My ulpan class - כיתת האולפן שלי

I am learning Hebrew.  This is something I have mentioned in previous blogs and after 7 weeks the time felt right to share a little bit of the bi-weekly hilarity that is my ulpan class.  Someone pointed out to me a while ago that Hebrew was a lot less useful as a language than Arabic in terms of the global population that speak it, so why was I giving up so much time to master a language spoken by so few?  Fair question.  In the short-term at least, Hebrew is more useful to me because I live in West Jerusalem and spend more time with Hebrew-speakers than Arabic-speakers so on a day-to-day basis learning Hebrew is more of a priority.  I’ve picked up bits of both languages from friends here but I shop, hang out, eat and drink in places where people mostly speak Hebrew and have acquired a fair few Israeli friends so right now Hebrew is where it’s at for me.  Plus, as my friend Shira pointed out, if I learn a bit of Hebrew I will be able to understand what’s going on when Israeli guys start chatting me up and use the appropriate language to rebuff them (or not, there are some very cute Israelis out there).

Thus at the end of October I began ulpan classes at Ulpan Milah, about five minutes walk from my house and twice I week I dutifully trot off to the building just off Ben Yehuda to sit in a room with 20 or so other people and attempt to get my head around a new alphabet, different grammatical structures and reading/writing from right to left. 

The Hebrew alphabet.  Fun, no?

We’re in the beginner’s class, alef (for the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet) and so we’re all facing the same challenge.  It’s not just learning a whole new vocabulary; it’s the fact that print Hebrew is very different to cursive, so it’s written differently to the way it’s read; and the fact that for some reason the creators of modern Hebrew decided that vowels were not really that necessary – just a series of dots, lines and dashes indicate what vowel sound is being made and they’re not usually written down anyway.  This means that whenever you read a new word you have to make the best guess you can at what sort of sound you’re making and it’s made doubly hard by the presence of three letters, alef (א), vav (ו) and ayin (ע) which sometimes make vowel sounds and sometimes don’t.


My textbook and exercise book, full of weird scrawls

However, the real fun does not consist in mastering a new language.  No, no, the real fun is to be found in the people who are in my ulpan class with me and they are a pretty random and hilarious (sometimes unintentionally so) bunch.  My class is made up of: two Austrian teenagers (Dan and Dan, who for some reason I now bump into everywhere I go and end up having stilted, ‘we’re in ulpan together’ conversations along the lines of ‘hi, how are you?’, in Hebrew of course); three German teenagers doing volunteer work (Lucas, Philin and Andrea); a highly entertaining French girl called Joanna in her twenties (which means I get the opportunity to practise my French too, always worthwhile, plus I'm one of the few peope in the room who understands her when she swears...); one inscrutable and taciturn Russian called Sacha who obligingly fulfils all the stereotypes that Russians should fulfil; a Bulgarian guy called Kenan who seems to find everything in class funny and is constantly giggling, at the same time as being streets ahead of everyone else and clearly thinking we all need to get a move on; an Ethiopian woman called Corrie whose phone always rings at the start of class and who always jumps in when someone is struggling with a word; a doctor of theology from Chile called Jorgé with the most impressive beard; a virtually silent student from Peru called Wilson; a lovely older American woman called Claire who might actually be one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met; another lovely American called Julianne; another German girl called Clara doing research on the Ethopian community here; an Australian called Sarah and an Italian girl whose name I've not grasped, both of whom I’ve not really managed to talk to yet (too many people in one small room and they joined the group later so it’s not really my fault); a guy called Javier who is the head of the Spanish equivalent of Reuters in Israel and is a very genial fellow; four local Arabs, Ayia, Fadi, Najati and Mohammad who all do a range of interesting jobs and are all equally lovely and interesting; and a Greek Orthodox priest called Epaphanios whose beard isn’t quite as impressive as Jorgé’s but who makes up for it with his enormous Orthodox priest hat and little pony-tail.

A pretty diverse group of people then.  It took a good few weeks for the ice to break but now that it has everyone’s rubbing along pretty well and we even had a class trip last Sunday to a museum in town (Beit Ticho), obviously an important bonding experience.  Kenan complained the whole way there, wanting us to move faster and get on with things; Corrie did a runner (where’s the love, Corrie?);  Epaphanios bumped into some other Orthodox priests that he knew; and our teacher Dana stopped outside almost every shop on the way down Ben Yehuda to give us little vocab lessons about what the shop was selling.  I should at this point mention that our teacher Dana is absolutely brilliant – very kind, very supportive, very funny and determined to take the piss out of everyone given half a chance.  This is what adds to the general hilarity in our classroom each Sunday and Wednesday, as she is no respecter of person but dishes it all out even-handedly.

So, seven weeks down the line and how am I doing?  Well, I got 95% in a recent test, which I’m rather proud of.  I keep getting my alef (א), vav (ו) and ayin (ע) mixed up when writing, which is driving me crazy – when should I put alef and when should I put ayin?  It’s never, never logical.  Occasionally I use the masculine version of the verb, not the feminine (well, OK, more than occasionally) and this really does make a difference as the endings of the words are completely different.  But I am now able to have small conversations with taxi drivers, shopkeepers and randoms on the street, which is a lot of fun, and as a rule Israelis are delighted to find someone learning Hebrew and take time to listen and help you when you get it wrong – not in a patronising way either, unlike the French.  I’m currently in the middle of translating a kid’s story I found on the photocopier at work (left there, I’m guessing, by our school Hebrew teacher) about a little mouse who is looking for a wife, for the benefit of Julie the receptionist at work.  She’s on tenterhooks – will he find his bride?  I’m only on the third line so it may take us a while to find out.  Either way, I’m really enjoying myself.  Here’s hoping I get 95% in the final exam so that I can progress to the next class, alef +, where, it is to be supposed, they learn exciting things like the past tense.  I’ll keep you posted.

95% - check it out!  Yofi, as they say here.

PS. The masculine/feminine thing backfires on Israelis too - one friend here, a guy, spent several weeks telling me he was a waitress at the Musuem of Israel.  Not so much...