Once again, I’ve been spending this month learning new vocabulary. This time, it’s been more focused on greetings, introductions, things I will use in my daily life. I’m a huge cook, so I took to my pantry labelling things in Hebrew, and now have many common cooking ingredients memorized. I might not always remember the word for shirt (חולצה) but I certainly know the word for garlic (שום). It was a good reminder of the effect of immersion, because while I was clearly not completely immersed, that’s some of the vocab I can easiest call to mind because of the number of times I saw it. Another fun fact pertaining to food: I’m deathly allergic to several different foods, so I also made sure they were top of my list to memorize! If I do get to travel to Israel, I’ll most have to worry about nuts (אגוזים eh-go-zEEm) and peanuts (בוטך bot-en) as they’re a super common food group.
I’ve continued to work on vocabulary lists with Maddie, and we’ve now covered the entire Hebrew calendar as well as basic numbers. I went through my Google calendar and customized it to include the Hebrew names and when they start, as well as all Jewish holidays. This is where I got the idea to do my final cultural project about Passover, or Pesach (פסח), as well as the ritual surrounding it. I’ve also started listening to pop music in Hebrew, and while I can’t really understand it, I do feel jolts of excitement when I understand a phrase here and there. It makes for great background music while doing homework, and I’m certain “Israeli Pop” is going to wind up in my Spotify Wrapped. That being said, I do recognize and can sing along to several simple tunes from religious service, and I feel like that has really helped me with my pronunciation for those texts. Music has been a great tool for my learning, and I’m excited to utilize it more when I can.
As for a less successful experience… It was advised to me to watch some children’s programming like Shalom Sesame to gain a good understanding of different basic Hebrew concepts, and I tried, I really did, but I found a lot of the children’s TV grating and slow. While it might’ve been helpful, I found it too annoying, so did not end up using it as a resource.
I’m rather unsure of my next step yet. I want to continue learning vocab, but I feel that I haven’t really learned much about grammar. While I can struggle through simple readings, I’m sure all my writing beyond those same simple sentences would be atrocious. Since Maddie is familiar with the religious text I’d like to learn, I’d also like to review them with her, as I know the sound of the prayer from the repetition of saying them in services, and I know their meaning because I know the English translation, but that’s clearly not the same thing as understanding the actual Hebrew.
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