Re: OT: Slightly OT: French as a second language

On 21 Nov, Aquamarine Demon wrote:


> > I think Hebrew is pretty.
>
> Ooh... me too! This guy at my school knows it fluently, and speaks every
> once in awhile...(he HATES English though... wonder why..
    If the guy is a native Hebrew speaker, he could be reacting to the
differences between the Hebrew he was used to and English, which is
a very different system.
    My kids, who are native Hebrew speakers, also don't like English even
though
they are fluent in it. Their reasons are mostly the following:
    1. Due to the triconsonantal-root structure of Hebrew, the grammar seems
        to them to be a lot more predictable than English: especially after
having learned Hebrew grammar in school and then having learned English
grammar as part of English class, they think that English is mostly
exceptions
         with a few rules thrown in rather than the other way around.
    2. Could be the phonology too:  Israeli Hebrew doesn't diphthongize its
vowels
        the way English does: "e" is /e/, not /ej/ for example. Also, there
is no /I/ or /&/ or /U/ (as in Midwestern American "put"). And the (American
at
least) English "r" is not trilled or tapped. Might be a bit too much of a
difference for him.
    3. And let's not forget the spelling, a topic of extreme youthful
anguish often heard in our home. ;-)  Hebrew is spelled a lot more like it
is pronounced
than English is.
        Typical rant in our home: "Why are there 50 million ways to spell
        (and they pronounce /i/)? If it sounds like (pronounced /i/), it
should be  written "i" and be done with it!"


<snip>

 ... never heard Yemenite or anything
> >though.
    Try having the Yemmenite parents bring you their sons for speech
therapy because they (the kids) speak Hebrew like all the other Israelis
around them
and not like the rest of their family!
    Usually I try to talk them out of it, but one time I couldn't, and I
ended up having to try and modify the poor kid's dialect to conform
to family standards!

Dan Sulani
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likehsna rtem zuv tikuhnuh auag inuvuz vaka'a.

A word is an awesome thing.