Hameno

Speaking Hebrew

I’m in Israel for work again this week. I’ve been pretty busy, and haven’t had much time to write blog posts. But I thought about writing a post earlier in the week, about how I seem able to understand what is going on around the office even when people are speaking Hebrew. There are just enough English words (like gigabyte, platform, etc) that I generally know what the technical conversations are about, and I know enough of the little words, plus facial expressions, to know who is disagreeing with whom. Oh, and I know when people speaking Hebrew mean when they offer me the empty chair around the table. Boy, was I feeling proud of myself.

Of course then I had a taxi ride last night. Halfway home I decided I wanted to go to a restaurant instead of the hotel, so I told the guy this. He understood just enough English to get the name of the Hotel, but not enough English to understand, well, anything else. He thought I was telling him to take a different route, I think, and I tried to say that the way was fine (with gestures of course). The whole way there we tried miserably to understand each other, and I ended up drawing a map, circling the restaurant (which was three blocks from the hotel) and drawing big stars around it. It was very pleasant and fun but not very fruitful. In the end we got there without me knowing anything more than b’seder (ok), ken (yes), and lo (no), which was more than he knew. He had a pretty good time, and so did I. Before I got out of the cab, he told me this long, really nice, pleasant story about … something.

So I’ve decided I need to learn a few more of those useful words, like Here, There, Where, Left, Right, Street, Restaurant. Cause it looks like I’ll be here a few more times in the upcoming months.