Learn Spanish, French and Mandarin Chinese
It's a challenge...
...to learn any language, but I've just started to try to learn to speak Hebrew. Growing up in the US, the majority of us were required to take a foreign language in school and the options were usually from the romance language family. So I thought I would try something completely different to shock the system and learning Hebrew certainly does that. Not only is it a completely different alphabet (which I'm trying to learn - both print and script), but you also read from right to left! I'm sure there are many many many more differences, but I'm still a beginner so you'll have to forgive me. The best thing I discovered about the Hebrew langauge is that the only tenses that exist are past, present, and future! I don't have to learn things like the past present participle or subjunctive (which to this very day I still can't do correctly when I speak Spanish). So, I'm excited about my new challenge and completley thankful that the people who created/molded the modern Hebrew language kept it blissfully simple.
I'll keep you posted on my progress...only two classes under my belt, but since I'll be travelling to Israel in 6 weeks I'm going to try to cram as much in as possible. Oh, and the Israeli boyfriend has certainly been a blessing...I have my very own (adorable) tutor available 24/7. If I'd had that for Spanish in high school things may have been totally different.
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Comment by Kongway on June 22, 2007 at 7:00am - well...i have learnt Mandarin since I was very young, and have spent 6 yrs learning "old mandarin" which could let u access to 5,000 yrs of chinese literature...having said that, "old mandarin" is too different from modern mandarin and i still can't read many of the literature dated back to 5,000 yrs ago.
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Comment by Robert Link on June 21, 2007 at 3:38pm
- Took a semester of Hebrew in, oh, 83/84? Loved it. Recall none of it. But the thing that called me is that Hebrew and Mandarin Chinese are the only two living languages of which I am aware which give one access to 5,000 years of literature. That's pretty heady stuff.
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Comment by LoquellaGirl on May 18, 2007 at 9:52am
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Hi Sarina,
Great post. I had no idea that you read Hebrew from right to left. That's a perfect example of all the good stuff we can learn from each other! Thanks for sharing, and we will definitely want to see some pictures from your trip to Israel!
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