People are seriously obsessed with English in this country. Need I link to the t-shirts again? In the middle of speaking in Hebrew, someone will just - without warning - say one phrase or part of a sentence in English. I cannot figure out why, which phrases they choose to translate, and at what point their brain says, "Hey, I'm gonna say this in another language!" I witnessed this at least 10 times today.
Sorry that this will be in transliteration but kacha zeh...
"Nimas li mi'zeh! Nimas li mi'zeh! Im hu mamsheech la'asot et zeh...? Den heet deh road Jeck!"
Umm...did you just spend the weekend in Motown or something?
Monday, April 28, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
9 comments:
Sometimes they don't even REALIZE its English... Like, for example, the time my aunt said to me, "Al tasimi lev. Tamshichi kmo bull-dozerrr. At yodaat mah zeh bull-dozerrr?" Ummm... yes, considering its an ENGLISH WORD.
How about Hi-Tech employees' annoying habit of translating English idioms into Hebrew?
'it does not make sense' becomes 'ze lo ose sechel'
Jew, speak Hebrew!
HA HA HA HA!!!!!!!!!
What's more interesting is when English words are simply Hebraized.
Especially notable (like Anonymous said in his post) in the field of high tech:
לפרמט to format
לקנפג to configure
לקמפל to compile
לדבג to debug
לנטר to monitor
I guess it kind of takes the edge off the accent when it's a Hebrew word.
English pervades EVERYTHING in this country. Try to find a product with all Hebrew writing on it, no English based words, nothing but real Hebrew. That'd be tough. It's like buying clothes in America and trying to avoid Made in China, Taiwan, India, Bangladesh, and so on.
kind of like the time my 50-something prof walked out of the lab saying "ani holech l'asot pee-pee"
well, you know, it has a certain je nais se quoi...
I have to tell you that you transliterate with a perfect Hebrew accent!!!! (:-D)
My question, beyond the "let's speak English all of a sudden for no reason except to use some cliche", is why is it that Israelis sometimes speak Hebrew with an American accent and act like it's funny. I mean it's one thing to be American and talk in a Southern drawl (for fun), but why davka American--not, let's say, Argentinian, Ethiopian, French, Russian, Iraqi, Moroccan or whatever else? Or if you want to stay in the Anglo-sphere, why not British, South African or Australian?
Anyway, que sera, sera...
I find it incredibly frustrating when my Israeli friends think that when they say something like "amarti lo she ze 'over my dead body'" and think that the English is the ONLY part of the sentence that I understood. They look at me with a "right, right, you got THAT part, didn't you?" look.
As you often wonder, "Ech omrim 'And don't you come back no more'?" :-)
Post a Comment