The Awful Hebrew Language
An outline of my next cultural piece, with apologies to Mark Twain's A Tramp Abroad (Appendix D, 1880)
As a student of Hebrew, by fault of being in Israel and believing it necessary to learn the language of the general populous (even as more of them speak English than in many parts of Texas), I have endeavored to grasp the basics of this formerly dead tongue which started wagging again in public a century ago.
While so-called history books claim Eliezer Ben Yehuda revived the Hebrew as a spoken language in the late 19th century, I believe that like the inventor of Eli Whitney's cotton gin, it was actually his wife. (Note for historical accuracy: Catherine Littlefield Greene, Whitney's employer, is credited by some historians with originating the Cotton Gin. She was not his wife.)
Hebrew can only be the product of a woman:
1) Everything is written backwards (except anything to do with mathematics.)
2) Hebrew proponents claim the grammar is logical, but every supposed rule has multiple exceptions.
3) Every word has a gender-- including numbers-- and the rule of thumb is that words with "t" and "ah" (letter Hey) sound at the end are feminine. Except, of course, for ones that aren't. The masculine of "you" is "ata" (but aha! it doesn't ended in an actual "ah" sound, even though it is pronounced that way.)
Oh, and counting is done in female numbers; while the word for numbers ("mispar") is male.
4) You have to match the gender of every word to the person/s you're talking to/about so they won't be offended that you're referring to them as the wrong sex
When buying a quantity of male vegetables, like carrots or potatoes, you must use male gender numbers; when referring to female ones like turnips or tomatoes, you use female numbers. You have to memorize all the exceptions and know how to spell the word before you can guess at its gender.
5) Thus, it's impossible to have a secretive phone conversation without your girlfriend knowing if you're actually talking to a man or woman.
6) You have to guess how to read nearly every word, because Hebrew didn't bother to including all the vowels.
To make things extra complicated, there is a supposed system of dots and dashes intended to simulate vowels, called "nekudot" (points) but there are three times as many of these markings as necessary.
7) There's no consistency between the written and spoken language.
Four letters can be pronounced two different ways:
?) Bet is either B or V
?) Pey is either P or F
? ) Shin is either S or Sh
?) Kaff is K or Ch
Four sets of letters are pronounced the same;
? ) Aleph and (?) Ayn: A or no sound
?) Vav and (?) Bet (then called 'Vet'): V
? ) Het and (?) Kaff (then called 'Haf'): hard CH
? ) Samech and (?) Shin (then called 'Sin'): S
One letter "Vav” can be pronounced as a V, O, or U!
Four letters, Mem (?), Nun (?, Fay/Pay (?), Tsadik (?), turn into a different shape with the same sound if they show up at the end of a word and are called a 'sofit,' for no reason other than to be difficult to figure out.
When written, however, the Fey Sofit (?) and Tsadik Sofit (?) look like a Lamed (?) except for the direction of a little curve at the end.
7) You can only know from the gender context how to properly read a word.
For example, the word for "name" is spelled the same but pronounced differently if you're talking to a woman ("shemech") or man ("shimcha.") Likewise the word for "yours."
There are at least 12 words that all translate to the English "you."
Clearly, such a wacked-out system could only have come from the mind of a chick.
With its limited concept of vowels, my name would be written like: NMSYYLF NOMYYS, or in the Hebrew:
?????? ???????
And as I'm sure you know, the written script looks almost nothing like the printed.
