Sunday, May 24, 2009

"...feelin' groovy..."

Not really. But there's a backstory...like many of my posts...

Like any good child of the 80's, I had parents who raised me and my sisters on their music in the car. That consisted of a lot of tapes (made from of records, because cars came with tape/cassette players and not record players) and the Oldies station-- 101.1 CBS FM (New York...I can't read/write/think that without hearing the tune in my head). " My mom likes Simon and Garfunkel (see their official website or the Wikipedia page for more info on them). So you would think that I would know their songs and recognize them when they, you know, were played on the radio and stuff.

Close...I knew their songs-- except I knew them in Hebrew. Do you understand how confusing it is to learn a song in Hebrew, think that that's the song-- it's in Hebrew, not English-- and then hear it on the radio IN ENGLISH?! My little brain was going"wtf?" (except not in those words because I didn't know them yet, and "wtf" wasn't an expression then). It took me a while to understand the concept of "covers." So, yes, I learned Simon and Garfunkel songs in Hebrew before I learned them in English.

Now why is this relevant?-- or in Hebrew-- ?איך זה רלוונטי-- "aych zeh relevanti?" Because I spent Shabbat reading words like:
טמפרטורה
סימפטומים
רלוונטים
דפורמציות
קונטרקטורות

(just like that-- no nekudot (vowels) the dots and lines under the letters, which make it easier to read)

Normally it's not so bad trying to read Hebrew. But here's the catch (and there's always a catch, especially when dealing with Israel or anything related)-- these words? ENGLISH! Watch:
טמפורטורה - tem-pu-ra-tura - temperature
סימפטומים - seemp-to-meem - symptoms
רלוונטים - reh-la-vahn-teem - relevant (plural)
דפורמציות - de-for-ma-tzee-yot - deformities
קונטרקטורות - con-trac-tu-roht - contractures

Do you see anything the same about these words in Hebrew and English? It's a hell of a lot harder trying to read English in Hebrew than it is trying to read Hebrew in Hebrew (on the plus side, I'm learning to type in Hebrew). And that my friends throws your brain off, much like trying to understand that the songs you learned in Hebrew are American songs, and makes your brain hurt.

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