest banks in Israel is called, "Discount". There is a Hebrew word, "mivtsa" that directly translates into the word, "discount". But instead of using the Hebrew word, they phonetically write the English word, using the Hebrew alphabet. As though the English name offers them some sort of cultural cache.

Another example, is the most popular beer in Israel, "Goldstar". Again, there are Hebrew words that mean both "Gold" and "Star". But they choose not to translate. On the bottle the name of the beer (beera in hebrew by the way) is written first in English, and then the English name is repeated using Hebrew letters.

Here's a good one. This is a sign above a drugstore. Sound the word out in Hebrew, and it says, you guessed it, "Drugstore".

"Drugstore", they will say, "that's not English, its an international word."

"OK", I say.