An Israeli business group says local flag makers won't have much to celebrate during Israel's 60th anniversary. During Independence Day celebrations, it's a popular custom for Israelis to hang the national flag from homes, public buildings and cars. The Israeli Manufacturers Association says the vast majority of the blue and white banners are being imported from China. The association said Sunday that budget-conscious city and regional councils are the worst offenders. It said local authorities are importing 95 percent of their flags - mainly from cut-price Chinese suppliers - and purchasing only five percent from local makers.The staff at What War Zone? have managed to get our hands on a few of these flags. Here they are.
This will not go down as one of my finer posts.
Because one wasn't enough.By the way, at my work seminar last week, the following words may or may not have been said:
beeperim
GPSeem
And one of the all-time bests...are you ready?
Mini-barim
My co-workers can't figure out why this is so funny to me.
Somebody lost the beepereem? ANI B'PANICA!!!
6 comments:
Cars are good for englishization too. You have your brayksim and, strangely enough, your bak-aksl kidmi(I think).
(what do you mean englishization isn't a word? Apparently, you haven't lived in Israel long enough.)
:-)
How about these names for cars?
The Ford Fadicha
The Nissan Fashla
They sound Israeli to me.
I am also amused by what you find amusing :-)
How would you expect people to say beepers or mini-bars?
Just like an English speaker asking to borrow 100 Shekels .
It took three whole courses about this in Uni (Linguistics). This has been going on since Eliezer Ben-Yehuda had to come up with words for things that didn't exist in bible times. He "borrowed" from here and there and gave words from other languages Hebrew grammatical form. You can look up Prof. Vexler at TAU Linguistics dept, his lectures and are in English.
Anyway, the funniest I have heard lately is LeSMS (said Le'sames) לסאמס which means sending an SMS.
P.S. There are also names that have to changed since they would be bad in Hebrew. Like have you wondered why they say Ikea the way they do here? It's because the way they say it everywhere else sounds very close to vomit in Hebrew? Natzi vomit furniture would not go so well, I think.
And there was a name of a car the is Shuma or I've seen it in other countries but not here (don't know if they changed the name or it didn't sell), but it means thy ugly thing that was once on Ehud Barak's face before he had it removed.
A few notes to Mia:
1) You are quite wrong about Ikea. It is pronounced in Israel as in Sweden and as in most countries with the exception of the USA.
See http://www.paloaltoonline.com/weekly/morgue/2003/2003_08_27.ikeac.html .
Americans tend to pronounce many i's as in "mine" even when The British pronounce it as in "bin. E.g. the word vitamins. Some Amricans even pronounce Iraq as Ayrak.
In any case, the American pronunciation of Ikea is very far to the Sabra's ear from vomit (haka'ah).
2) lesames, simasti, simasta etc. is actually quite old, since SMSes arrived.
Verbalizing (is that a word in English?) nouns and names is common in many languages. Actually, it is particularly common in English.
:Lesames" also exists in English: to text someone.
Post a Comment